Ehhh… he’s a talented speaker but a snake oil salesman. The “backwardsness” of some (maybe many) of Islams followers has nothing to do with their religion, and everything to do with them being from insulated 3rd world countries, often war torn.

By his standard that Islam doesn’t have the answers to fit the questions of the 21st century, please tell me what religion does?

Just another bigot.

Sounds like someone with a personal ax to grind. I wouldn’t take his opinions as anything more than opinions.

@tedd – Salesman? What does he sell?

@tedd

It was pointed out in the interview that not all Muslims are from war-torn 3rd world countries. Look at Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar. Very wealthy countries with high standards of living, but still under strict Islamic law.

Interesting, and he articulates things that I’ve thought before but did not have the facts or knowledge to posit. Though I have stated before that you cannot separate a person from their religion wen it permeates every aspect of their lives.
I like the idea of Islam without Sharia law or jihad.

@janbb – Personal ax to grind? I don’t think so. Not after having read his book. He has become a senior consultant of the German government and participant of a conference of dialogue which is scheduled to last at least two or three years, and which is intended by the organizers to be a tool for improving the relationship between German society, its institutions, and the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who belong to it, by promoting integration and combating the diffusion of Islamist terrorism.

Of course his views are one opinion and there are other opinions. But I was quite impressed by the analysis in his book.

Can anyone answer the following question:

Why has there not been a single discovery or single invention in the past 600 years originating in Muslim societies? From Nicolaus Copernicus to Albert Einstein and Tim Berners-Lee. There must be some deeper reason for this.

This sounds like a statement of the obvious. There is nothing here, except that he is stating it publicly. It is clear that one would never use the words progress and muslim country in the same sentence. Where are the scientific, medical, technologic advances coming from these days? Certainly not from countries that are fundamentally Islamic. The reason is that strict Islam stifles creative, constructive, argumentative thought, and also suppresses the activities of 50% of its populace, namely women. Freedom of religion equals freedom of thought, and freedom of thought permits the birth of progressive ideas.

Eventually, when the oil runs out, those countries will either HAVE to adapt to modern times, or implode and become permanently entrenched as 3rd world countries. Alternatively, an intellectual revolution or renaissance could overturn centuries of restrictive thoughts, but as entrenched as fundamentalist Islam is, I cannot see that happening.

One statistic mentioned in his book is this:

Greece has a population of 11 million who speak modern Greek.

All Arab nations combined have a population of 280 million who speak Arabic, a language which hasn’t changed much since 1400 CE.

The total number of books translated into Greek per year exceeds the number of books translated into Arabic every year. Unlike Athens, when you go to Cairo you won’t find a lot of bookstores.

Almost all Arabic books that are available do have a religious content and are very often sponsored by Saudi Arabia. According to Hamed Abdel-Samad.

People in Arabic countries who seek knowledge need to learn English. There’s no other way. Now what does this fact tell us about the state of the Arab nations? This has nothing to do with Islamophobia.

@mattbrowne Uhhhh I’m not sure what history you’ve been reading… the vast majority of art, science, literature, etc from the middle ages originated from the middle east during the birth and first few hundred years of the Muslim religion. Alchemy, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, agriculture…. all took huge leaps and bounds under the Islamic golden age.

And heck today, about a third of my professors in school were islamic and they were some of the most free minded intelligent people I know…. coming up with things like cures for cancer.

for your inspection.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

@tedd – Exactly.

“The Islamic Golden Age is traditionally dated from the mid-8th century to the mid-13th century A.D. During this period, artists, engineers, scholars, poets, philosophers, geographers and traders in the Islamic world contributed to agriculture, the arts, economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, sociology, and technology.”

So what happened after 1250 CE ??

Well the golden age ended…. that doesn’t mean they stopped having a thriving culture full of literature, art, and science.

@tedd – Well, they did stop. That’s the whole point of Hamed Abdel-Samad and this debate. The number of books today is one indicator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus Nobel peace prize winning economist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahbub_ul_Haq Founder of the human development theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahbub_ul_Haq Nobel prize winner in chemistry for work in femtochemistry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_Nurun_Nahar Senior research scientist in atomic astrophysics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumrun_Vafa Leading string theorist at Harvard University.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdus_Salam Nobel prize winner for work in electro-weak theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_scientists Main list.

Most of the people I listed are Iranian and Pakistani.

The guy is a snake oil salesman and a bigot…. and you have bought into his bigotry hook line and sinker.

I’ve said before, and I continue to say, that Islam is in a kind of “teen-age idealism” phase of its existence. As a world religion it is about 700 years ‘younger’ than Christianity, which itself is several thousands of years younger than Judaism, Hinduism and other old religions. Seven hundred years ago Christianity was going through many of the growing pains that Islam now is: persecutions of heretics, witch-burnings, forced conversions, etc., not to mention the Crusades themselves.

This man’s comments could relate to nearly any “fundamentalist” religion, even Christianity. Wherever that is practiced in a very “fundamental” way we see the same lack of scientific progress and tolerance of diversity in lifestyle, interpretation and other-ness that fundamentalist Islam enforces.

Islam needs to grow up into a more comfortable middle age, where it can live and let live, as Christianity does now (for the most part), and Judaism has done for a long time. The growing pains are tough for all of us, though.

Good article. Thanks, @mattbrowne.

I think the answer to this question is yes, but the concern is whether the demise is enacted quietly or otherwise.

The Islamic world has endlessly been adulterated and manipulated, by Western influences. Contemporary Islamic culture is under intense pressure, squeezed by the relentless onslaught of globalisation. When a culture is under threat it tends to adopt rather a grotesque posture, suspect elements lurking within Islamic Doctrine become distorted, and aggravated, that is regrettable, and then, of course, the squeezing gives way, ultimately, to open hostility, from both sides, and finally brutality.

Islam may well be forced to adopt extreme measures to ensure it’s integrity, unlike Communist regimes, Capitalism’s other arch enemy, Islam is a non-materialist ideology, with a far more unpredictable modus operandi. The prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation is considerably more plausible under the directorate of a Fundamentalist Islamic group than a Communist super power.

Of course once Islam is taken care of, we can begin to ponder the Demise of Earth.

“the believer reaches for the bottle of dogmatic faith in every situation”

For the most part Abdel-Samad is dead on.

The demise of the Muslim world?
Religion in general is doomed as an institution. Don’t get worried. Another and/or a refined one will crop up.

@tedd Most of those scientists live in Western countries, for one good reason: lack of intellectual freedom in their country of origin. Your links actually MAKE THE POINT of the entire argument, which is that fundamentalist Islam stifles progress. And, just for comparison, here is a list of Jewish Nobel laureates in biomedicine, chemistry, economics, physics, and literature (total number, 159). Considering that there are 100-fold more Muslims than Jews worldwide, the normalized ratio is significantly higher. My point is not to say that Jews are better, or smarter, but rather that the acceptance by the majority of Jews of a modern, intellectual, permissive and progressive viewpoint free from religious tyranny has fostered great achievements by a small number of people. If only 1.4 billion Muslims would share that viewpoint (and value an education of critical thought rather than religious indoctrination), the world would be a much better place.

Both the Bible and the Quran are backwards and uncivilized documents. They reflect the barbaric (by our standards) civilizations that wrote them.

To the extent that a religious person or group conforms to these books, they will be backwards and uncivilized.

Now, one can point to the example of Christianity—modern Christians rarely care what the Bible says, or even know what it says, and generally have liberal morals. Maybe Islam will go this route too; in some places it already has. But let’s not forget what it took to get here with Christianity: centuries of religious holy wars, censorship of science, punishment of heresy and any questioning of the Bible.

In many parts of America, Christians are still like this. Also, in my opinion, “Christians” like @mattbrowne are in many ways functionally indistinguishable from atheists such as myself. I don’t buy the classification of religion as a cultural identity.

@tedd, it’s not “bigoted” to criticize an ideology, whether it’s the Republican Party or the religion of Islam.

Religion is not a race, or a sexual identity. It is a set of beliefs. If you think criticizing beliefs makes one a bigot, then you’re a bigot as well—since you’re also being critical of people’s beliefs.

@mote I’m not sure which list you looked at, but only two of them live in western countries… and one of those two has joint Iranian and US citizenship.

And people want to list Qatar and Saudi Arabia as examples of how the Muslim world is limiting and strict and backwards. Why’d they leave off the most populous muslim nations in the world? No one mentions Indonesia or Turkey…. heck even Egypt is pretty “westernized” at this point. And how many millions upon millions of muslims live in nations that aren’t predominantly muslim? You’re going to throw the whole religion under the bus as backwards and not coming up with anything to help man kind because a segment of them live under dictorship-ish leadership. And hell the only reason countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia are still under theocratic rule, is because the United States gave financial and military backing to their leaders, because they knew those leaders would give us their oil….. You want to know why a religious dictatorship was able to come to power in Iran? You want to ask why we’re helping the Saudi’s put down movements to make the country a democracy?

@mattbrowne, I basically agree with you—Islamic culture is backwards compared to Western culture today—but I do think we should acknowledge the damaging effects of Western colonialism on traditionally Islamic places (and others). I think an argument can be made that, in the past few centuries at least, Western hegemony has somewhat handicapped the economic and intellectual development of many other cultures with incredibly exploitative practices. But obviously this isn’t the whole story either; and clearly something happened in the West to enable this technological hegemony that did not happen in Islamic culture.

@tedd, Indonesia is better than Saudi Arabia, but it’s not exactly a shining beacon of civilization; as I understand it religious fundamentalism is resurgent there.

@Qingu Not sure if you’ve noticed, but religious fundamentalism is resurgent everywhere… even here in the US. See Tea Party regarding separation of church and state, or see Religious militia groups in the US.

@tedd Mohammed Yunus, educated in the USA. Mahbub ul Haq, Cambridge and Yale. Abdus Salam, Cambridge and Imperial College. Ahmed Zewail (femtochemistry), California Institute of Technology. Sultana Nurun Nahar, Ohio State. Cumrun Vafa, Harvard University.

Indeed, ALL from YOUR LIST were either educated in and/or permanently reside within Western countries. Who are you talking about?

@mote Ok so they sought to further their education at the best institutions in the world. All but two of them now reside back in their countries of origin, where they went on to accomplish great things. Just because Pakistan doesn’t have an equivalent to Yale, doesn’t mean that their people are backwards and we need to discount all their thinkers who opted to go to Yale because it was the best.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_scientists Main list.

