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[Morrigan Stark]

Can someone resolve this inconsistency for me please?

There's the claim that the Quran and the Hadiths are set, the Quran itself being the perfect word of God and so interpretation is near impossible considering what is said in the Quran.

Then there's the claim that ISIS is a clear demonstration of the brutality of the Quran and the Hadiths, everything they do is permissible and justified.

Why did it take almost 1500 years for them to appear? I thought the Quran was immutable, that easy to understand and it all follows from the book to their action, why only now do we see such brutality even Al Qaeda is condemning them.

Of the wonders of the ancient world, which has been in Muslim hands for 1500 years, why did it take ISIS to finally work out what the Quran says?

lol, what

First of all, Muhammad was a brutal warlord. Early Muslims were probably not as bad as ISIS, but much like early Christians, by the stanards of our modern-day morality, they were abhorrent in behaviour and belief. So... using your incredibly naive and goofy "logic", why did it it take so long for the "true", moderate Islam to surface, then?

What I find most hilarious is that most are relying upon a person without qualifications in the Qur'an, Islam, Islamic history, Arabic, Quranic Arabic, who clearly hasn't read the entirety of the Quran to be the arbiter in deciding what is a true muslim or not.

What I find hilarious is this notion that there is even a "true" Muslim or not.

Also if we accept the premise that Muhammd and his followers followed the "truest" form of Islam, I believe an argument can be made that ISIS is closer to that than your average Western Walt-Disney Muslim.

Very true. Muhammad was a bloodthirsty warlord with a child bride, after all, not a peaceful dude who thought it was OK to be gay.

That said I'd rather have the latter even if they're distanced from the core of their Islamic roots, of course. Much like I'd rather have moderate Christians over Bible thumpers, even if the latter are more consistent with their scriptures.

And 'Walt-Disney Muslim' isn't an attack on any religion. It's a direct slam on people.

What's wrong with Walt Disney?

 

[haxamin]

lol, what

First of all, Muhammad was a brutal warlord. Early Muslims were probably not as bad as ISIS, but much like early Christians, by the stanards of our modern-day morality, they were abhorrent in behaviour and belief. So... using your incredibly naive and goofy "logic", why did it it take so long for the "true", moderate Islam to surface, then?

This is a man who has done very little to condemn slavery, who ordered the execution of an entire tribe's men, and then took the others as slaves. Just picture that for a second.

 

[nynt9]

As Muslims we believe that there is a true Islam that we'll be judged by after we die. Now if you don't share that assumption it'll sound ridiculous and irrelevant but if you can imagine it for a moment you might see that when different groups of Muslims accuse each other of not being 'true' Muslims it's not apologia of any sort. It's the harshest ideological criticism that we can even make as it's a struggle over what it means to lead a good and worthy life.

One of the most ridiculous things about all of this is to be struggling with other Muslims about this issue and then to have outsiders who shouldn't even think there is any real Islam logically speaking jump in and go 'No you guys should shut up and go to Magic Mountain and hang out with Goofy where you belong those rapists and murders are the REAL Muslims which by the way you guys are totally apologizing for also by getting blowed up by them.'

That doesn't answer my question though. If there is one true Islam like you said, and both ISIS and "liberal Muslims" (for lack of a better term) think their version is the true Islam, when both are explicitly incompatible, who is to judge and say which one is Islam and the other shouldn't be taken seriously? Of course you'd think your own interpretation is correct but so do ISIS.

By the way, I didn't make the "Disney Muslim" comment and I don't agree with that so you don't need to defend yourself like that against me. Also I was brought up Muslim yet no longer identify so, so I'm not an ignorant outsider either.

 

[TimeEffect]

Mine. I would assume Aziz's and Aslan's as well. By saying ' that's not real Islam!' based on nothing that stands up to logical scrutiny you deny me a part of my identity.


Nynt9: There is absolutely no distraction tactic here. I would love nothing more than to deal with those issues head on. I can't though if I have to defend me and mine from being accused of being either ISIS apologists or fucking not real Mickey Mouse Muslims. Or fucking both at the same time.

Im curious about how you interpret the text in such a manner that the prophet isn't seen as a warlord, or in such a way that justifies the text that speaks against homosexuality.

Yeah the older post you quoted seems like bs to me... Whatever "True Islam" is, it can't be just some empty container you pour your modern, liberal values into and call it a day.

The text matters. To use an example from Christianity, the Bible explicitly condones slavery. Leviticus even allows you to beat your slave as long as they don't die immediately, and Paul tells slaves to obey their masters. Nowhere in the Bible is the idea of owning other people as property condemned in any way. Even some Christian apologists agree: https://carm.org/slavery

Now, the liberal "Walt Disney Christians" who think slavery is absolutely abhorrent don't have some equally valid interpretation of the Bible. They're merely deluding themselves, forcing an ancient text to fit their values. They impose their own morality on the Bible, rather than the other way around. I'm not very educated on Islam, but I'm pretty sure the same applies.

