They ‘chicken and egg’ on the grounds of provocation through invasion, syphoning of their resources, Zionist pandering etc.
Many tribes and factions exist in Islam - they actually kill each other far more than the fashionable, “infidel” - so, it’s not as easy as just shooing them away. Although nuclear, Pakistan’s military and intelligence is kind of primitive (in First World terms) and largely geared towards combating India, not terrorist cells and goat herders with Russian weaponry.
These notions you speak of are an anathema to Islamic dogma. The word ‘Islam’ means “to submit”. So, protestation, democratic adjudication are wholly incompatible with this particular religious doctrine. Read a handful of paragraphs from the Qur’an and you’ll soon get the drift.
Islam is an intractable system of control that does not brook deviation from its fundamental tenets. Hence why moslems fight amongst themselves more than with their arch enemy, the West, and also why what we coin ‘moderate moslems’ (i.e., non fundamentalists who commune with their non Islamic surrounds) are no less an “infidel” than your average atheist when it comes to Qur’anic interpretation.
It’s quite a cancerous belief system, I have to say. It’s not only absolute in its intolerance, but it’s also a religion that encompasses every aspect of its adherent’s life; from god to government. This is in fact Islam’s strength – it is immutable and therefore more resilient than other forms of god-worship that attempt to adapt and change; thereby diluting their foundation and undermining their purpose.
I certainly wasn’t defending Pakistani treatment of Hindus and other religious minorities. I was rebutting a claim that Hindus in Pakistan were “killed or converted” out of existence - note that the claim did not include “forced to emigrate”.
And to Christian dogma as well; democracy isn’t compatible with revelations and commandments handed down by priests and prophets, and freedom isn’t compatible with “obey or burn forever”.
As is Christianity, and many other religions. That’s not a special feature of Islam.
Again, barring the specifics of the enemies involved that applies to many religions. Just look at how much effort Christian factions have spent killing each other.
That’s intrinsic to religion; again, nothing special about Islam.
Again, a common feature of religion.
The distinction between Islam and Christianity isn’t that Christianity is morally superior; it’s just weakened more and is prevalent in nations that keep it restrained. Look at places and times where Christianity and (usually to a lesser degree*) other religions have the same kind of power that Islam does in some place like Iran or Saudi Arabia and you see the same kind of tyranny and abuse. There’s plenty of people like Christian Dominionists who would love to turn America into a Christian mirror of Iran.
*To a lesser degree because most others aren’t monotheisms, which naturally tend towards aggression & intolerance
More tripe from a place like islam-watch or jihadwatch.
There is no inherent opposition to democracy or democratic principles in Islam. Look at the polls among Muslims regarding democracy in the link I provided in Post #40. European Muslims overwhelmingly support democratic governments. Nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey each enjoy democratic governments and, to the extent that they have been less than wholly successful, much of their failure can be attributed to the support of authoritarian regimes by the West during the Cold War when the boogeyman was “Communism” instead of “Islam.” Even Pakistan was able to maintain a democracy fro several decades, even electing a woman as head of state, (something the U.S. has failed to do), before more recent problems led them away from democracy.
The West is not “their arch enemy.” The West may be the arch enemy in the minds of certain small factions of Muslims, but the majority of Muslims do not perceive the West to be the enemy–despite the frequent efforts of the West to behave as the enemy.
Your claims of intolerance are nothing more than polemical nonsense.
OK, but as per that analysis, and I’ve found no fault in it, 7.5 million Hindus/Sikhs were killed or converted out of existence. That’s substantial support for the claim, even if it wasn’t completely correct.
Also, what were you using as a source for your figure that Hindus are 5.5 % of the Pakistani population? I looked around, and I couldn’t find that number. Even total minorities seem to be below 5% of their population. Pakistan doesn’t seem to have a regular census, so I’m always on the lookout for good sources.
Malaysia is the breeding ground for terrorism in southern Thailand and the Philippines. It’s also a wholly intolerant nation where LGBT people are discriminated against, if not much, much worse.
Summation:
It’s never a true peace when it comes to the so-called “religion of peace”, only an armistice (see: taqiyya)
…And then assassinating her.