I clickedon this list, then each of the names. Here are the dates that they lived;

Khalid ibn Yazid (died 704 CE).
Jaʿfar ibn Muhammad al-Sādiq) (702–765 C.E.)
Yaʿqūb ibn Ṭāriq (died c. 796 AD)
Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Habib ibn Sulaiman ibn Samura ibn Jundab al-Fazari
He died in 777AD.
Abu abdallah Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Fazari (d. 796 or 806)
Nobakht Ahvazi Nobakht was particularly famous for having led a group of astrologers who picked an auspicious electional chart for the founding of Baghdad
Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī[4] (c. 850)
Ja’far ibn Muḥammad Abū Ma’shar al-Balkhī (10 August 787 – 9 March 886)
Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī astronomer and one of the famous astronomers in 9th century.
The Banū Mūsā brothers (Arabic: بنو موسى‎, “Sons of Mūsā”) were three 9th century Persian[1][2] scholars,
Maslama al-Majriti, Al-Majriti ((b. Madrid – d. 1008 or 1007 CE)
Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Jābir ibn Sinān ar-Raqqī al-Ḥarrānī aṣ-Ṣābi’ al-Battānī (c. 858, Harran – 929)
Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (c. 872[2] – between 14 December, 950 and 12 January, 951)
Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (December 7, 903 – May 25, 986
Abu Sa’id Zarir Gorgani 9th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer
Abul-Hasan Kūshyār ibn Labbān ibn Bashahri Gilani (971–1029)
Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Hasan Khazini (900–971)
Abu-Abdullah Muhammad ibn Īsa Māhānī was a Persian [1] mathematician and astronomer from Mahan, Kermān, Persia.
A series of observations of lunar and solar eclipses and planetary conjunctions, made by him from 853 to 866

Hmmmm. Kind of bears out what @mattbrowne was saying…

@tedd, religious fundamentalism is not resurgent in Europe (unless you count Muslim immigrants), and its “resurgence” in America is greatly exaggerated. In fact, in America, religiosity is on the same path of decline as it is in Europe—it’s just about half a century slower. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the government actually banned a non-Islamic sect (whose members are occasionally assassinated by Muslim extremists).

Also, by the way, until very recently (1998) Indonesia was a dictatorship. Turkey, until recently, was a de facto military dictatorship.

@tedd, the fact that Pakistan doesn’t have the equivalent of Yale does mean the country is backwards. I don’t really know what criteria you are using for “backwards” if not “education.”

But you are correct, it doesn’t mean we need to discount the tiny fraction of Pakistanis who are educated.

In the early years of the Moslem Golden Age, they could have leveled the same charges at Christians. Religions evolve. My guess is that Moslems will become more secular, the way that they are in Europe and America.

@Trillian The lists are in order by year…. look at the names at the end of each section. Also its not a comprehensive list, most of them are people who came up with some specific mathematic formula, or Nobel prize winners.

*sigh…. you all make me incredibly sad and doubtful for humanity. Islam does not equal stupid, evil, backwards, or anything of the nature.

@tedd Why do you think they left their countries if not for intellectual freedom? Many Jewish scientists of German (and other European) descent left prior to WW2 and Holocaust because of religious and intellectual persecution. The intellectual freedom you enjoy right at this instant to debate this issue would be tenuous in a more fundamental country.

@mote Then I wonder why they ALL WENT BACK TO THEIR COUNTRIES AFTER GETTING THAT EDUCATION. (except for 2 of them)

Oh and thanks for just comparing Muslim nations to nazi germany. Thats cool.

@tedd – I don’t think it is either.

I think that part of the problem is that Islam now is predominant in developing and resource-rich (as opposed to service- or tech-rich) nations. In many ways, the western world by poiring money into developing nations supports oppressive regimes. So I really don’t think it’s a question of Islam but more economy.

@tedd, two questions.

1. Is there any ideology or set of beliefs you do consider backwards? (For example, cultures that sacrifice children to their gods.)

2. Have you actually read the Quran?

“Islam does not equal stupid, evil, backwards, or anything of the nature.” I never said, thought, or implied anything or the kind.
At least as far as stupid, or evil goes.

@Qingu

You know that’s an unfair question ((1), at least) as you can find the backward elements in ANY ideology and we should be looking more towards the general manifestations of those ideologies in the real world to find whether something is actually a backwards practice.

@Qingu Have you actually read the bible? The book that tells me a geriatric man built a boat by himself big enough to hold two of every animal, and feed them all for 40 days? Have you read the old testament? I gotta tell you I’d take the Muslim take on god over old testament take on god for the most part…. A lot more forgiving.

@iamthemob, I strongly disagree!

The actions of an ideology’s adherents can be directly traced to the content of the ideology. I don’t understand the idea that we should just ignore what a belief system actually says, as if there’s no functional difference between the content of the Quran and the content of the Rg Veda. Or that there’s no difference between Sufism and Salafi Islam.

The content of ideology is not the whole story; neither is an organism’s DNA—but I think ideolgoy, like DNA, does go a very long way towards determining how a culture manifests.

@tedd, of course I’ve read the Bible. Perhaps we haven’t met. Hello. My name is Qingu. Half of my posts on Fluther involve deriding the Bible (you left out the fact that the Bible—unlike the Quran—actually commands genocide). Perhaps you also missed my post where I said both the Bible and the Quran are barbaric books, and the extent to which a person adheres to those books determines how backwards they are.

The actions of an ideology’s adherents can be directly traced to the content of the ideology.

Specific content of the ideology. Considering that our DNA manifests in such a manner that male brains are larger than female brains, is that support for an idea that men are better, more intelligent citizens than women? I would say no, but if you isolate certain parts of the content, and then say historically men have been more privileged then women, then you have support in the same way that any religious ideology has used certain fragments to support their various oppressions.

Consider counter-examples as well: the primary evidence for the acceptance of Jesus as the messiah is due to the resurrection. Part of this is based on the synoptic gospel assertions that the tomb was found empty. This was based on eyewitness testimony of women only, and Palestinian attitudes to women testimony was very very dismissive. Why then would a religion base the foundation of it’s most basic premise on witnesses that were historically deprivileged? There is a democratic aspect there that church leaders often ignore, and therefore it is about the selective choice of the aspects of the ideology that allow for various forms of oppression as opposed to pointing out “See! Christianity/Islam/DNA asserts this!”

Maybe the Islamic world asserted a Conservative Authoritarian influence over it’s technological advancement when it felt that Science would begin to threaten it’s Ideological hegemony. Unlike Christendom that lost it’s grip upon the Consciousness of it’s people to the Enlightenment movement. Maybe Islam felt that this course toward modernity would render the world soul-less, secular and too materialist.

@iamthemob, sure. But certain ideologies have easier cherry-pickings than others.

In the case of the Bible, I think it’s simply intellectually dishonest to suggest that the book is pro-women on the basis of female eyewitnesses. We are talking about a book that directly gives the relative monetary value of men and women, understands women as the property of their husbands or fathers, and quotes Paul as saying “man is the head of woman just as Christ is the head of man.” (Also, note in Matthew and in John, female eyewitnesses were apparently not enough, as the authors have Jesus magically appear to a crowd of male eyewitnesses).

Then compare the Bible to, say, the writings of John Stuart Mill.

Now, modern Christian churches cherry-pick more than at any other point in history. Modern Christians ignore probably 99% of what the Bible says. Genesis is “just a metaphor” (whatever that means). The barbaric laws and multiple genocides of the Old Testament were written by men. Paul was not a real Christian. All the contradictions in the gospels are scribal errors or man-made mistakes. Whatever works; at least these Christians have better morals than Christians who take the Bible seriously. But let’s not pretend they are honestly interpreting their holy text, or seriously basing their religious beliefs on what the holy text says.

I think @CyanoticWasp said it best. What Abdel-Samad is seeing is part of the natural progression of religion. Islam is young compared to Christianity and Judeaism and thus it is in an earlier stage of development. They have peaked (in the sense of conversions) and will now start to decline. But blaming the religion for the fact that many of these nations are underdeveloped is a none-too-subtle form of bigotry. Is Catholocism to blame for the South American nations that lag behind?

The bigotry in question comes from applying what is true of all religions and acting as though it applies only to the one. Fundamentalism is the issue, not the specific breed of fundamentalism. I fear that is far from dead or dying…

Maybe a better example of cherry-picking Biblical content is slavery in America.

Southern slaveowners believed they could own slaves because this is exactly what the Bible says. Leviticus 25:45 says you can buy slaves from foreigners and pass them down to your kids as property. Exodus 22 says you can beat these slaves as much as the Romans beat Jesus before they crucified him. In 1 Timothy 6, Paul tells slaves to obey their masters, even if they’re cruel. It’s not “selective” to read these passages and come to the conclusion that you should be able to legally purchase human beings as chattle.

The Christian abolitioinists, on the other hand, based their anti-slavery stance largely on a vague verse about how all human beings are equal in heaven. They ignore (as southern pamphleteers gleefully noted) all of the times in the Bible where slavery is said to be legal, or even mandatory. Now that’s cherry-picking.

This is why I think the Bible is an absolutely terrible book. Because it says, plainly, that slavery is okay. It also says genocide is okay.

Likewise, the Quran says slavery is okay (though it is more forgiving than the Bible). It says women are worth half as much as men when it comes to being eyewitnesses. It says unbelievers deserve to be tortured forever and should not be trusted or befriended. It says some good things, too, but it clearly conveys a tribal, misogynistic morality—and tribal, misogynistic Muslims aren’t being “selective” in basing their attitude on what the Quran plainly says.

Fundamentalism is the issue, not the specific breed of fundamentalism.

Indeed.

@Qingu

Modern Christians ignore probably 99% of what the Bible says. Genesis is “just a metaphor” (whatever that means). The barbaric laws and multiple genocides of the Old Testament were written by men. Paul was not a real Christian. All the contradictions in the gospels are scribal errors or man-made mistakes. Whatever works; at least these Christians have better morals than Christians who take the Bible seriously.

Is this cherry-picking or rather is it development? Do we benefit by calling these people “cherry-pickers” or do we benefit instead by celebrating the fact that they’re shedding the most virulant portions of the bible?

I think the cherry-picking argument has it backwards.

On one hand, it’s development—because I think it’s a good thing, progress, for people to ignore a higher proportion of ancient Mesopotamian mythology and social mores.

I would much rather have liberal cherry-picking Christians than fundamentalist Christians who believe what the Bible says.

But this doesn’t change the fact that the first group engage with their holy text in an intellectually dishonest way.

I would much rather have liberal cherry-picking Christians than fundamentalist Christians who believe what the Bible says.

But this doesn’t change the fact that the first group engage with their holy text in an intellectually dishonest way.

Only if you’re a literalist.

Apparently, you’re offering the choice: you either subscribe to no religion, or you’re an intellectually dishonest person in approaching your religion, and therefore don’t deserve respect.

Well, yeah.