Great post. While I am happy that there are Christians and Muslims who may accept homosexuality, I can't fathom how they get around their text

 

[Duji]

While I agree with you guys on Muhammad, we also have to acknowledge that this man is viewed differently from different people. The Muhammad that my family believes in is not the same Muhammad that ISIS believe in - in fact in some instances they might as well be considered different people.

So I encourage people to avoid the potential knee-jerk reaction as viewing a follower of Muhammad's teachings as necessarily being homophobic, a condoner of pedophilia, or genocidal even.

It is rather unfortunate, though, that the most popular "versions" of Muhammad are very troubling (ie most Sunni Muslims don't seem to deny that he had a nine year old wife).

 

[gblues]

Dont you at least see Harris' motivation here?

Someone wrote a hit piece on him, and he wanted to actually address each fact in it and correct it bit by bit.

I think it's misguided and idealistic and of course it turned into a disaster. That's the angle I can agree with here: foolish Sam Harris thought he could actually correct the record by convincing his attacker that he was wrong by going over each fact. It's incredibly naive.

But the angle of this Salon rebuttal that it's about some arrogant control freak suppressing information.. Naw. Thats silly. That's an uncharitable fallout from a disastrous interview written by the guy who wrote an uncharitable hit piece in the first place.



In regard to the original Salon article, I was explaining to you why people in Harris' circle are unlikely to be sympathetic towards heavy-handed attack pieces that paint him with a broad brush. They've been talking about the "regressive left" for months now. This feels exactly like one of those smear pieces, whether it truly is or not.

If there are real points to be discussed (and I can see that there are), they're lost in the general tone of trying to paint him as persona non grata. And that goes for both Salon and the aggregate of much of this thread.

I don't know what his motivations were. But what he did was to try to pull a Rush Limbaugh--get your detractor on the line under the guise of dialogue and then shout them down for entertainment.

If he wanted to reply line-by-line, he could do that without the Salon writer.

If he actually wanted a dialogue, he would have been flexible with the format.

Instead, he went to the considerable effort to convince her to agree to his control-freak rules, and then when the whole thing ended up not being that entertaining, he chose not to air it.

Because airing it wasn't the point. The point was to harass the Salon writer. The topic of Islam or Sam Harris' views on profiling are irrelevant.

 

[Simply Sarah]

Calling Islam inherently violent and intolerant compared to other religions is just utterly bizarre to me and basically involves cherry picking pieces of history to support it. You can do that with most anything.

Do people forget that the Crusades happened? That the western Christian world went on holy missions to retake the Holy Land called for by Popes? That the First Crusade ended in the massacre of much of the the Muslim and at least some percentage of the Jewish population of Jerusalem? You know, the Jews who were present and fighting to defend the city with the Muslims despite the fact that, apparently, Muslims would never allow that. That when Saladin retook the city he did nothing to the non-Crusader inhabitants, including the Christians, and allowed the majority of the Crusaders safe passage in exchange for a small ransom? Those unable to pay or be paid for were, admittedly, made slaves, but they were not slaughtered. That Saladin allowed access to holy sites for all pilgrims?

You can say that I'm cherry picking above, but that's my point. Depending on when and where you look at a religion you can find it being honourable or you can find it being callous and destructive. Early Christians where not a violent group, I mean, how could they given they were persecuted and had to in many places exist in secret. And yet almost 1000 years later they did that sort of thing. Conversely, it's without question that the Prophet was a warlord but historically there have been many great, tolerant, and relatively peaceful Muslim societies. As others have said, it's really not religion at the heart of much of the bad and the good, it's more general cultural things that, yes, include and are influenced by religion but are certainly not dictated by it.

David was a warrior. And I won't even start on the Book of Joshua which, while generally seen these to be ahistorical, is still part of the Jewish and Christian canon and still describes Joshua's conquest of Canaan and the complete slaughter of its people.

Edit:
To add, people talking about ignoring the words as written basically ignore that exegesis is an inherent and critical part of many religions. The commentary and interpretation of scripture often are the most important part of religions, far more so than the literal words on the page. Even those Protestants that argue for sola scriptura still need to interpret the scripture for themselves.

 

[Duji]

Calling Islam inherently violent and intolerant compared to other religions is just utterly bizarre to me and basically involves cherry picking pieces of history to support it. You can do that with most anything.

Do people forget that the Crusades happened? That the western Christian world went on holy missions to retake the Holy Land called for by Popes? That the First Crusade ended in the massacre of much of the the Muslim and at least some percentage of the Jewish population of Jerusalem? You know, the Jews who were present and fighting to defend the city with the Muslims despite the fact that, apparently, Muslims would never allow that. That when Saladin retook the city he did nothing to the non-Crusader inhabitants, including the Christians, and allowed the majority of the Crusaders safe passage in exchange for a small ransom? Those unable to pay or be paid for were, admittedly, made slaves, but they were not slaughtered. That Saladin allowed access to holy sites for all pilgrims?