“Small” enough to invade and occupy nations and maintain continuous drone sorties, according to the Pentagon…
The only nonsense here is the religious dogma of Islam… and all similarly intolerant, bellicose religions in fact. I’m not going to waste time in citing the multitudinous passages contained in the Qur’an that instruct misogyny, the intolerance towards heterosexual people, the societal and legal condescension towards anyone not a moslem, the sanctioning of lying in order to further Islamic endeavours, war against those who oppose the absolutism of the doctrine… and so on. Take some time to peruse the ‘egalitarian’ teachings of Allah via his goat herder-come-messenger Muhammad and taste the halal pudding for yourself.
We’ve taught them that it means bloodshed and destruction, conquest and tyranny, poverty and American puppet dictators and exploitation by the West. The words have been poisoned by our actions.
[/QUOTE]
It’s much worse. Most regimes throughout history don’t look like Iraq after America wrecked it.
And, “it’s no different than any other regime in history” completely fails as an argument for democracy.
Your “own research, experience and issuing assessments” plus $3.59 will get you a latte at Starbucks.
In other words: yes, it is tripe.
Of course, nobody’s claiming that there aren’t some genuine and serious problems these days with militant and oppressive fundamentalist-Islamist cultures.
But your attempting to extrapolate from that the existence of some kind of single, essential “real Islam” that is inherently and inevitably pernicious is just bigoted tripe.
As has already been pointed out in this thread, Indonesia carried out suppression of Islam for the better part of forty years, leading to the creation of a Fundamentalist movement seeking to protect their beliefs. Your reference to the Pancasila genocide is odd. While the original Pancasila movement in the late 1940s included efforts by Muslims to turn the religious principle to a Muslim-specific one, that effort was defeated and Islam was never made the chief religion. Beyond that the “Pancasila genocide” was never a Muslim movement, (it was, ostensibly, anti-communist), but its victims were very often Muslim. Citing that as an example of the horrors of Islam is like pointing to Jim Crow as an example of how bad black people are.
Malaysia has a similar, (although not as thorough), history of placing sanctions on Islam and, as I already noted, has a history of authoritarianism that is rooted in the Cold War. The discussion was democracy and the fact that a nation that was a pawn in the Cold War includes non-democratic elements should not be a surprise to anyone looking at it objectively.
Turkey is under the pressures that all Middle Eastern nations suffer regarding Fundamentalist Islam. It also has the typical problems of a monarchy moving toward democracy.
Pretending that the more radical elements that foment problems are indicative of the religion, itself, requires more than an assertion from someone who has only personal misunderstanding as a source.
Piffle.
This is standard boilerplate cherry-picking of words to make a point that is not based in substance. It is rather like Fundamentalist Protestants decrying JFK’s run for the Presidency, citing Catholic “rules” that were supposed to make him take orders from the Vatican or various nutcases quoting the Talmud out of context to “prove” that the Jews intend to rule the world.
If you will read the link you posted, you will note that taqiyya is only a principle held by the Shi’a (the minority movement in Islam) and is intended to protect them from Sunni persecution. It does not even exist in the Sunni majority. Pretending that it is some clandestine effort to hide the goals of Islam to conquer the world is not just silly, it is clearly wrong. Do you also believe nonsense published about The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion?
Pakistan has had the same troubled history as a number of newly independent nations where there is no tradition of democracy. That has nothing to do with Islam opposing democracy.
meh
More hate peddling based on ignorance and fear. The bible used by Christians and Jews has every bit as much misogyny and xenophobia.
Go back and look at the polls of actual Muslims in Europe and the U.S. who do not hold those beliefs. If Islam was as terrible and powerful and monolithic as you claim, European and North American Muslims would be holding tenaciously to those views. That they are clearly not indicates that the “bad” ideas are rooted in local cultures, not in religion.
With so many factual errors in your post, you might want to take some time to read actual information before spouting errors, here.
Ah, sorry I missed the retraction. It’s a pity Pakistan doesn’t do a better job of data collection regarding its population, the partition otherwise provides such a potentially useful natural experiment.