I mean, I respect liberal religious people in many other aspects of their beliefs and choices. But I don’t respect the way in which they interpret the Bible, because I think it’s nonsensical and dishonest.

Also, “literalist” is misleading. I think we should try to understand ancient texts in an honest way, based on what they actually say and the cultural context in which they were written. For example, Aristotle wrote that the universe consists of four elements—earth, fire, water, and air—plus the aether. Aristotle was wrong, but nevertheless, this is what he wrote, and this is how we should understand what Aristotle wrote. We shouldn’t interpret Aristotle’s writings on the four elements as “metaphors” or “true for the time” or some other excuse, because that would be intellectually dishonest.

I think we should try to understand ancient texts in an honest way, based on what they actually say and the cultural context in which they were written. For example, Aristotle wrote that the universe consists of four elements—earth, fire, water, and air—plus the aether. Aristotle was wrong, but nevertheless, this is what he wrote, and this is how we should understand what Aristotle wrote.

But that requires a modern understanding to reinterpret what was previously said. You are also applying rules applicable to scientific interpretations of the natural world to religious and spiritual ones. Aristotle was stating his elemental basis as a factual account, not a spiritual one solely, of how the world works. He was seeking scientific and human truths. Religion and spirituality do something different, although there is overlap.

Bringing it back, if we allow for this same kind of development in religion, where we look at texts as allowing for and incorporating new knowledge, we have a tool to help defeat fundamentalism. Looking at it as an either/or perspective is fundamentalism in its own right, albeit not a religious one.

Wait, I don’t see how I’m “reinterpreting” what Aristotle said. I’m interpreting Aristotle the same way hellenistic Greeks would have interpreted Aristotle; that is in fact my goal, my hermeneutic (sorry), for interpreting Aristotle.

My conclusion that Aristotle is wrong on this point is independent of my interpretation of what Aristotle actually said. Likewise, my conclusion that the Bible is wrong about the shape of the earth, or that it is morally repugnant in its views on human relations, is independent of my interpretation of what the Bible says.

I also don’t see any hard-line distinction between “factual accounts” and “spiritual accounts.” Certainly neither ancient Greek philosophers or ancient Hebrews and Christians did not. I really dislike this term “spiritual” because I think people use it largely as this invented category for things they don’t want subjected to criticism. It’s like you can simply declare that a claim is a priori “spiritual” and all the sudden there’s no reason not to believe in it.

Finally, I don’t really see how liberal Christians are “incorporating new knowledge” into the Biblical text. They’re simply ignoring parts of the Bible (that is, the vast majority) that conflict with modern science and modern moral vies. I don’t understand how a religious text can be said to incorporate new knowledge, since new things aren’t added to the text. The Bible is not a living document like the Constitution or like scientific hypotheses.

That said, I did say that I prefer cherry-picking Christians to fundamentalist Christians, so I’m not sure how I’m presenting an either/or perspective here.

@Qingu – thus the inherent problem in terms of what you deem “intellectual honesty” in how scientists approach a text as opposed to (1) historians, (2) philosophers, (3) theologians, (4) literary scholars.

I would wager that every single person you listed approaches any given ancient text the same way. A scientist, historian, philosopher, theologian, and literary scholar would all agree that Aristotle says there are four elements, or that the Code of Hammurabi says you can find out if a woman committed adultery by throwing her in a river and seeing if she drowns.

Except theologians interpreting their own religious text. Then, suddenly, things that aren’t factually correct in the text, or moral and legal statements that make modern Westerners squeamish, turn out to be “metaphors.”

@Qingu – I would wager, being from both a literary and legal background, that you are very, very wrong. Consider postmodernism as a literary movement.

The problem is that you seem to demand that the truth of the document to be unassailable in order for any movement from it, interpreting it, etc., to be honest. This narrow viewpoint is exactly what encourages religious interpretations to remain adherent to a backwards and/or anachronistic understanding of the text, and forces resort to the bible as opposed to interpretations of it.

Coming back to the idea of islam “going away,” if it adheres to a specific interpretation of its religious texts, this will always be in danger – if it recognizes that language is inherently problematic, and there is no such thing as perfect communication, we get to a point where we can get a developing understanding of what it means to be Muslim, and why certain passages were written in the rhetorical style they were.

@tedd The guy is a snake oil salesman and a bigot…. and you have bought into his bigotry hook line and sinker.

How easily you dismiss a man whose book you have not read, as well as the opinions of @mattbrowne who is known by our personal experience to be keenly analytical and not given to lightly air ill-considered opinions. At the very least, I would take @mattbrowne at his word until I had read the book.

I would also note, however, that Abdel-Samad expresses opinions that are in line with my own re the Muslim world.

How would a postmodernist interpret Aristotle or the Code of Hammurabi differently?

I mean, I know some people take postmodernism to its extreme and believe that any statement is equally valid, and so might interpret the Code of Hammurabi as a metaphor signifying the instruction manual to Super Mario Galaxy. I would say such an interpretation of the Code of Hammurabi is stupid.

@Qingu – it’s about understanding the text as a whole, rather than using specific elements to discredit the whole. If you focus on the what too much, you have only the most rudimentary understanding of it.

For instance, if you stated that the four elements disproved Aristotle, that would be rudimentary. Same thing with the Code of Hammurabi. Same thing with the Bible. Same thing with the Koran. Especially in the religious context, the text and the reader are in constant interplay. Start talking about facts, and you miss the points. Start talking about evidence on which certain religious movements base their policies, then there’s value. But making these generalizations when we talk about movements, ideologies, etc., is dumbing down any intellectual investment we need to put into it.

I have to come in on Qingu’s side here. The fact remains that either the bible is the word of God or it isn’t. I would much rather see progressive Christians (or Muslims or any religious type) than fundamentalists, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are being intellectually dishonest when they adhere to parts of the bible and not others.

The problem is that if the bible isn’t the word of God it is a grossly propagated lie. So if you say it’s okay to take out this part or that there is no scaffold left to hang the rest of the stuff on. Fundamentalism will never evolve out of religion, it will simply wax and wane. As long as people sell the lie that it is the “word of God” (without which it is simply a book of unsubstantiated opinion), you will have fundamentalists that take it seriously.

@iamthemob, How many specific factual errors or questionable morals does it take to discredit the whole?

For example, Aristotle was wrong about the four elements. He was also wrong about the nature of motion and gravity. He had some decent ideas about how to categorize animals, but was ignorant of evolution and was wrong in many respects. He believed the sun revolved around the earth. As I understand it, he had some pretty stupid ideas about the place of women in society.

Aristotle was (like the BIble and the Quran) incredibly important and influential in human history. But he was also wrong about many of the things he wrote about. And what’s more, his wrongness stemmed from a non-evidence-based, almost dogmatic way of engaging and studying the world.

So I feel quite comfortable saying that Aristotle should be discredited. If someone today claimed to be an “Aristotelian,” I would either think they were just ignorant or that they did not honestly interpret what Arisostle said.

Do you agree or disagree with this assessment?

@Qingu

I would either think they were just ignorant or that they did not honestly interpret what Arisostle said.

And here is the essence of the either/or judgment.

I disagree completely with the assessment. It’s based on an assumption rather than an understanding of what the person means. Shorthand comes with it the danger that assumptions are made, but when those assumptions are made it’s just as much the intellectual laziness of the person making assumptions as it is the person using the shorthand.

@crazyivan, I would say that, if the Bible isn’t the word of God, then it’s simply an example of Mesopotamian mythology.

We can learn a lot from Mesopotamian mythology. We can also respect the progression that, for example, the Code of Hammurabi heralded. The Code of Hammurabi is brutal and barbaric by our standards, but it did serve as a set of laws—a novel idea at the time. Likewise, the Bible improves on the Code in that it doesn’t punish children for the crimes of their parents. (It is worse than the Code in other respects, such as its genocidal attitude towards unbelievers).

The Quran, for its part, improved greatly on Arabian society and helped organize warring tribes into a unified state.

At the same time, these texts “belong in the dustbin of history.” It makes as much sense to believe in a religion based on the Bible or Quran as it does to believe in a religion based on other Mesopotamian mythology, or stories about Zeus and Mount Olympus.

@iamthemob, can you walk me through how you would arrive at some alternative interpretation of Aristotle?

Like, say I think that Aristotle, when he wrote about the four elements, was actually using elaborate metaphors for the four states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, and plasma). Do you think this is a valid or honest interpretation of Aristotle?

@tedd What numbers are you looking at? Ahmed Zeqail remains at Cal Tech (1), Sultana Nurun is at Ohio State (2), Cumrun Vafa is at Harvard (3), Abdus Salam (now deceased) spent the majority of his life in England and Italy (4). The fact is that most highly intellectual people migrate to Western countries for education and intellectual freedom. That alone is an indictment of the poverty of thought in Muslim dominated countries.

@crazyivan I am fine accepting that parts of the bible are true, parys are exaggerations, and parts are completely false. I have a problem with the people who say that it is the direct word of God, and if one part of it is proven to be false, then you have to throw the whole book away. I would rather give the religious people an out to use logic and reason. To understand it was written years after stories had been handed down and retold many times. That the books are a sign of their times, and as we grow as human beings, some parts of these religious books seem to not apply. I prefer to allow people to be able to identify with a religion, because it bonds them to their families, and their friends, and most people seem to need to feel part of a group, and not have to be religous. But, I am an atheist Jew, so of course I am biased, but I think it has worked for us. If religion dissappeared from the face of the earth, I would be fine letting my Jewish identity go, but as long as people are dividing people up this way, I feel more comfortable identifying myself as Reformed Jewish.

Back to the religious books, I think of it much like our parents, they seem to know everything, and then as we get older, we see they didn’t. It doesn’t mean everything they taught us is to be thrown out in the trash.

@Qingu

If someone today claimed to be an “Aristotelian,” I would either think they were just ignorant or that they did not honestly interpret what Arisostle said.

This was the assertion that I disagreed with. What a “different interpretation of Aristotle” means doesn’t play into that. And again, you are disregarding the difference between the scientific and philosophical claims, and how both of those differ from a religious or “folklore” claim.

There are different things we factor into the analysis as to what a belief system is besides the facts or claims in any document within that system. That’s what I’m saying. If you disagree, then we’re at an impass.

You don’t have to read but a few of the passages from the Koran to know that its message and the Bible are fundamentally different. Christianity is a peaceful religion which has been used for nefarious purposes, while Islam is violent at it’s core. http://www.prophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Quotes_Tolerance.Islam

I agree, that a belief system is more than a collection of facts—it’s also a methodology, a way of engaging the world and organizing those facts. But, Aristotle was also largely wrong about his metholodology.

And I don’t think the difference between religious and scientific claims is as great as you think. In fact, I think religious claims start as pseudo-scientific claims.

