I agree that Islam and Christianity are different, but when you say “differences must be taken into account” it sounds somewhat as if you feel it must be established that Islam is in some way inferior to Christianity. Even if that *were *true, I do not see how it is supposed to help matters. Maybe you could explain how you suggest to approach the accounting for differences and what you hope to gain from it.
Also opression of women is certainly not limited to Muslim countries. A woman in Istanbul or Jakarta is certainly better off today than a woman in rural India or Christian Eritrea. Opression of women is a society problem, not a religious one. (Of the roughly 20 centuries of Christian history, how many would you say women in Christian societies were *not *opresssed?) Modernizing a society will do a lot more for women’s rights than attacking its religion.
In other words, you’re not claiming it’s some kind of transcendent truth, you’re just claiming it’s the only historically valid way to interpret Muslim doctrine.
But claiming that the extremists’ interpretations are the only historically valid way to interpret Muslim doctrine is exactly the kind of anti-moderate undermining of reformist interpretations that A’isha is objecting to.
There have always been alternative interpretations of religious scriptures in Islam and everywhere else. There’s no such thing as a sacred text that has been interpreted in only one way “throughout the centuries”.
Moreover, there have always been substantial numbers of adherents of all religions who have fomented violence and oppression because they follow an interpretation of their religious scriptures that encourages such behavior.
For example, nowadays there are quite a number of radical-extremist Jews who illegally foment violence and oppression in the occupied West Bank because they believe a literal interpretation of their religious scriptures that tells them that this territory was divinely assigned to Jews in perpetuity. But we’re not telling moderate peaceful Jews that their alternative interpretations of their scripture are somehow pointless or futile because they’re just “trying to convince people that the texts do not really mean what they say”.
Somehow, it seems to be only Muslims who are expected to accept having moderate or reformist interpretations of their religious doctrines easily dismissed simply because there will always be extremists who prefer to interpret them “in the more violent and oppressive manner”. Odd, that.
In other words, A’isha and other moderate Muslims should continue to do the heavy lifting of actually supporting and defending modern moderate interpretations of Islamic doctrine. But they should stop inconveniently pointing out to you that your ill-informed sweeping generalizations condemning Islam in general are counterproductive and are in fact effectively endorsing the very type of extremist literalism that you claim to oppose.
Got that, A’isha? I’m afraid that in your zeal to fight ignorance about the existence and significance of modern broadminded Muslim thought, you’ve allowed yourself to lose sight of the most important objective here: namely, upholding Hank Beecher’s assurance of the correctness of his opinions. I trust we will shortly be receiving a full apology. :dubious:
I think what Hank’s saying is that fighting extremism by thumbing scripture and looking for loopholes and moderate interpretations just isn’t the way to go here. For any book with valid conservative and liberal interpretations there will always be a certain set of people who choose the conservative interpretation. Of that set, there will always be a subset of people who choose an ultra-conservative interpretation. A liberal can’t persuade an ultra-conservative that his interpretation is wrong, because the ultra-conservative has already read the books in question, already knows the liberal counterarguments, and has already discounted them. To an ultra-conservative, a religious moderate is just a failed fundamentalist who doesn’t “get it”.
What Hank is saying, as I understand it, is that trying to fight scripture with scripture is always a doomed proposition. For every liberal interpretation, there’s a conservative counterpoint and vice versa, which is why religious liberals and religious conservatives have such a lousy track record of changing each other’s minds. Hank’s point is that the best way to go about reforming Islam is for reformists to reject the false dichotomy of liberal and conservative interpretations altogether and argue for secularism instead.
This approach has proven successful in America. Look at the struggle for gay rights, for instance. The fact of the matter is that when you actually sit down and read the Bible in its entirety, it really is quite clear that, for whatever reason, God actually does have a beef with gay people. He “hates fags”, to put it bluntly. There are numerous denunciations of homosexuality in both the old and new testament. The battle for marriage equality wasn’t won by moderates twisting scripture in knots to make it look like God was cool with gay people. It was won by people, both gay and straight, basically saying “Fuck off, God boy, and take your Bible with you.” Of course, they didn’t put it quite so bluntly, especially not in the courts, but the thrust of the campaign for sexual equality was that, no matter what the Bible said, it was just flat-out less important than the secular principle of equality.