I’m not making claims about the larger point, but the most similar(if not practically the same, apart from Islam) newly independent nation with no tradition of democracy was India. Indeed, the only difference between the two was that Pakistan was envisioned as an Islamic republic and India as secular. It is instructive to examine Islam’s role in Pakistan’s democratic failings, because it does play a role, albeit in a manner that you are wont to dismiss. Pakistan’s military dictators have always used Islam and Islamic groups for rallying political support, and have tended to make Pakistani laws and institutions more Islamic in nature.
Sure, but politicizing a certain interpretation of religious identity is in no way unique to Islam.
Conservative Christian politicians in several African countries (not to look any closer to home, ahem) have used Christian “culture war” issues like opposition to homosexuality to rally their supporters and gain backing. The Israeli right talks up Judaism to support their policies in the same way. Such politicization isn’t even exclusive to theistic ideologies: for instance, the Chinese state-atheist government launched an antireligion propaganda drive in majority-Buddhist Tibet to undermine Tibetan separatism.
There is nothing specifically Islamic about using religious ideologies and organizations for political ends.
I would suggest that it looks that way because you’re so used to dealing with people who make ignorant and essentializing arguments about Islam being terrible and the source of all evil. Just look at this thread. I, however, am not interested in doing that and have no such feelings.
I can only imagine that that is the reason why you see my argument as singling out Islamic jurisprudence as the sole enabler of regional phenomena that I went out of my way to acknowledge were not unique or universal to Islamic contexts. I thought that I was quite clear that the role Islam plays in Pakistan is real but complex. It is not static, nor monolithic, and it is tied to many other factors, which is why I said it should not be ignored or misjudged.
I’m not really sure why you put Islamic jurisprudence in quotes. Do you not know what I mean by it, or do you think that the loopholes I mentioned are not relevant? If the latter, I’d be happy to explain what I mean.
I am surprised that you seem to insist that the local religious context of Plessy v Ferguson and ceremonial deism is not relevant or useful. Did the cultural trends in America that produced these things not interact with Christianity at all? I would argue that they did, and that understanding how is useful.
Finally, I am sorry that I was not more clear that honor killing, FGM, and other negative phenomena are not only done by Muslims. I definitely think that when Christians or Sikhs or Druze or other groups perform or excuse honor killings (etc.) it is important to identify how local religious traditions are being used and how they can contribute to improvement. I also think it is important that the roles of colonialism, urbanization, modernity, and other such upheavals are carefully considered.
[QUOTE=Ibn Warraq]
Nani, Coptic Christians in Egypt, who practice FGM can also refer to Christian sources as well.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, and that is an opening of engagement to better understand and combat FGM that should not be ignored.
[QUOTE=iLemming]
These notions you speak of are an anathema to Islamic dogma. The word ‘Islam’ means “to submit”. So, protestation, democratic adjudication are wholly incompatible with this particular religious doctrine. Read a handful of paragraphs from the Qur’an and you’ll soon get the drift.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Tomndebb]
There is no inherent opposition to democracy or democratic principles in Islam.
[/QUOTE]
I think iLemming is wrong but tomndebb slightly overreached. There is a wide range of political views that can find validity in Islam. This includes Western liberal democracy. It also includes opposition to Western liberal democracy. Saying that there is no opposition to democracy is Islam seems to say that there is nothing in Islamic sources and traditions that can be used to oppose democratic principles. This is obviously not true. Similarly, submitting to God does not imply that engaging productively in a democratic society is anathema. This is also obvious, as tomndebb points out.
Christianity is the same. I wouldn’t say there is no opposition to democracy inherent in Christianity or Islam, I would say that there are ways of being sincerely Christian and Muslim and fully supporting liberal democracy, and many of these ways are quite mainstream. Otherwise I fully endorse tomndebb’s larger reply. Especially when seeing the follow-up exchanges. I mean, seriously, taqiyya?
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
Sure, but politicizing a certain interpretation of religious identity is in no way unique to Islam.
Conservative Christian politicians in several African countries (not to look any closer to home, ahem) have used Christian “culture war” issues like opposition to homosexuality to rally their supporters and gain backing. The Israeli right talks up Judaism to support their policies in the same way. Such politicization isn’t even exclusive to theistic ideologies: for instance, the Chinese state-atheist government launched an antireligion propaganda drive in majority-Buddhist Tibet to undermine Tibetan separatism.