For example, the Bible says the sky is a solid dome that holds up an ocean. Now, some modern Christians would say this is a “metaphor” or a “religious/spiritual/folklore” claim, or whatever. However, to a bronze-age nomad, it was a serious and factual statement about reality. It also made a great deal of sense. After all, the sky is blue, like large bodies of water. Rain falls of it. So there must be an ocean up there. But oceans don’t float, so something must hold it up. This is why ancient people (including the Hebrews) thought the sky was a “dome” or a “firmament.”

These ancient people—like Aristotle—turned out to be wrong, but this doesn’t magically make their claims non-factual or mere folklore.

@palerider, Christianity is a peaceful religion… except for where the Bible commands multiple genocide (Deuteronomy 13) and gleefully describes god-ordered genocides (the entire book of Joshua). Or when Jesus promises that his dad will torture you forever if you don’t join his cult, or where Revelation describes the mass-torture and mass-killings of non-Christians.

Deuteronomy 13:6 says to kill unbelievers (even your own family) who try to convert you. Please tell me whether or not you think this passage is wrong.

@Qingu The sky does hold up the oceans, as well as the land. We live on a planet surrounded by sky. It holds eveything.

In fact, I think religious claims start as pseudo-scientific claims.

I totally agree with this. However, this allows, then, for people to take an approach to their religion and it’s claims that, in fact, allows for criticism and dismissal of the claims that are clearly false.

This isn’t cherry-picking, by necessity – nor is it an intellectually dishonest approach. It’s a recognition of where the problems are, and where the actual truth might be.

I feel like the argument in the OP is strong again solely because intellectual analysis is going to be more common and acceptable in intellectually liberal environments – and these are most likely going to be in areas that are developing….

@Qingu but you accept the principles of Logic outlined by Aristotle right, as still valid?

@Qingu Most of your quotes come from The Old Testament. Most Christians today follow the New Testament teachings.

@palerider The sky does hold up the oceans, as well as the land. We live on a planet surrounded by sky. It holds eveything.

lol, i guess you could say that.

@iamthemob, but don’t you see how such criticism is not really sustainable, since it inevitably leads to a rejection of the vast majority of the religion in question?

Let’s take Christianity, and a Christian like @mattbrowne. He doesn’t believe Genesis is a factual description of the creation of the universe. He doesn’t think adam and Eve existed. He doesn’t think humans disobeyed Yahweh by eating a magic fruit. He doesn’t believe that God made a covenant with Abraham. He doesn’t think God gave Moses laws, or that the vast majority of those laws should be followed. He doesn’t think Mary was impregnated by God, or that her son died and literally came back to life.

Matt (and apologies if I’m misrepresenting your actual beliefs) calls himself a “Christian,” but this is largely because he likes some of what Jesus said as a moral philosopher and their ability to shape human society. The problem is that I—an atheist—feel the same way, so I don’t really see how matt’s Christianity is functionally distinguishable from my atheism.

So this is the path that religions “develop” on… a gradual dismissal of their claims about reality and morality until they eventually become functionally the same as atheists. It’s not surprising that many Muslims see such progression as poisonous to their belief system.

@palerider, so do you think that God was wrong when he ordered genocide in the old testament? Or was it right for the time, but wrong today (i.e. are you a moral relativist?)

Or do you think that God never actually gave that commandment and that chapter of Deuteronomy is bullshit?

@mammal, I’m not toooo familiar with Aristotle’s contribution to logic, but based on what I do know, yeah that’s still valid.

(Likewise, the Bible’s commandment “do not murder” was a good idea and is still valid today)

The problem is that I—an atheist—feel the same way, so I don’t really see how matt’s Christianity is functionally distinguishable from my atheism.

Functionally, it’s not. So why should you have a problem with his Christianity? If he believes, it’s not interfering with a pursuit of natural truth.

If you don’t understand it, that’s a point where you agree to disagree. Does it prevent either of you from working together to benefit society? No. So why beat the dead horse?

Bringing it again back to the OP, the problem is always fundamentalism, which will be inherent in oppressive regimes. Islam, because it is dominant in developing areas, is very susceptible to a fundamentalist perspective.

@Qingu I am not questioning God, or why he condoned such actions in the Old Testament, the point I am trying to make is that there were a whole lot of changes when Christ came and died for all of us. There is a striking difference in the tone and the wording between the two books (Old and New) because of His actions while he was here. And I stated earlier most Christians today follow the teachings of The New Testament. I guess we grew as a whole when He died for us.

@iamthemob, I largely don’t have a problem with matt’s Christianity. I do have a problem with the way some liberal Christians interpret the Bible, for the reasons stated (although I don’t think Matt even interprets the Bible this way).

And by “fundamentalism,” you seem to mean “taking the Bible or the Quran seriously.”

@palerider, so you believe that Christ abolished God’s laws in the Old Testament, and that it would be wrong to follow those laws today?

@Qingu There was a change. That is what I am saying, Christianity was somewhat chaotic (maybe even barbaric by today’s standards) before Jesus came. He brought a sense of calm and direction to the followers. He gave a compass and ballast to an unwieldy ship.

Um, that’s not really an answer to my question. What was the change, exactly? Did Jesus abolish the OT laws, or didn’t he?

@Qingu People are free to follow what religion they want. I was speaking of the great vast majority of Christians. I’m not aware of any church that solely teach the Old Testament. Which is what your are espousing all Christians do.

@Qingu – Jesus did both, of course. ;-) He stated he was meant to “fulfill” the law, and not abolish it. In essence, he brings a sense of interpretation to OT laws to determine what they really mean – he looked to the meaning of the law rather than the temple or authoritarian interpretation of it.

@palerider, so you believe it would be morally wrong to follow God’s commandment in Deuteronomy 13?

@iamthemob, what do you think is the “meaning” of Deuteronomy 13:6? The meaning seems pretty clear to me. The law says to kill anyone if they try to convert you to another religion. It says to show them no mercy, even if they’re your own family.

To answer the original question, yes I believe the Muslim world and it’s backwardness will die sooner than later, as well as Christian believes. Now Tedd said that how dare we compare Muslims with Nazis, or Christians with Nazis. Well, I do. This is the way I see it, if we see somebody dressed as a Nazi or somebody saying that agrees with the Nazis we condemn them ( I certainly do ). We condemn that people for the actions of some that took place years ago. So how come we don’t condemn Christianity and Islam as well? I think they have done worse. If you are consistent you will do the same thing. And because I’m such a believer of the goodness of humanity, those religions will cease to exist. Not in my life time, but it will end.

@mrmijunte, I wouldn’t say Islam has done worse than the Nazis.

Christianity, maybe. Not in the number of people they killed, but Christians have performed a lot of genocides. Up until and including “Manifest Destiny,” which I think is morally indistinguishable from Nazism.

@Qingu – really? How would my interpretation of an individual passage, right now, really exhibit any in depth understanding of what it meant?

I would have to put in some real study into what I thought it meant.

@iamthemob why on earth do you think this verse requires “special study” to figure out what it means?

Do you feel the same way about, for example, random laws from the Code of Hammurabi, or the U.S. Constitution?

@Qingu I disagree. Just because they didn’t do it in 8 years doesn’t mean they haven’t done worse. Just look at the treatment of women today and all the stonings. Now count back hundreds of years.

I guess we’d have to agree on some sort of criteria for ranking moral atrocities.

But, I would say that keeping a population as second-class citizens (women, in your example) through use or threat of force is not as bad as actively committing genocide against a population.

Even though many of the quips here are tangential to the question or OT, they have made for some good discussions.

Perhaps this question should be moved to the social section.

@Qingu Yes I guess I went for a simple example. I have to thank you and iamthemob for the debate you guys are having.

@Qingu

As a lawyer, I in fact do think that individual lines may require entire lifetimes of study in order to determine what they mean, particularly in the realm of Constitutional law.

Example: The textbook for one’s “Fourteenth Amendment” class is thicker than one for most Con Law classes as a whole. The focus is mainly on Sec. 1 of the amendment, the whole of which is as follows:

“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The same level of study is applied to the idea of “freedom of speech” (three words), the “right to bear arms” (four words). The Eighth Amendment against “cruel and unusual punishment” is subject to rigorous analysis.

We depend on scholars that have come before us, our life experience, the text itself, the history of its writing, in the interpretation of any claim made by any central document. So, fittingly, yes…I do think that it requires analysis.

I think this may be social now too – I really tried to get it back to the OP ;-)

If anyone secretly entices you—even if it is your brother, your father’s son or your mother’s son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend—saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’, whom neither you nor your ancestors have known, any of the gods of the peoples that are around you, whether near you or far away from you, from one end of the earth to the other, you must not yield to or heed any such persons. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them, and afterwards the hand of all the people. Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel shall hear and be afraid, and never again do any such wickedness.

I guess I don’t understand how this passage requires vast amounts of analysis to interpret. It seems clear. If you know someone who is a loudmouthed unbeliever, kill them. Use stones. You have to throw first. The reason is to terrorize your fellow Hebrews so that they won’t be tempted to join a rival cult.

What am I missing?

There’s too much good stuff… can’t respond to all of it.

But I will jump into the functional difference between Matt’s Christianity and Qingu’s Atheism. There may be no functional difference, but doesn’t that mean there’s no purpose in the religion itself. Because it has/can be used to motivate good people to do bad things, I’d say that you can get all the benefits without it.

Perhaps it is time for a new religious book that evolves the Bible in the same way that the new testament evolved the Old. The problem is that if we can’t admit that God had nothing to do with the writing of the bible then we can’t accept any type of compromise on this, regardless of the merits of a new book of philosophies.

@Qingu Nothing. That’s what it meant. Isn’t it curious that it is the same kind of fear Christians have of Harry Potter? Not with the violent consequences but because it is seems like competition to the belief? I thought there was only one God, why fear competition if it doesn’t exist?

Consider this one bit:

who brought you out of the land of Egypt

Therefore, directed solely at the Hebrews. Does it say anything to the Gentiles? Not directly. Therefore, as a Christian, you can potentially disregard the entire chapter, as the God of Abraham did nothing to bring a gentile out of the land of Egypt.

There are always problems of history, audience, rhetoric that complicate things. It says what it says, that’s for sure. Does it mean what it says and is always the same throughout time and when the rest of the text of the bible is considered, as well as theological or historical analysis outside the bible? Not at all.

@mrmijunte, I would say that the very early Hebrews weren’t monotheists; they were closer to henotheists. Yahweh is not the only god; he has a whole heavenly court of other gods (this is why he says “we” in Genesis—he’s not talking in the royal we).