You can say that I'm cherry picking above, but that's my point. Depending on when and where you look at a religion you can find it being honourable or you can find it being callous and destructive. Early Christians where not a violent group, I mean, how could they given they were persecuted and had to in many places exist in secret. And yet almost 1000 years later they did that sort of thing. Conversely, it's without question that the Prophet was a warlord but historically there have been many great, tolerant, and relatively peaceful Muslim societies. As others have said, it's really not religion at the heart of much of the bad and the good, it's more general cultural things that, yes, include and are influenced by religion but are certainly not dictated by it.

David was a warrior. And I won't even start on the Book of Joshua which, while generally seen these to be ahistorical, is still part of the Jewish and Christian canon and still describes Joshua's conquest of Canaan and the complete slaughter of its people.

Well it depends how you look at it, of course.

If we agree that the founders of the religions were the best examples, one sees that there's a pretty clear difference between Muhammad and his most immediate followers versus Jesus and his most immediate followers.

Perhaps rather arbitrary/meaningless in a modern discussion, but I think it's something worth noting.

 

[injurai]

I agree that there are certain criticisms of Islam that are more appropriate for specific schools of thought. When it comes to theologians, they are buying into a certain world view on faith. Faith shouldn't be construed as virtuous, it should be seen as precarious and haphazard. If you study Islam, not just as many variations or attempts of personal faith to understand the one true Islam. If instead you study it as a cultural movement through time. If you study the founding of Islam. If you study the founding of other religions and beliefs. It becomes very apparent that Islam is not what many people in the modern era claim it to be. I'd add that for some of us, it becomes painfully clear that the true Islam is not the truth of the world.

Then you think, how religion works. It prescribes answers about the universe. It sets up frameworks that explain what is important and why. Religions becomes bootstrapped with metaphysics and philosophy. Then you start reading the collective body that makes up the doctrine and dogma of the religion. What can be valid interpretations. It doesn't matter that certain conclusions don't represent a specific muslims. Islam is more than just many instances of personal faith. It's a large overarching body of ideas that permeate through culture. Ideas that evolve with time, as people try to rectify their cognitive dissonances who are two afraid or uncertain to go against and drop their faith.

Islam is not some universal permeating truth, but one that was fit like a glove for a very specific people's in time. It appeals in uniting a specific conglomeration of ideas that had melded in the region. From Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianism, to the local lore and beliefs of the bedouins and the Arab tribesman. The Quraysh lived in a trade hub and was very much a melting pot of ideas. From its very founding it sought to appeal to the tribal leaders of the pagan Quraysh. It was opportunistic in how it sought to strengthen unite the Quraysh in solidarity with one another. Formulating notions of the umma and crafting societal imperatives to look out for one another. But it was also violent, Muhammad believing that it must be spread by the sword. He very much appealed to the ruling elite of the Quraysh. From the very start Islam was political. It was about forcing itself upon other people. There is a reason why Islam is so tied with Theocracy. It's because it was the model that Muhammad set. It was the model that was followed from day 1 after the passing of Muhammad. After all it prescribed as a single truth as to how one should live. It proclaimed it to be truer than the views of others. It was an inherently flawed human construct, that that was intimately tight with tyrannical control over others human beings. It was a way of finding blame for the wrongs of the world and setting the bounds of acceptable society. Not in a dynamic evolving way, in a static doctrine.

But just like any body of thought, it has been refined. It has been dynamic despite claims of it being a consistent truth. It fortunately evolved beautifully so during Islam's golden age. But clearly, as new Ideas began to contradict Muhammad's one truth. People began to have doubt. They doubted their pleasures that distracted them from Allah. They doubted the interpretations that came before them. They ambiguity that divide the umma upon Muhammad's death. Islam was already splintered at this time. But the very fact that Islam is a flawed take on the world forces people to dig down deeper into trying to find the truth within the entire body that is Islam. Islam being unsatisfactory for many people, and fails to connect them with the divine in any real sense.

You don't have to just pick out Salafism or Wahhabism to develop barbed criticism of Islam. It's been their from that start. The problem with modern peaceful Muslims is that they still appeal to massive religious body that has come before them. You might not be able to tell someone what type of muslim they are, but you can speak to what Islam is. It's larger than them and has been so far a long time.

I like Hankka's quote on the last page.

"Whatever "True Islam" is, it can't be just some empty container you pour your modern, liberal values into and call it a day."

This is very much true. It doesn't take a believer to develop and understanding for what Islam is. Of course believers will always tell people like me that we just don't get it. We don't see the glory or the truth. We don't see the value. The truth is we do see many great sentiments for which Islam offers. We do see how it at least unified people over a vast distances with a common thread. Religion was very much a necessary step towards understanding the world and stepping out of tribalism. But it merely pushed tribalism to a larger scale. From the very start it promoted a dictatorial theocracy. The Islam that followed very much can be criticized. What does it take a true follower to argue against these criticisms as to Islam's founding and spread? They must deny historical figures from being true muslims, and they must do this an astronomically large number of times. Or they accept that this was part of Islam, part of God's will. If they do accept it into their modern view of Islam, that right there is the problem with Islam that can and will be criticized.

 

[ModBot]

Yeah I think we're done here.