There is nothing specifically Islamic about using religious ideologies and organizations for political ends.
[/QUOTE]
This is all very true. Even today, the Chinese government will quite clearly define certain religious interpretations as good and others as evil. Talking about “secular” governments is often complicated by a government’s insistence on being a theological actor.
Still, I think it’s important to study the religious traditions that are being called into service in particular contexts, because of the opportunities it opens for effective engagement and understanding. For example, there is worry that Islamic schools in Pakistan are teaching what the USG likes to call “extremism.” I worked for an NGO that had as a large project a program to put Islamic schools in Pakistan in touch with best practices on teaching interreligious tolerance and nonviolence from other parts of the Islamic world. One reason we had the success we had was because we were willing to acknowledge religion at all.
I think the difference lies in the degree to which Islam is important in politics and law in countries with majority Muslim populations. Islam is central to the laws and worldview of multiple large countries in the world. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, to name some off the top of my head. That’s partly because Saudi Arabia, which practices a fairly fundamentalist version of the religion, is the holiest site in Islam. Couple that with oil money, and their version of Islam, which is also the most unpleasant, ends up with an undue amount of influence in the Islamic world. No other religion is similarly placed, and when you view that with the increasing radicalisation of Islam, it is legitimate reason for concern.
I put Islamic jurisprudence in quotes to highlight your phrase. You now say that you recognize that that was not unique or universal to Islam, but your focus on Islam while not mentioning any of the other religious factors or cultural associations appeared to be an effort to single out Islam, despite your denial that you were doing so.
As to the loopholes in a religious law, I will doubt that they are relevant unless you can provide evidence that Islam employed those same loopholes for similar decisions from its earliest days.
Of course the culture interacted with Christianity. However, you are asserting that they are too intertwined to separate and I deny that. What statement from Paul or Irenaeus or Origen or Augustine or anyone else supports “separate but equal”? I think that one can make a case that the biblical acceptance of slavery supported that institution, but that not every decision by every legislature or court in inextricably tied to the religion of the prevailing culture. Thus, I hold that one can distinguish between the religion and the culture. It is not a matter that Islamic jurisprudence has huge holes that permit bad things. It is a matter that culture is sufficiently separate from religion that all cultures have loopholes that allow them to ignore their own religious dictates. If Islamic jurisprudence has a loophole to permit honor killing, what is the Christian loophole to permit it? And if Christianity lacks such a loophole, what is your explanation for Christians engaged in honor killing when you assert that we cannot separate religion and culture? Where in either Christianity or Islam can one find an excuse for FGM? And why is Muslim FGM ascribed to loopholes in Islamic law while Christian FGM suffers no such comparison?
In my first post in this thread I wrote (emphasis added):
[QUOTE=ñañi]
In no place, Muslim or non-Muslim or mixed, does honor killing inhabit some purely non-religious cultural space. Addressing honor killing in places like Pakistan, specifically, demands engagement with Islamic traditions.
[/QUOTE]
I therefore find your characterization of my posts here to be very inaccurate.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
As to the loopholes in a religious law, I will doubt that they are relevant unless you can provide evidence that Islam employed those same loopholes for similar decisions from its earliest days.
[/QUOTE]
In general I dispute your notion that something has to be used from Islam’s earliest days to be considered validly Islamic. Stoning is something that was apparently almost never used in Islamic West Africa before the colonial era, but its resurgence, tied with a post-colonial desire to reclaim an “authentic” Islamic culture on the part of some extremists, is justified with the use of Islamic language and no matter how wrong their view of history is, you can’t just ignore it.
But as to your specific doubts, we can start with loophole number 1: how do you punish murder in Islamic law?
The Qur’an states that murder should be punished in two ways: the death penalty, or, if the family agrees, then a reasonable compensation (Diya). Diya is further mentioned as the preferable option.