The purpose of the covenant between Yahweh and the Hebrews was sort of like a theological version of debt consolidation. Instead of having to pray to Marduk for rain, Enlil for victory in battle, Ishtar for fertility, etc, you could simply direct all your prayers (and tasty sacrifices) to Yahweh (and his fat priests). In exchange, you get to be Yahweh’s “chosen people,” and you’re not supposed to give your tasty sacrifices to other gods.

/off topic

@iamthemob, I would agree that the “analysis” here would deal with the laws applicability. (Likewise with Constitutional law) But my original question was about the law’s meaning. Can we both agree that the law’s meaning is pretty clear?

@Qingu Yes I am aware of that. But ask somebody if how many Gods are in the Bible and will look at you like you are crazy, but at the same time fear other deities.

Getting to the OP again – this sort of demand that the text mean what it says without considering historical, translational, and rhetorical issues, as well as the overall messages of the text itself, are why we have fundamentalism. If we allow for secularist integration into the texts as opposed to criticizing those that attempt to approach the text in a manner that can incorporate current understandings, we are essentially saying, be a fundamentalist or be a liar, or disregard your god completely.

@Qingu – You haven’t stated what you think the law means. And, if there is a whole second level of applicability (interpretation) to be done, then what deep value does the “literal meaning” have?

You also haven’t stated what is clearly the law as we consider “OT” law. For the most part, the 10 commandments are specifically referenced when we talk about Jesus’ discussion of the OT law.

I did state what I thought the law means. In short: kill unbelievers. With stones.

I’m not sure what you mean by “deep value.”

I also hope you would agree that the law is barbaric, regardless of its applicability, and that nobody should have ever followed it.

I definitely prefer the recreational application of getting stoned.

@Qingu – then no, I disagree. You’ve completely misread it.

If it says anything basic, it says “Kill those who attempt to turn you from God.” I would argue that it actually says “It is better to kill someone who attempts to turn you away from God than to allow them to turn you or anyone else.”

Alright, I can agree with that.

Do you agree that the law is barbaric and should never have been followed by anyone?

I don’t think that the death penalty is appropriate for any crime.

Okay. I’m not sure where that leaves you vis-a-vis Yahweh and the Bible.

@Qingu – as I said from the beginning, I don’t see how it would leave me anywhere. Quote wars and interpretation seem to lend very little to how any one can be perceived as understanding God, or Yahweh, or the Old or New Testaments.

These things go in cycles, the Muslim world will likely be in the ascendant some day. Muslims have lost confidence and have turned to fundamentalism which has little to offer the world and will burn out in time but the Muslim world will go on and we should not hope for or expect its demise.

@mattbrowne

This is what happened in 1250 c.e. though it actually happened in 1258 c.e.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)

The damn link doesn’t work but you can find it.

Read about the House of Wisdom too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom

Before I reply to the comments in more detail, I think it might be a good idea to move the question to the Social Section.

When looking at the next 50 years, there are two main concerns I have, which require critical thinking and creativity to be dealt with properly:

1) How can our planet with its limited resource accommodate 9 billion people?
2) What needs to change so people who hold different worldviews or belong to different religions can live together peacefully?

This is really important to me, and I think before considering solutions we need to make sure problems are being analyzed properly. So when looking back over the past ten years here are two question I find very important:

What are the root causes for

a) September 11 and other terrorist attacks?
b) the widespread bitterness and anger in the Muslim world, for example when millions take to the streets because of a few (harmless) Danish cartoons in some newspaper?

Is it just the ongoing Middle East conflict? Is it Western politics? Western economic power?

For years I’ve been thinking about these problems, and of course like many others, I got a few of my own theories. Well, and then I watched an interview with Mr. Abdel-Samad and heard about his book on German television. I decided to buy and read it.

It has challenged some of my assumptions and it keeps me thinking. I’ve discussed some of it with my wife, and I thought the topic is worth being debated here on Fluther.

To me it is ridiculous to simply call Hamed Abdel-Samad a snake oil salesman. Beside the fact that he’s a consultant of the German government, the magazine “Der Spiegel” usually doesn’t interview snake oil salesmen. We are not talking about tabloids here. I’m not sure how many Americans have heard about “Der Spiegel”.

Hamed Abdel-Samad is a German-Egyptian political scientist and author who has also worked for the UNESCO in Geneva, the department of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany, and the Department of Modern History at the University of Munich. We are not talking about some narrow-minded religious or anti-religious fundamentalist here. We might disagree with some of his views, but I think it’s quite unfair to attack him as a person, based on an excerpt of an interview which I posted above.

He thinks that in addition to the lack of good books in the Arab world, one other reason for all the trouble are Arab school books and the mindsets of teachers. Everything about Islam and Muslim societies is being glorified and it’s absolutely politically incorrect to challenge commonly held views at school. Most Egyptian students who don’t have the opportunity to leave the country, do not learn the art of critical thinking. Islam is part of almost every subject except math and science. And the alleged superiority of Islam is a common theme at school. He is talking about public, not religious schools.

The concept of separation of church and state does not exist with very few exceptions, but even the direction of Turkey is more and more unclear.

Hamed Abdel-Samad treasures the Age of Enlightenment and the Western ability of applying critical thinking to everything including religion. But he seems very surprised why criticism of Islam and Muslim societies is a taboo among (liberal) intellectuals in the West and he points out that honest criticism based on good analyses is different from dumb and counterproductive Islamophobia.

And he contends that only a significant paradigm shift and widespread critical thinking can halt or even reverse the demise of the Muslim world.

I never said that I totally agree with him. This idea of a demise seems odd. But I think it’s worth exploring some his views.

@tedd – It’s interesting that you mention Muhammad Yunus. Yes, microfinance in a significant invention and an exception to the lack of discovery and invention. Mr. Yunus is a Muslim from Bangladesh. Although a poor country, Bangladesh does not have to deal with the widespread violence common in Pakistan.

Mahbub ul Haq went to Cambridge and also worked for the World Bank. Sultana Nurun Nahar is a senior research scientist at the Ohio State University. Cumrun Vafa is a string theorist at Harvard University. Abdus Salam obtained a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics at Cambridge. He was both religious and a critical thinker. Like Galileo and Mendel and Lemaître.

Abdus Salam was part of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. In 1974, when the Parliament of Pakistan declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslims, he left Pakistan for London in protest.

Too much critical thinking? Challenging assumptions?

And how can a parliament vote on topics like who is a non-Muslim or not?

@Qingu – I also agree with everything you said, except one thing. To you only backward Christianity is real Christianity and an evolving Christianity is not. To me the opposite is true. Young-earth creationism for example is an anachronism and outside of mainstream Christianity in the year 2010. At least worldwide. I know the statistics are different in North America.

Abdel-Samad also talkes about the damaging effects of Western colonialism, but holds an interesting view about his own country of origin which is Egypt:

The Ottoman Empire conquered Egypt and brought nothing that helped Egypt progress. The brief French invasion of Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. Within three years the French introduced modern administration, built numerous hospitals and roads, reformed the school system which included the teaching of science classes and they also built several factories.

@tedd – You also wrote:

“You all make me incredibly sad and doubtful for humanity. Islam does not equal stupid, evil, backwards, or anything of the nature.”

I can understand your feelings. It might sound odd, but actually debates like this one and books like the ones written by Hamed Abdel-Samad are a sign of hope. They raise the prospect of a better future. If we don’t understand the problems properly, how can we make the right changes?

Islam needs to change. Dramatically. With satellite tv and Facebook and Twitter it might only take one generation instead of the centuries Christianity and Christian societies needed to evolve.

It doesn’t help declaring taboos against criticizing parts of the Bible or the Koran. Or not interpreting parts of the Bible or the Koran in the context of the year 2010, instead of the years 1000 BCE, 100 CE or 700 CE when these books were written. Real Christians in the year 2010 are able to question parts of the Bible without having to resort to simplistic claims that the whole book is nothing but a collection of ancient nonsense without any wisdom in it whatsoever. Where are the new real and enlightened Muslims?

I’m a very optimistic person. We know about the challenges of limited resources on Earth while the total population is still growing. But we already got megatons of good ideas to deal with these challenges. We need gigatons, even teratons of more ideas, but I see no reason why this shouldn’t be possible. We need to harness global collective intelligence. We need every brain capable of critical thinking and innovation. We won’t get this when thousands of Muslim boys just learn recite the Koran for months and years in 14th century madrassas and not much else. We need hundreds of bookstores in Cairo where you can buy books about Buddhism and Nietzsche and Schrödinger and Dawkins and Küng and Abdel-Samad.

We need societies mature enough to be able criticize themselves. And learn. And evolve.

Just blaming others and defending all of the status quo won’t do the job.

Still going through all the posts.

@Qingu – I agree that the overlap of my form of Christianity with atheism (and humanism) is far greater than the overlap with non-enlightened forms of Christianity or non-enlightened forms of Islam. What do I mean by that? Enlightened Christianity is a form of liberal Christianity with a strong focus on the Age of Enlightenment and interfaith dialog. There’s the belief that the divine entity called God is the explanation for the origin of the natural laws. God sustains these laws and gives our universe a purpose and a deeper meaning. God is beyond nature and should not be viewed as a god of the gaps. Science cannot explain the world, only phenomena which are observed within our cosmos. There is no magic, which means the supernatural doesn’t exist in our world. Natural sciences are consistent with both atheism and religious belief. Rationalism, critical thinking and spiritual progressiveness are core values of enlightened Christians. Rationality needs to be tied to moral decency. Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism. Holding on to superstitions is therefore wrong. Liberal Christianity in a more general sense uses a method of biblical hermeneutics, which is an individualistic method of understanding God through the use of scripture by applying the same modern hermeneutics used to understand any ancient writings.

The Christian religion has many levels of meaning and the belief in God is only one of them. Jesus Christ being the son of God has a symbolic meaning. Prayers are a form of meditation supporting our spiritual growth and finding our strengths. Dogmas arise in a social context and when the context changes, dogmas should change too or even be given up. Rituals are seen as a means to strengthen social groups. Christianity must not claim exclusive rights in defining truth and it is best seen as one world view among many. In-group/out-group morality models are discouraged. Liberal and enlightened Christians share many values with other belief systems and world views such as liberalism and humanism.

Enlightened Christians, like enlightened Muslims such as Abdel-Hamad can question holy books and their belief in God can also include “being at odds with him”. But questioning does not necessarily mean all answers lead to the rejection of everything. And I also said many times before that myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life such as birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans.

Many forms of conservative Christianity also embrace enlightenment and science. The Catholic Church supports the theories of evolution and the big bang and reject a literal interpretation of the seven days in Genesis.

