I am fully aware of the history of Christianity and all the wars, genocide, murder and forced conversions that was done in its name and I condemn them. If there was majority Christian countries that still executed people publicly for trying to convert to another religion then I would condemn that as well.
You cannot just wave your fingers and claim moral equivalence and Christians are just as bad, because there is not 45 Christian countries in the world that have signed a declaration enshrining biblical old testament punishments as the only valid source of law and that apostasy should be a crime. Any religion that had the same self admitted public values I would condemn. Oh and before you say not relevant anymore, the CDHRI was signed in 1990.
From a strictly semantic point of view, wouldn’t you call someone seeking to reform Islam an “Islamic reformer,” whether or not they themselves are Muslim?
Its completely besides the point since you very well know she was was born a muslim and is one of the few high profile outspoken voices calling for a reform of islam. Ex-members of Scientology or Ex-Mormons are certainly entitled to speak about their experiences and call for reformation, certainly ex-muslims should be allowed to.
She has stated Islam is the enemy that needs to be destroyed. Do you consider someone who wants to destroy Judaism to be a “Jewish reformer”?
None of this excuses or explains death threats and harassment, of course. But coremelt is trying to draw a parallel to the Christian reformation that doesn’t really work in this situation.
This is far outside my area of expertise, but Wikipedia lists 125 pages for “Islamic reformer”. The idea that Islam is completely immune to change or that anyone proposing change immediately gets death threats is false.
I’m not presuming that all immigrants of a given faith are going to be bigots. I’m stating as fact that a significant percentage of them (in many cases the vast majority) definitely are, because of their faith.
Take a look at this page of the Pew poll Sam Stone cited earlier. Let’s pick a random country. How about Tunisia? If you don’t like that choice, we can pick another. The figures are appalling for all of them. 91% of Tunisian Muslims think homosexual behaviour is immoral, 83% think abortion is immoral, 93% think a wife must always obey her husband, 19% think a wife should not be able to divorce her husband, 85% think sons should be preferred over daughters in matters of inheritance, and 12% think suicide bombings against civilian targets are often or sometimes justified.
So, if 100,000 Tunisians were to emigrate to the US, you would know in advance that over 90% would be homophobes, 83% would be anti-choice, 93% would be sexist, 19% would be extremely sexist, and just over one tenth are cool with suicide attacks against civilian targets. And the results for some other countries were even worse.
Why should any first world nation welcome people with such retrograde views with open arms, and why, in particular, are people on the left so eager to do it?
I’m not hand-waving at all. I’m merely pointing out that, according to your own posts, it’s obviously not the religion at play here. Why, then, do you persist in blaming the religion?
Please provide a credible cite that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has ever said that Islam “needs to be destroyed”. Google is finding no results for that. Her criticisms are on abuse of women in Islam, specifically domestic violence, forced child marriage, pedophilia and genital mutilation. As such she has a valid voice on reform in islam and attempting to silence her is equivalent to attempting to silence a Catholic priest rape survivor (She was a victim of genital mutilation at age 5).
And as for Islam being able to be reformed, explain this: I am free to start my own group with a unique interpretation of Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist scripture. The worst that will happen to me is that I will be ignored or ridiculed. Lets look at the history of Islamic minorities that had reform views of Islam in the 20th century:
Persecution of Baha’is:
Persecution of Ahmadiyya
Can you honestly say you can go to any country in the Ummah and start preaching your own interpretation of the Quran and be confident you will survive more than a few days? If not, then you can’t honestly say that Islam is open to reform.
Religion isn’t some sort of software code that you plug into people’s brains and get, I don’t know, murder or something. It’s RAM, not ROM. Religion is descriptive, not prescriptive - it’s an amalgamation of the collective beliefs and actions of all the people who think of themselves as members of that religion. A religion can be completely different than it was centuries ago, even if all of its writings, rules and prescriptions are completely unchanged, if its followers think and act differently.