Early jurists who elaborated on this struggled with a particular situation: what to do if a father intentionally murdered his child? Obviously he could not pay compensation to himself. In Sunni Islam, Hanafi, Shaafi, and Hanbali jurists held that a father could not be killed for intentionally killing his child, citing hadith and the decision of 'Umar, one of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, to force Abu Qatadah (a man who intentionally killed his own son) to pay 100 camels to him as compensation for his crime. It’s important to note here that killing your own child was never regarded by the scholars with shrugged shoulders, it was seen as a terrible thing. But how exactly to deal with it was vague, and dependent to a great deal on local leadership and 'Urf (customary law), that was given Islamic legitimacy in many decisions.
It is also important to note that the Maliki school held that fathers could potentially be given the death penalty for murdering their sons, and this attitude has gained greater currency in recent years. Many Islamic activists on this subject use arguments inspired by Maliki (such as challenging the hadith mentioned above) and Islamic language to combat honor killing.
Unfortunately, the details get even more murky when the murder is carried out by another relative besides the father. In cases where a brother kills his sister, the parents have a right to accept compensation from their son in lieu of other punishment. This is how honor killings in Pakistan are often swept under the rug. Attempts in Pakistani (for example) law to address these loopholes (such as a reserving of the right of the state to impose a punishment in cases of honor killing regardless of Diya, which also has roots in Islamic conceptions of the authority of the King in legal rulings) are worthy of further discussion if you are interested.
Other loopholes include: what is the purpose of punishment in Islamic law? When (if ever) can individuals enforce corporal punishment? How much leeway does the ruler have to make decisions? What is the duty of witnesses to hudud crimes? And so on.
The problem with your argument is that it is far more useful for scoring rhetorical points against anti-Muslim bigots in the West than it is for actually understanding and addressing problems that happen in Islamic contexts.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Of course the culture interacted with Christianity. However, you are asserting that they are too intertwined to separate and I deny that.
[/QUOTE]
If you can come up with non-arbitrary definitions for religion and culture that show a clear difference between the two, I would be glad to hear them. But I think that might be worth another thread.
Lots of segregationists (and apathetic types) justified their position with Christian language. Their beliefs were sincere, if abhorrent. They didn’t define Christianity (even American Christianity) as a whole, but it would be a mistake to not engage with them because of that. MLK certainly agreed.
As I’ve stated elsewhere on this board, modern western racial categories are tied up in reactions by Western Christians to slavery, colonialism, the discovery of the new world, etc. They encountered new circumstances and developed, engaging with what they already had all along.
I simply disagree that legal decisions or other acts are ever made in a cultural context but not in a religious context. I don’t see how that is possible, unless you are using a definition of “religion” that is very restricted. You can trace back a lot of Christian thought to Jewish, Pagan, Islamic etc. sources and interactions, of course. But this just makes religion’s role more complex, it doesn’t erase it.
It’s not that the loopholes permit bad things, it is that in certain contexts they don’t effectively stop bad things. What Islamic dictate is being unambiguously ignored when parents accept compensation from their son because he killed his sister, and the ruling authority accepts this?
Honor killings are often referred to by the euphemism of “crimes of passion” in Latin America. How they are prosecuted (or not, as the case may be) owes a lot to local Christian historical attitudes on individual responsibility, on taking into account extenuating circumstances when deciding punishments, etc. These are loopholes because they do not explicitly accept or promote the behavior, but they participate in its accommodation. As with honor killings in Islamic contexts, there are vibrant efforts to shift these attitudes that are at least partly religiously based as well.
I would also point out that Christian and other influences play some role in many Islamic contexts, and non-Christian influences play a role in Christian contexts, etc.
There are several hadiths and long-standing Islamic legal opinions that describe female circumcision (usually defined as “non-extreme cutting”) as either obligatory or recommended. In Islamic law, ‘Urf (customary law) is also given religious sanction at times in decision-making. Religiously influenced attitudes toward pre-marital sex as illicit also are interpreted on the ground to give people sanction to pursue FGM.
In Christianity, we can look at popular attitudes against masturbation (justified with Christian language) that contributed to the popularization of male circumcision in the US. We can look at similar attitudes toward pre-marital sex contributing to the legitimization of FGM in places where it occurs. We can look at customary law being given religious legitimacy by local actors. And so on.
I’ll add that if anyone wants to talk about the religion/culture divide as it relates to the US, I heavily recommend that they consider the scholarship surrounding American civil religion, propounded by Robert Bellah and other scholars.