Again, because this is so important: our search for meaning is the primary motivation in our lives. Some call this search a spiritual endeavor. And it is when this deep need for meaning goes unmet that our lives come to feel shallow or empty. Deprived of a deep, meaningful center, many people seek meaning in distorted or peripheral activities like materialism, greed, violence, an obsession with health and beauty, drug abuse or New Age occultism. Eventually this can lead to cynicism and despair or mere conformity.

I think conformity is a big problem in modern Islam. The peer pressure seems enormous. But we should tap into all sources of wisdom available. And not restrict this to one book.

@crazyivan – There are modern approaches going beyond the old religious books with the ten commandments such as Hans Kueng’s (a Catholic scholar) Declaration Toward a Global Ethic

http://www.weltethos.org/dat-english/03-declaration.htm

or Michael Lerner’s (a Rabbi) Spiritual Covenant with America

http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php/covenant

@mattbrowne, I agree with basically everything you said (big surprise, I know)—and to clarify, I am really not interested in who is a “real Christian.” The issue of defining your Christianity is simply a matter of semantic clarity to me.

That said, I want to bring attention to the fact that you and I agree on nearly 100% of our basic views on reality and morality. Because I think this is a big problem—not in my view, but in the view of fundamentalists who are judging your version of religiosity. You are arguing for a version of religiosity that is—as you admitted—basically indistinguishable from a secular atheist’s worldview. Now imagine a traditional Muslim considering your proposal, and considering how you are arguing that the Islamic world should progress.

I’ve said before that I truly respect both your goal and your approach in reforming religion—I don’t think my confrontational approach (a la Dawkins) is the only valid one. But I do think it’s important to realize the limitations of your message here.

@mattbrowne Yes, but as long as the bible is preeminent among the books we will forever be cursed to deal with fundamentalism. I don’t disagree that a nuanced approach can be taken to Christianity, but it requires a certain level of intellect to do so. You’re a pretty bright guy so you can recognize the value of the bible even if you don’t take it as the transcribed word of God. There are less intelligent people who can’t reach that equilibrium.

But I also think it’s funny that this question has so quickly devolved into a discussion of “real” Christianity and such. Here the question is one based on taking the more extreme end of the Muslim faith and trying to paint the entire religion with it while simultaneously defending your own faith against such generalization.

@Qingu – You said, now imagine a traditional Muslim considering your proposal, and considering how you are arguing that the Islamic world should progress. Exactly. I think one indicator ending the demise of Muslim societies would be to no longer feel threatened by atheism. Before Abdel-Samad came to Germany to study political sciences, he studied English in Cairo. At the time he was a devout Muslim, but one with a good heart and great intellectual curiosity . He attended many secret meetings of various student groups such as gay Muslims, Marxists and atheists. None of them could meet officially or talk about their meetings, because the university would shut them down immediately and report them to the police or local imam. Eventually he began to wonder why this is so. How a society could force people what to believe and why it wasn’t possible to respect different worldviews. Later he wondered whether there’s a correlation and in his book he came to the conclusion that the level of acceptance of atheism (and also different forms of spirituality) in a society is an indicator of the maturity of a society.

When you say that your secular atheist’s worldview is basically indistinguishable from enlightened Christianity, does this mean you agree with the importance of the search for purpose and meaning, the value of myths, prayer, spiritual growth, community, rituals, abandoning hatred, and forgiving those who trespass against us?

If yes, I would see you as an atheist who is spiritual but not religious, as described here

http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php/spiritual__butnot

and not an atheist who rejects spirituality altogether.

@crazyivan – When you search for Christian books on Amazon you get 542,957 results. I guess about 100 relate to various translations and editions of the Bible. The rest is about everything written after the final original version of the Bible was released after the Nicean Council. Christianity is not just about the Bible. It is also about what great Christian thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and Martin Luther King had to say. It’s actually both Christian fundamentalists and some hot-blooded atheists who declare some kind of logical equivalence of Christian = Bible.

Besides, does it anywhere in the Bible say that the whole Bible is the word of God? I’m not aware of this. But even then what do the words “is the word of God” actually mean? Can we define this precisely? Like there were real sound waves actually reaching someone’s ear drums? Or tapping into the auditory neurons directly? Or what? Far more interesting questions are how God might want humans to get along with each other or what they think the meaning of their lives is all about.

Yes, the Bible is a key element of the roots of Christianity. But so are the myths Mesopotamia or the genome of homo erectus for that matter. This doesn’t mean that time stands still. The development of Christianity didn’t end in the year 400 AD.

@mattbrowne, my point was this: I think many traditional Muslims are just as threatened by your version of progressive religiosity as they are by outright atheism. And I think that some might view your approach as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” in contrast to advocates of atheism who are more direct.

As for your questions, I don’t see a value in prayer (at least as I understand the word “prayer”), and I really hate the word “spiritual” because I think it’s uselessly vague… but otherwise I definitely agree. I feel like all of our disagreements on Fluther center on approaches towards dealing with fundamentalists and semantics rather than anything substantive in our worldviews.

I think there is a fundamental difference in attitude among many openminded Americans to a Muslim presence thant there may be in Europe. Since America has absorbed, slowly but succesfully, so many immigrant groups from its inception, mayn of us who are not swayed by the fearmongers in the media are not threatened by the idea of a Muslim presence here. Also, Muslims are still a very small proportion of our population here. In Europe, where most of the countries were relatively homogenuous until quite recently, the problems of widespread immigration are just now being felt. At least that’s my take on some of the alarm.

@mattbrowne Your unique brand of Christianity is so far from the mainstream that it’s hard to pin that to the larger faith, though. I don’t care if it says in the bible that it is the word of God or not because 97.5% of Christians never read the bible.

The priests and preachers tell them it is the word of god. They tell them that it is a sin to alter so much as a word of it. It’s silly to say that fundamentalists and atheist are the only ones who say Christian=Bible. I’ve been to Catholic Churches, Baptist Churches, Pentacoastal Churches… I’ve seen bibles at all of them. All of the sermons quoted from the bible. All of the people read from the bible. There was a bible in the back of every pew. There were no copies of Aquinas or Dostoevsky.

It’s hilarious the way you’re standing on both sides of this argument. You suggest that we judge the future of Islam by looking at the extreme side orf the religion while insisting that we don’t judge your religion by the same yardstick. Hypocrisy defined.

One aspect of this problem is that many people are scared of the unknown and do not want to deal with it. Over time the world has become more globalized. People are having to deal with other people who are different than they, and quite honestly, many are scared. There is more competition, more scarcity of resources. People are scared, and are trying to hang on to what they have, believing that they have it all figured out and others do not. I am a Christian, and would like nothing more than to see everyone come to that faith, but even Christ himself said that that would not happen. Christians have not been sucessful at spreading the gosple through fear and intimidation. (Why would we be sucessful with that method?) It has not worked for any other group that has tried to use that to spread their beliefs. People need to accept that, realize that we are all different, and act accordingly.

[mod says] This is our Question of the Day!

@iamthemob, I missed your post up there. I disagree with ye. You said you don’t believe the death penalty is a good punishment for any crime. So right off the bat, we can determine that you disagree with the entire basis for justice and punishment in the Bible.

The question is then, do you believe that God actually gave humans these laws—as claimed in the Bible? If you think this is the case, then your post implies you think God is morally wrong.

Or, do you think that humans make up these laws (adapting them from previous civilizations, since they’re largely identical), and then falsely attributed them to Yahweh? If that’s the case then you feel the same way that I do about the Bible; you’re just being less confrontational about it.

@Qingu

(1) the death penalty has been applied worldwide in an almost universal manner. Therefore, according to you, I disagree with the basis for justice and punishment throughout all of history. You also imply that the death penalty is the entire basis for justice and punishment in the Bible. I think that you are drawing a much more general conclusion from very limited information.

(2) I do not believe that God gave all of these specific laws to humans – in Leviticus, for example. prohibitions on mixed fabrics. But if he or she or it did, language is fallible so I would rely only on the big general laws as opposed to the itty bitty ones – essentially, figuring out the purposes behind the laws, much as Christ suggested when he discussed his role as “fulfilling the law.”

(3) I don’t believe that we can describe a morality sufficient for God. In order to declare something as morally wrong, we automatically have to claim moral superiority in some way. Anything that God probably is has a perspective that is probably completely alien to our sense of morality or knows what needs to happen to make it all turn out right.

(4) I think in all likelihood all laws come from man. Whether they are divinely inspired or stolen from other cultures or something else, I don’t pretend to attribute intent in the authors unless its necessary. I look at whether there are practical and beneficial reasons for the laws then, and the laws now, in any context. It’s literally impossible to say whether men “made up” laws and then intentionally “falsely contributed” them to any God.

Therefore, we probably feel different about the bible on some basic levels. I don’t take the confrontational approach because, personally, I think it’s simple.

@iamthemob, that’s a fair point about overgeneralizing the importance of the death penalty in the Bible. I’d characterize it as a major pillar of Biblical justice, though—another major pillar being sacrificing animals and food to atone for your sins.

I don’t know what you mean by “big general laws.” Certainly some of these are atrocious as well. The Ten Commandments? The punishment for breaking any of the Ten Commandments is death. I also wouldn’t characterize the laws about slavery or genocide as “itty bitty” laws (a la the law against mixed fabric), as they deal with some of the most important and visceral forms of human relations.

I think you’re being a little coy in your fourth point. You don’t want to attribute intent in the authors… yet we have a text that explicitly claims “a god gave these laws to us.” The Bible is certainly not the only ancient text to do this (the Code of Hammurabi does the same thing, so does the Quran). But this claim—central to establishing the authority and righteousness of the laws in question—isn’t something whose intent you can sidestep around. I mean, at some point in the history of these texts’ compositions, someone either had to lie and falsely attribute a deity, or else be so delusional as to believe a god was personally giving them standard Mesopotamian legal texts.

And finally, when we talk about “God,” and judging or describing the morality of God, I think it’s important to establish which God we’re talking about. Because we are talking about a very specific and (I would argue) parochial god, Yahweh, a character who bears a lot of resemblance to other Mesopotamian sky-gods such as Enlil, Marduk, and Sin. This is important—I don’t think you’d hesitate to, for example, portray the Greek gods Zeus and Hera as “capricious” or “human-like” in their emotions and morality. Specific gods have specific character traits and moral views (compare sympathetic Prometheus, cuckolded Haphaestus, and murderous Ares). These gods aren’t exactly static—they change over time as their followers adapt and add new myths and ideas—but I disagree that they’re somehow “above” description. At least, it would seem like special pleading to claim that one specific god (Yahweh) is alone above description. Also, Yahweh is quite clear on the reasoning behind his moral views—he is quoted as saying genocide is necessary so the Hebrews aren’t tempted to follow other gods, for example.

