No one is making that argument AFAICT. Rather, the issue is that some on this board are arguing that because the Koran contains passages that advocate killing infidels and stoning adulterers etc., Islam must be a terminally, irremediably illiberal religion incompatible with Enlightenment ideals. The fact that many similarly backward and gratuitously violent prescriptions can be found in the Bible, and yet neither Judaism nor Christianity turned out to be terminally, irremediably illiberal, serves as a counterexample to refute that argument.
In short, Muslims should stop stoning adulterers and supporting death for apostates and all these other things. But they don’t have to stop being Muslims, anymore than people had to stop being Jewish when they decided it wasn’t ok to murder their unruly children.
Based on Pew’s numbers, presumably they would garner such support. But I don’t know what point you’re making. All that I’ve said is that I question the depth or breadth of support for things like death to apostates and stoning of adulterers because I’m not aware of either of those punishments being widely practiced or laws (where they exist) being widely enforced. With 1.5 billion Muslims, Pew’s results ought to make us expect THOUSANDS of apostates and adulterers being executed each year, as opposed to a handful. So that makes Pew’s findings of overwhelming popular support for these punishments prima facie implausible to me. At the very least I’d want to see them corroborated by other surveys before ruling out that Pew’s results were the product of sampling bias, biased question framing, desirability bias, or any number of things that could go wrong in the design or implementation of the survey.
Also, just for the sake of precision, the Pew survey found that 74% of Egyptian Muslims favored implementing sharia law, and of those, 86% supported the death penalty for apostasy. So that ends up being 64% of Egyptian Muslims, or a little under 61% of the total population. Still a reprehensibly large number, if true.
Maybe you can tell me, Ramira: since Muslims in western countries are very good at getting outraged, demonstrating, demanding the blood of cartoonists, etc.
Right now, there is a harmless young man, Raif Badawi, father of three, whose wife and children are refugees in my country, Canada, while Raif has been sentenced in Saudi Arabia to 1000 lashes. His crime is blogging and expressing opinions that rile Muslims. He may die from the effect of 1000 lashings. Or he may be put to death because they have discovered a new “crime”. He “liked” a Facebook article saying that Muslims should not exterminate Christians, but show some tolerance.
Since Muslims are so ready to protest against some cartoons, why are they not out in their thousands in front of Saudi embassies around the world? Where is there an iota of the outrage generated when they called for the death of Salman Rushdie for writing a BOOK, few goodness’ sake?
I don’t think you can separate them, in any book, in any faith. What you are saying is akin to whitewashing American history and just pretending that slavery and genocide aren’t part of the story. To completely ignore it as if it never existed. That would be a mistake. The seeds of that mentality are present even today. The idea that we can exploit people as a commodity and poison and ruin the planet is a direct result, in a more moderate degree, from the callous disregard that led to slavery and genocide. So, you used to be able to stone a woman to death for adultery. But you can’t any more. But such anti-female thinking is precisely what leads to the idea that a muslim woman must obey her husband/father in all matters.
The way you prove “secular” rights is simply to “would it be okay if they did this to you” idea. It’s just such a basic argument that we don’t bother saying it.
In this case: What if you were killed for being an apostate from the “secular” government because you converted to Islam? Is it okay for the West to kill people who convert to Islam? Then why it is okay for Islam to kill people who convert to the West? Even Islam has the “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you” rule.
Which hints at the other part when dealing with a religious bigot. Prove that they are the ones not following their law. It’s actually advice from Paul: To convince Jews, use Jewish arguments, to convince Gentiles use Gentile arguments. To convince Muslims, use Islamic arguments.
Trying to convince someone that their religion is wrong is a losing strategy. So let them see what they are doing seems wrong, making them question just for a bit, then give them an answer that lets them not abandon their religion.
Granted, this is only something I’ve successfully accomplished with non-extremists, as extremists have more of a finger-in-ears aspect to them, but it has worked. It’s what I do with same sex marriage, and continue to do.
With this guy, I might just say: If it’s okay for you to kill them for converting, then it’s okay for us to kill you for converting, right?
And then they’ll say you’re trolling or something, at which point you just mute the conversation and move on.
Disagree. The Protestant Reformation didn’t pretend that the excesses of the Church never existed: it recognized severe problems with the faith as it was practiced, and set out to reform it.
Reform Judaism is vaguely similar: they took some ideas they didn’t like, and changed them.
There really are tons and tons of perfectly moderate Muslims.
To insist, “You must stone apostates to be truly Muslim” is as wrong as saying “You must sell priesthoods and bishoprics to be truly Catholic.” Just as the genocide of the native Americans: it happened, and we can’t deny it. We just don’t do it any longer.