What A’isha seems to be trying to do is fight fire with fire by arguing that liberal interpretations of the Koran and Hadith exist and are just as, if not more valid than conservative interpretations. What Hank is saying is that so long as the fire is burning at all there’s always going to be a problem, so just chuck a great big bucket of water over the whole thing and argue instead that Islamic values, liberal or conservative, are not the best possible values on which to found a society.
Secularism, as I understand it, is a situation wherein a society bases its decisions on considerations that are not founded in religion. I believe that for a society to accept secularism it is a mandatory precondition that this society not be dominated by a very conservative religious group, because conservative religion tends to have little tolerance for any decision that is not aligned with its religious code. So in order to achieve secularism you have to first achieve at least a certain degree of liberal thinking within the religious groups of your society. The “Fuck off, God boy”-approach would be short-lived otherwise (and probably literally).
And so therefore it is right. That SIS rejects that interpretation and those texts means, for you, not that they are working to change the problems in their religion (the thing you claim to be supporting), but that they are going against “mainstream Islam” and are therefore wrong in their interpretation.
Again, how does that help them?
It means “declaring child marriage permissible in Islam because these Sunni hadith collections say it’s okay” is both incorrect and completely misunderstanding the issue. Since not only are there a lot of Muslims who reject those ahadith, even among those mainstream Sunni Muslims who accept them as authentic there are some pretty important and influential ones who disagree with the idea that they permit child marriage. Such as al-Azhar.
Which isn’t based on the Bukhari hadith, but mostly on things said by the Sixth Imam and the contested Seventh Imam and their rulings on what constitutes baligh.
Because that’s the extremists’ interpretation, which you and Khuldune agree is the correct one.
And here you set up a Catch-22 for moderates: they have to change their religion and their texts to “excise” misogyny and violence, but they can’t change their religion and their texts.
Thus conceding the battle to the extremists and their interpretation before it’s even begun? “Give it up, moderates,” you say. “You’ll never be able to reform Islam, because the texts of Islam indubitably say what the extremists claim they say, so your efforts to interpret the texts in any different way are doomed to failure.”
You’re not arguing for a more moderate Islam or supporting Muslim moderates at all. You’re advocating the abandonment of Islam and the rejection of God and Muhammad entirely, telling moderates to leave their religion (and to leave it in the hands of the extremists).
And I’ll point out that extremist interpretations of Christianity still exist and are dangerously prevalent. Even in the arguments over gay marriage, the strong influence of Christian religious conservatives has proved a critical blocking point.
So, if the extremists will always be around if you promote a liberal interpretation, and they’ll still always be around if you promote pure secularism, then the criticism that promoting a liberal interpretation won’t get rid of the extremists entirely is a false one, a double standard.
All that condemning moderate interpretations of Islam will do is help ensure that the only members of that religion will be the extremists. Which I guess for Islamophobes is a feature, not a bug.
But modern moderate interpretations of Islam aren’t some kind of deliberately invented “extremism-fighting” strategy. They developed from long-standing traditions of exegetical dispute and philosophical divergence within historical Islam. They are genuine religious traditions in their own right.
For us non-Muslim westerners to leaf through a translation of the Qur’an, carefully noting down all the references to bloodshed while listening to some Wahhabist radicals calling for fundamentalist jihad, and then to proclaim that we “know” that moderate interpretations of Islam are pointless effete “loopholes”, is simply pig-ignorant as well as arrogant.