“And finally, when we talk about “God,” and judging or describing the morality of God, I think it’s important to establish which God we’re talking about.”

In a way, yes…but I think that you’ll get a pretty different answer about who god is each and every person you ask, regardless of religion. The problem with bringing Zeus and Hera into it is that (1) there is a profound difference between multitheism and monotheism in that there were gods that were clearly limited, wrong, etc. because they were personifications of our greater human motivations (particularly the Greek and Roman deities), and (2) the fact that text requires, again, interpretation (this is many ways why the protestant reformation was a big deal – the Catholic church didn’t want people reading and thinking about the bible themselves because it would bring multiplicity to the dogma), and therefore there will always be a difference in what people mean even when talking about a single god from text.

When there are multiple deities, you can easily define their limitations. When one god is responsible for everything, whether we consider it good or bad, of course it is “above” or “beyond” description – if you were, in fact, able to find one, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all – everyone would already agree what god was, why it was right or wrong, etc.

@Qingu – Well, I value spirituality, in fact, I even go as far as saying that a lack of spiritual growth and a lack of search for meaning is either quite unhealthy long term, or it leaves people trapped in shallowness and conformity.

I actually think that most atheists are more spiritual than they realize or willing to admit. Certainly far more spiritual than most religious fundamentalists, who confuse spiritual growth with reading or memorizing entire holy books and following a set of rules. Many atheists restrict the definition of spiritual to its superstitious connotation. However, there are other widely accepted connotations as well, see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality and this is what I’m talking about.

Atheists think more about God and the deeper questions of our universe and human existence than most people, including Christians and Muslims.

@Qingu (and apologies if I’m misrepresenting your actual beliefs) calls himself an “atheist,” but this is largely because he likes knowledge and critical thinking and what famous humanists said as moral philosophers and their ability to shape human society. The problem is that I—an enlightened Christian—feel the same way, so I don’t really see how @Qingu‘s atheism is functionally distinguishable from my modern form of Christianity.

So I think he is an enlightened Christian, like Immanuel Kant, who is not entirely sure about the existence of God. Well, neither am I. @Qingu is on a lifelong quest to keep evolving and growing, and so am I. He is following an inner path enabling him to discover the essence of his being, and so am I.

@crazyivan – How would you offer 542,957 books in every pew of a church? There’s nothing wrong with quoting the Bible. I do this from time to time for example to point out that some atheists just look at the speck of sawdust in believers eyes and pay no attention to the plank in your own eyes (for example when selling philosophical assessments as scientific findings).

Most well-educated ministers and priests in Europe gain insights from readings dozens of books every year and this gets reflected in their sermons. I can’t believe that most American minister and priest are idiots and biblical literalists. The ones I met in Lawrence, KS certainly were not. But maybe you live in the Bible Belt.

@janbb – You’re missing the point. When Muslim societies fail, this affects America as well.

@GracieT – Just being scared doesn’t accomplish anything long term. I totally resent Islamophobia, because it’s dumb black and white thinking. I think it boils down to this: How do people deal with well-founded, well thought-out criticism?

1) They see this as an attack from a perceived “enemy” and resort to moping or anger or bitterness
2) They see this as negative feedback coming from a well-meaning friend which might deserve careful thought and further debate

According to Abdel-Samad, the mindset of most people in Muslim societies is restricted to option 1. Criticism is a taboo.

Yesterday, Morocco (a moderate country) suspended activities of Al-Jazeera, because some of their reports were too critical.

@mattbrowne I see what you’re saying although I do think a lot of this fear of Islam is over- hyped; the creation of a false dualism. Also, I feel that many Muslim countries have and others will evolve into more progressive societies given time. I just don’t see the world in “us agianst them” terms; it wasn’t useful during the Cold War and it isn’t useful now. Fundamentalism of any stripe – Christian, Jewish, Muslim – slows down progress and human connection.

@mattbrowne

What are the root causes for

a) September 11 and other terrorist attacks?
b) the widespread bitterness and anger in the Muslim world, for example when millions take to the streets because of a few (harmless) Danish cartoons in some newspaper?

Of course if the answers to your questions aren’t glaringly obvious, we must assume that the glaringly obvious answers are not the answers you are wanting to hear.

Here is an entertaining and informative speech that may point you in the right direction with regards to your queries, it is long but very engaging.

I really can’t see it completely fading away, but I would be happy to see some modification in its most restrictive applications. Religions can change, but changes rarely come easily. Of course, I can only view Islam as an outsider, I cannot truly evaluate what these people get from their religion & what they get from their religion is the key to any changes that will succeed. From a personal stand point, I would like to see Islam recognize women as being equal to men – I simply cannot imagine trying to live as a woman under Islamic law. Of course, the recognition of women as being equal to men is still not totally accepted in various segments of Christianity. I have often wondered why religion is so “down” on women, why it is so strongly in favor of men? It takes both genders to perpetuate the human race, but religion just does not seem to want to recognize that women have minds & intelligence.

@mattbrowne Here is a quote from plywright Tony Kushner cited in The New York Times today that sums up my philosophy on this issue. “Containment is the idea that there is some sort of viral presence in the body or the body politic that has to be proscribed or isolated or crushed. Comtainment demonzies the other, whether it’s Communism or AIDS or Jews. It’s a politics that comes completely out of fear as opposed ot out of hope.”

And here is another article from The Times about the openness of life in Sadr City today.

@mammal – Glaringly obvious? I’m talking about root causes. I’m talking about the problems behind the problem. And I think it’s not obvious. And once it becomes more obvious, strategies for change might not be that obvious. some of the root causes I found in Abdel-Samad’s book were

school books and teachers

lacking enlightenment-driven mindsets, lacking a culture of debate and the inability to exercise constructive self-criticism.

This seems one of the ultimate reasons why at some point in their lives people in Jemen are sending bombs on cargo planes headed for Chicago.

The fight in Afghanistan won’t be enough because the effort is not dealing with the root causes.

@janbb – A few positive examples cannot compensate for the deeper and very serious problems. This might be interesting too

http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=8696

http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2010/09/abdel-samad-pending-collapse-of-islamic.html

“It is an inner-Islamic clash between individualism and conformity pressure, between continuity and innovation, modernity and the past. It would be naïve to assume that real political reform — and, along with it, a modernizing reform of Islam — are anything but in the rather distant future. That will be the case as long as the education systems still favor pure loyalty over freer forms of thinking. The so-called reformers of Islam still dare not approach the fundamental problems of culture and religion. Reform debates are triggered frequently, but never completed. Hardly anyone asks, Is there possibly a fundamental shortcoming of our faith? Hardly anyone dares to attack the sanctity of the Koran.”

See also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_criticism#Qur'an

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasr_Abu_Zayd#Humanistic_Hermeneutics_of_Islam

“From the beginning of his academic career, he developed a renewed hermeneutic view of the Qur’an and further Islamic holy texts, arguing that they should be interpreted in the historical and cultural context of their time. The mistake of many Muslim scholars was to see the Qur’an only as a text, which led conservatives as well as liberals to a battle of quotations, each group seeing clear verses (when on their side) and ambiguous ones (when in contradiction with their vision).

Abu Zayd promoted a view on modern Islamic thought by critically approaching classical and contemporary Islamic discourse in the fields of theology, philosophy, law, politics, and humanism. The aim of his research was to substantiate a theory of humanistic hermeneutics that might enable Muslims to build a bridge between their own tradition and the modern world of freedom of speech, equality (minority rights, women’s rights, social justice), human rights, democracy and globalization.”

What happened?

Zayd suffered major religious persecution for his views on Qur’an. In 1995, he was promoted to the rank of full professor, but Islamic controversies about his academic work led to a court decision of apostasy and the denial of the appointment. In a hisbah trial started against him by Muslim scholars, he was declared an apostate (murtadd) by an Egyptian court, and consequently was declared to be divorced from his wife, Cairo University French Literature professor Dr. Ibtihal Younis. The basis of the divorce decree under Sharia law was that since it is not permissible for a Muslim woman to be married to a non-Muslim man, and since Zayd was an apostate, he therefore could not remain married to his wife. This decision, in effect, forced him out of his homeland.

I think this says it all.

@mattbrowne Interesting technique in trying to backhandedly discredit the people that disagree with you. You slyly insert a statement like “I can’t believe that most American minister and priest are idiots and biblical literalists. The ones I met in Lawrence, KS certainly were not. But maybe you live in the Bible Belt.” At once, this makes it seems like you’re being forgiving and understanding while also suggesting that at any point in this thread I said (or even implied) that most American priests and ministers are idiots and biblical literalists.

It’s kind of an underhanded and dispicable method of blanketing the obvious bigotry that permeates virtually everything you’ve said in this thread. It also saves you the trouble of actually responding to the holes that have been poked in your argument.

All I’m saying is if Fluther had a parliamentarian you would have just been formally ejected from the debate.

@crazyivan – In your post you discredited Catholic Churches, Baptist Churches, and Pentacoastal Churches, because they seem to disagree with your worldviews. All I was saying is that almost all the churches I know, do have clergy who know that the Bible was written by people and edited and revised by people. Clergy who know that understanding the Bible means taking the historical context into account.

I’m really tired of all the posts declaring that 2 billion Christians worldwide are being led by religious nutcases, just because a few yecs in the US make a lot of noise. But we’re getting off track here.

My question is about the future of Muslim societies and what this means to the Western world.

It’s kind of an underhanded and dispicable method of blanketing the obvious bigotry that permeates virtually everything you’ve said in this thread. It also saves you the trouble of actually responding to the holes that have been poked in your argument.

Heal thyself.

@mattbrowne I notice that once again you duck the actual criticism in an effort to further shove words down my mouth.

It’s kind of an underhanded and dispicable method of blanketing the obvious bigotry that permeates virtually everything you’ve said in this thread. It also saves you the trouble of actually responding to the holes that have been poked in your argument.

Again, heal thyself.

Are these the actions of rational people? Murdering Christians simply for the crime of being Christian? Words cannot convey how despicable these actions are, yet, there is hardly a peep from the general public (one wonders if they secretly applaud such actions).

@shilolo

But is that a problem that is related to Islam – or brainwashing?

@iamthemob Chicken or egg?

I’m pretty sure that brainwashing exists completely independently of Islam – so…no, this isn’t a chicken or egg issue.

I would venture to say that the education systems in Middle Eastern countries are greatly skewed towards brainwashing the populace into believing that Islam is “the best” and that all other religions (and vis-a-vis the people that belong to those religions) are not to be treated equally. Indeed, this is precisely what the political scientist who is the focus of this thread is saying.

But this isn’t a necessary outgrowth of Islam – Islam is an easy way for oppressive regimes in resource-rich states to subjugate their population for the benefit of the few.