Ok, I am wrong on Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It seems she has shifted from advocating the end of Islam to advocating reform. I don’t want to silence her, I just think she is more representative of the ex-Islam movement than a reformist. Death threats and anything like that aren’t acceptable, either way.
My understanding is that Islam does not have a central authority, and people choose teachers and schools of thought as they see fit. So in a way, people have a lot of choice in how it’s interpreted.
If they live in the west that is absolutely true. But if they live in the Ummah (Islamic World) then if they choose to espouse a view of the Quran contrary to the accepted view in the country they are in, their lives are in danger.
The same is not true of Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus in their own majority countries. Start a heresy… go ahead, chances are you will be just fine.
I think we need to keep cause and effect in mind. One could argue that reformation was possible precisely because Christianity existed in the western context, where for instance progressive measures like the Magna Carta had been introduced three hundred years earlier – so to say that Christianity evolved is a bit of a circular argument – it evolved because of the kind of culture in which it was embedded. And while the reformation created some progressive Christian thought including modern Protestant liberalism, Catholicism at the same time reasserted most of its traditions. We don’t have Christian theocracies in the western world, but Catholicism has continued into the modern age to direct its followers from the Vatican on matters of birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and many other things.
But again, the nature of our western societies has made these edicts more a matter of practice for the Catholic followers than an imposition on society as a whole, and even then, significantly mitigated by contemporary mores. Were it otherwise, and were the Bible to be interpreted literally and with the force of law, I see no inherent virtue of fundamentalist Christianity over Islam. So my point stands, I believe, about culture (and socioeconomic and other secular factors) as the dominant drivers of these different social norms, with religion as more of a symptomatic indicator than a cause.
You mean these homophobic sexist suicide-bomber terrorists? Or do you mean these homophobic sexist suicide-bomber terrorists? :rolleyes:
Perhaps I can explain the position of the nefarious “left” that seems so alien to you. It’s that pre-judging individuals based on broad-brush characterization of a group is the very definition of “prejudice”. Such a position is the same kind of bigotry exemplified by state governors who refuse to have even one Syrian refugee in their state because they’re all danged terrorists.
Doesn’t that just confirm what I said about culture, education, social or socioeconomic factors being the drivers of regressive behaviors?
No. I don’t mean them and you damn well know it. If you’re not going to even pretend to deal with my argument honestly then there’s no point responding to you.
I’m not the one who isn’t making an honest argument. Clearly the US isn’t going to admit any immigrants from anywhere without suitable vetting. No one interested in making an honest argument would therefore ever make the ridiculous claim that immigrants from any country would have to represent the kind of xenophobically derived profile of undesirable traits that you just trotted out. The groups of Tunisians I cited certainly don’t. Indeed they seem to represent far more exemplary traits of citizenship and social values than the xenophobic state governors I mentioned or the idiot constituency that they’re pandering to.
That’s how immigration policy works, but you damn well know that, right? I was making a point about blind bigotry. But you knew that, too, right?
Except, of course, for the simple fact that Buddhists and Hindus are actually killing non-Buddhists and non-Hindus. Of course that’s not everywhere, but, then, you really don’t want to apply that metric to Islam, do you? As far as you’re concerned, if it’s Islam, no matter how many or how few Muslims are doing something bad, it’s indicative of how all of Islam is bad, but that doesn’t apply to other faiths.
Communal violence in India and Myanmar is a complex problem and should be condemned. However statistically the hypothetical heretical Jewish / Hindu / Buddhist / Christian group has a much better chance of surviving unmolested than a Muslim one in the Ummah.
Sometimes the Onion says it the best way. I’m not going to link it because its NSFW, google “No One Murdered Because Of This Image” if you want to see it. Its extremely offensive to Jews/Christians/Hindus and Buddhists. Its been on their website since 2012 and they’ve had no death threats over it.
Quote “Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.”