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
For any book with valid conservative and liberal interpretations there will always be a certain set of people who choose the conservative interpretation. Of that set, there will always be a subset of people who choose an ultra-conservative interpretation. A liberal can’t persuade an ultra-conservative that his interpretation is wrong, because the ultra-conservative has already read the books in question, already knows the liberal counterarguments, and has already discounted them. To an ultra-conservative, a religious moderate is just a failed fundamentalist who doesn’t “get it”.
[/quote]
Sure. But once again, why should it only be Muslims who are expected and exhorted to discard all non-fundamentalist interpretations of their faith just because there are always going to be some diehard fundamentalists who refuse to agree with them?
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
What A’isha seems to be trying to do is fight fire with fire by arguing that liberal interpretations of the Koran and Hadith exist and are just as, if not more valid than conservative interpretations.
[/quote]
And that is a perfectly valid historical and theological point, whether or not you’re hoping to use it for firefighting purposes.
If that’s intended as an argument in favor of secular civil law codes such as Turkey’s or France’s or the US’s, in which the basic operation of government is supposed to be religiously neutral, then sure, I’m all for it.
But if it’s intended as advice to moderate Muslims to just dump their religious interpretations and beliefs, then it’s basically religious bigotry.
kay, fine, Islam is this violent, evil religion. What do you want us to DO about it?
I follow the golden shower rule: “Do with the same some you want they are doing to you.”
Or translated to english: “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.”
As long as they treat me as they would like be treated.
@ **Robert163 **and Hank Beecher - I disagree with your premise that Islam is evil and violent, but lets put that aside for now. Do you propose muslims are evil and violent because of their religion? If not and if you are *only *attacking the ideas, *not *the people, then I believe you should change rhetoric, because it is very similar in tone to white supremacy rhetoric from where I come from. It is an ugly and hateful way of speaking and using it only empowers violent psychopaths, to the detriment of everyone else.
Yes. And that’s something I’ve tried to point out through reference to things like Afsaruddin’s book and the contemporary treatment of al-Khawarizmi.
And let’s not forget that the main and most prevalent extremist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, is barely two and a half centuries old, in a religion that’s 1400 years old, and was treated as a heretical aberration when it appeared.
It’s more than that; the Muslims who are more likely to become terrorists are the ones who know the least about Islam, and the ones who are disconnected from Muslim society. Further, Islamic source texts and history are not required in order to turn impressionable, disconnected young men into killers…see Aum Shinrikyo, the Red Army Faction, the Tamil Tigers, the ultranationalists of 1930s Japan, and on and on. Where there’s a political goal and a supply of cult members, violence will ensue, in any society.
Kudos for your honest reply.
I can’t watch videos on my work PC, do you have an alternate source?
“Camel flavored”? :smack:
The religions are more alike than different; cousins, if you will. It’s not identical to Christianity (note that I didn’t say that it was), nor is it uniquely terrible or special in any way.
That depends on your definition of “oppression”. Certainly, no Muslim-majority country tops the list of the best nations for women’s rights, but then again, Muslim-majority nations aren’t randomly distributed.
Oh, absolutely. But in the spectrum of possible religious beliefs, it’s not far off from Christianity, either…(omnipotent, singular creator god who issues moral decrees through humans, immortal souls, etc). Compare Christianity and Islam to, say, Scientology, or Buddhism, or Shintoism.
There are lots of rich and upper middle class (and Western) terrorist recruits. It’s become a constant theme. They are seemingly not disconnected at all. If they are so disconnected how are they recruited? Do mosques play no part?
Not really, no. The internet, particularly posts of propaganda videos and heavy use of social media, are the main way groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda try to appeal to Western recruits.
Here is a Business Insider article about al-Qaeda’s (and ISIS’) online recruitment methods.
Note how it emphasizes that the best recruits come from among non-religious Muslims, because it’s easier to convince those who know the least about Islam of the violent extremists’ particular interpretation, while religious Muslims are the most resistant to that message (to the point where recruiters are warned of the dangers of trying to recruit religious Muslims lest “they… reject the da’wa (invitation) and end up being the reason for our defeat”). It also advises them to target the isolated and disaffected for recruitment.