Blaming Islam for this is in many ways the same as saying that poverty generally is capitalism’s fault.

@iamthemob – Would you agree that it’s an outgrowth of non-enlightened Islam? Like witch burning and the crusades were an outgrowth of non-enlightened Christianity?

If yes, where are all the enlightened Muslims like Abdel-Samad? Are they afraid of getting killed? Abdel-Samad needed police protection in Germany because of his two books. The first called ‘Departure from Heaven’ was also published in Arabic and triggered one fatwa. In Egypt there were plans of burning his books publicly.

@shilolo – And this also begs the following question:

Most Muslims are not terrorists, but these days most terrorists are Muslims. Why?

http://www.fluther.com/102625/most-muslims-are-not-terrorists-but-these-days-most-terrorists-are/

@mattbrowne – I’d agree, but I think the problem is always less related to the type of religion than the type of government. There are plenty of non-enlightened religious sects in the U.S.

As mentioned in one of the other threads, recently I read a highly interesting article called

What is the Threat – Islam, Islamism, or Western Sins? (August 23, 2010) by Barry Rubin

which is relevant to our discussion. Here are some excerpts:

“The current debate over the roots of Islamist revolution, clashes in the Middle East, and conflicts between forces in that region and the West involves two critical issues of interpretation:

First, is there a threat to the West from groups whose members are Muslims or does the fault arise from Western policies and shortcomings which, if altered, would make any conflict disappear?

Second, if there is a threat does it stem from Islam as religion or Islamism as political philosophy?

It is important to understand that revolutionary Islamists do draw on mainstream, accepted, and sacred Muslim texts. Their argument has the potential to be just as “legitimate” in believers’ eyes as does the contrary view. At the same time, though, Islam as a religion is not the threat, even though it is the threat’s source and rationale.

The best image to use in order to understand this situation is neither to see the car’s driver (Islam) as inherently bad (as does the “Islam is the threat” camp) or inherently good (the “Islam is a religion of peace” camp). A more accurate view is of a battle over the steering wheel by contenders who both have a claim to ownership. Both may be reckless drivers but the main danger is the Islamists, those who want to run us over and then drive the car and all its passengers over a cliff.

Islamism definitely draws on normative Islam and thus has wide appeal among Muslims. But, likewise, Islamism has many Muslim opponents who don’t accept it as their version of Islam.

There are many who do not want to accept the “Islam is the problem” argument because to do so is depressing (billions of people are against us!) or because it conflicts with their ideological assumptions (one cannot criticize any religion, or at least one that is not your own), or because it can be ridiculously labeled as “racist” (one cannot criticize anyone who isn’t wealthy or Western or “white.”)

These are fallacious arguments. But they don’t prove the “Islam is the problem” approach is correct, any more than do other fallacious arguments, that Islam is “really” a “religion of peace,” or that there is no threat, or that the conflict’s cause is Western sins, prove that revolutionary Islamism isn’t a danger.

Those who deny the nature of the threat often argue that when “properly interpreted” Muslim texts are not “really” radical, violent, and seeking political hegemony. However, one must quickly add that those “proper interpretations” are distinctly minority ones today, even if they predominated forty years ago.

The fact that Muslim texts do give backing to revolutionary Islamists does not mean that all or even most Muslims think that way. What it does reveal, though, is that unless they are going to hear counter-arguments, receive strong leadership by fellow Muslims, or enjoy Western support for fighting revolutionary Islamism they are more likely to think that way over time.

Most Muslims, even today, are not revolutionary Islamists. But in recent decades the current has flowed in that direction. I remember distinctly when a text like the Muhammad Abd al-Salaam Faraj’s book, The Neglected Obligation, calling for a revival of jihad, came out at the end of the 1970s, seemed so marginal. But the revolution in Iran took place in 1979. Then a small group of Egyptian jihadists assassinated President Anwar al-Sadat and launched a guerrilla war. Shortly thereafter, Faraj was captured and executed. Since then, Islamists have steadily gathered steam, despite an apparent decline in the late 1990s, and extended their power and support base.

The task of true moderate Muslims is to change the situation and make the moderate interpretations mainstream. They have a lot of work ahead of them and they are getting all too little support from the West.

Can they hope for success? Certainly. Christianity was an extremist religion in practice a thousand years ago and in some ways until a long time afterward. Of course, one can argue that its accepted texts are peace-oriented and that this religion’s founder, in contrast to Muhammad, opposed violence and a theocratic government. In making such an “obvious” (and factually accurate) argument, however, one must keep in mind that centuries ago such things were not considered obvious at all.

One can expect in the future, probably far in the future, Islam would still have the same founding texts yet will have developed to the point where moderate Islam dominates. That process could take in the Muslim majority world anywhere between 50 to 400 years or so. It is not likely to happen in our lifetimes and it is dangerous to expect otherwise.

Yet that doesn’t mean Islamism will triumph in the mean time. There are counter-identities and ideas among Muslims that block Islamism’s victory. They include the following factors such as ethnic-communal identity, nationalism, and individuality.

People have different priorities and psychologies. They often tend (though less often than people in the West think) to want a stable life having the highest possible living standard and most benefits for their children. We see this does not always work (parents cheering their children becoming suicide bombers) but often does.

One must be careful, though, about basing government policy on this assumption, thinking, for example, more prosperity in the Gaza Strip will make Hamas more moderate or lead to its overthrow. Even aside from the appeals of ideology or religious doctrine, a minority of militants can often persuade or intimidate a much larger body of people to follow them.

(...)

While those Islamists who actively use violence are the most dangerous, those with revolutionary goals are equally Islamist and a threat even if they are not using violence in the present. This, of course, refers to the Egyptian and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood especially. It is important to understand that the fact that they aren’t actively involved in violent revolution because of moderation but because they fear government repression. Their exact counterparts are Hamas and Hizballah, which are so radical and violent in their practice because they aren’t afraid of their weak rivals, the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority respectively.

The basic acceptance of modern forms of belief and behavior often associated with the West. As Arab nationalism and nation-state patriotism is the main barrier to revolutionary Islamism in the Middle East, modernism plays that role among Muslims living in the West. The failure of Western societies to seek energetically an acculturation or assimilation along these lines is thus very dangerous and tends to put radical Islamists in control of the communities. It is an interesting question to what extent “natural” factors, that is the day-to-day experience of living in a modern society with its good (freedom of thought, equality of women) and bad (drugs, alcohol, rampant sex) features is going to transform Muslim communities there. Again, one has to get the balance right. One thing that is clear, however, is that European state practices are inhibiting this process rather than helping it.

Focusing on Islamism as the threat teaches the central importance of allying with genuinely moderate Muslims whose lives and lifestyles are threatened by the radicals. This does not just mean the small number actively trying to “reform” Islam but also the much larger number who just want to be left alone, enjoy freedom, and participate in the benefits of modernity. This analysis, then, demonstrates why it is important to show how Islamism is rooted in genuine mainstream Islam and is not merely some hijacking of a “religion of peace.”

Equally, though, it is vital not to assume that because something can be found in authoritative Muslim texts this tells us that Islam is “inherently” radical. Only by comprehending this can we understand how radicalism may be fought effectively. Both of these points are extraordinarily relevant. If one doesn’t understand the first, disaster will come from passivity, wishful thinking, and actually strengthening revolutionary forces by mistaking them as moderate ones.

Yet if one doesn’t understand the second, all the factors subverting radical Islamism despite its claim to be normative Islam, one won’t know how to proceed strategically and tactically. An additional problem is that one will be written off as extremist by the dominant Western society. It is all right to be brave despite name-calling and delegitimization efforts if one is right, but doesn’t make sense when the analysis itself is not so accurate or helpful.

(...)

The anti-Islam argument can mobilize a small number of courageous defectors from Islam and critics among Muslims, the anti-Islamism argument, however, can ally with millions of Muslims and governments in Muslim-majority countries.

If the Western establishment view would be that Islamism is a big threat and problem, this debate would be less relevant. In recent years, however, the official view of Western governments has moved toward saying that only al-Qaida is the threat and that Islamists can be won over. This is an extremely dangerous position that brands both the “Islam is the threat” and “Islamism is the threat” analyses as “Islamophobic” and dismisses them without serious consideration.

This approach is highly dangerous for Western interests, democracy, and even for the future of millions of Muslims who face death or tyranny at the hands of revolutionary Islamism.

There are real “Islamophobes” in the sense of people who are bigoted. But the number is far tinier than Politically Correct forces claim. “Islamophobia” is a stick used to intimidate anti-Islamism. At any rate, those who are motivated by an irrational hatred of Islam are not the main threat to Western civilization and interests today. That role is played by far more powerful forces that ignore real problems and unintentionally assist revolutionary Islamists at home or abroad.

The “anti-Islam” argument is neither accurate nor strategically useful. The “Islam is a religion of peace and you can’t criticize even radical Islamists” argument is neither accurate nor furthers the survival of Western interests and democracy. What is needed is an “anti-Islamism” approach that also works with moderate Islam, the best alternative in principle yet regrettably weak, and a conservative, traditional non-Islamist Islam, the most practical alternative at this point in history.”

http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/print.php?&ArticleID=6445

Hey – look what’s happening in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen now…

Amazing. Hamed Abdel-Samad seems like a smart guy.

This is really big!

Is this the outbreak of democracy that Bush promised we would get if we went into Iraq? I can just picture him taking credit.

@mattbrowne Who knows what each day will bring – I am worried especially about the Hammas border but cautiously optimistic – especially for Mubarak – wow – 30 years later – he must be taking it hard…

Americans and Europeans and Israelis alike are afraid of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood inspired by Sayyid Qutb, a radical thinker and creator of a totalitarian intolerant ideology rooted in Islam. Qutb also inspired Al Qaeda terrorists and poisoned their brains with his ideology so it became possible for them to murder 3000 people by flying airplanes into skyscrapers.

Mubarak is an evil person and a dictator, no doubt. He has to go. But someone committed to democracy and freedom needs to replace him. And I strongly doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood (no sisters, mind you) will support this approach.

I admire the brave demonstrators in Egypt and their resolve. Today is the march of the millions. I hope they’ll succeed.

What do you think about ElBaradei as the new Egyptian president?

I am more afraid of the Hizballazation of Lebanon – but if Mubarak falls – and the Muslim Brotherhood takes over – and becomes another Hammas – well, they are armed to the teeth (thanks USA) and right on Israel’s border. I think Syria isn’t far behind: they say it’s quite stable there, despite the terrible poverty and restrictions – why? because of the conflict with Israel – he is still popular there as he takes his stand against Israel. Mubarak, with peace for the last 30 years with Israel – is considered weak. Sigh. Let’s turn the clocks back another 200 years and all live like in Iran.