Yes - the gap between what apologists tell us about this religion of peace and the actuality is immense. Mohammed was no Jesus, he was a slave-owning military leader responsible for massacres and forced expropriation of property.
And the much-vaunted religious tolerance amounted to keeping Jews and Gentiles around to be taxed the hell out of to finance expansionism and the caliphinate.
We also have to realise that the Koran is the official last word of God. It superces the corrupted teachings of the Bible and Mohammed is the last Prophet, his words superceding Jesus. Thee is no tolerance concept of ‘all religions being on the same path’. Christians are polythiests because of the Trinity. It is not like the Bible, it is not allegory to be interpreted any way we think fit. It is the unchanged word, the primary miracle of Islam and it is pretty explicit about a host of things anti-thetical to liberal democracies.
That’s not to say some form of liberal, tolerant Islam cannot emerge, or that Islam has not at times played a major role in transmitting knowledge or that minorities cannot live within liberal rules in western democracies. But it does mean the Word of God has to be pretty violently bent whereas liberal Christianity has the NT doing a lot of the work for it with the message of Jesus.
And we only have to look around the world to see that a liberal Islam has barely risen to the chimera level yet. We deal with it as it is, not as we wish it to be or hope it will be some time down the road.
Okay so I gather from previous posters that I’m an Islamic apologist - you would think that as a gay man that would be difficult, wouldn’t it? :dubious:
Yes, I wish the extreme regimes in the middle east were different as the actions listed by Sam Stone are abhorent to me as well. But that choice isn’t mine to make, is it? There are things that happen in our own society that go on in the name of religion (all kinds of religions) that I don’t agree with but then how I live is disagreeable to others as well. How am I different to the extremists I dislike if I make the same demands that other people live their lives like I do because I say so? It bothers me slightly that no-one seems to agree with this point, and that people prefer to Islam bash instead which doesn’t really have a great deal of merit. What should we do? Declare waw on all muslims? Classify them all as enemies of peace? Herd them into camps and gas them all? Isn’t that the logical extreme of all the “islam is a religion of hatred and war” polemic?
How is this defence of freedom of thought and belief?
The real meaning of apologist isn’t pejorative. It means defender. You’re doing that and that’s totally cool with me. You’re holding up your end in a debate and if I’ve suggested there’s anything wrong with that please accept my apologies.
Like I said - I’m a longstanding liberal tolerance type and held much the same opinions as you. Until I actually read the Koran, some Islamic history and Islamic theologians and critics in the light of the ongoing fracas over cartoons.
I’ve now re-evaluated my position.
I beleive we have to deal with Islam as it is and for me that means in foreign policy terms we stop stoking the fires, we stop interfering, we do everything we can to allow the internal debates in Islam to at least work their way towards the 18th century. We live up to our ideals.
Internally it means we absolutely defend our values. Minorities cannot retain customs antithetical to liberal values, they are not handled with kid-gloves over forced marriage, the ongoing oppression of women, the propagation of Islamic messages not consonant with our values.
If that means the closure of all religious schools, the licensing of native born Imans rather than the importation of them from the Dark Ages and radically rethinking immigration policies then I say - go for it. We have to understand that religion and law are not seperate spheres in Islam, that is a western concept. Sharia Law is the universal law of God and is not compatible with liberal values. Demographically the Muslim population is going to increase significantly in Europe and already it is making itself felt electorally.
In the UK the Blair government is desperately kow-towing because it relies on Muslim voters for many inner city seats and needs to win them back after the attack on Iraq. While i’m no subscriber to Gum’s doomsday predictions he has a point.
IMHO the UK is adopting the wrong approach - placating Islam and extending religious protection, state funding schools of religious pursuasion, trimming free speech.
If the West and Islam are to reach a mutual understanding internationally and internally then from our side we have to deal with Islam as is - not as either liberal apologists or neo-con fanatics see it.
Tagos - thanks for that post, it set my mind at ease. I agree with virtually all that you say and I vehemently agree that religious education should be removed from the compulsory schooling system as it undermines the idea of chosing what to believe (how can you if you’re indoctrinated?).
I think what I am finding hard is for myself deciding where the right point actually is on the “freedom of thought” scale. Do we give people the freedom to run schools that teach things opposite to the liberal ideal that underpins our society? Or do we deny them that freedom? Is that paradoxical? I don’t want people preaching and learning that homosexuality is wrong because that would inhibit my freedom to live how I wish, but can I then restrict their freedom to say/think it?
Not an easy issue to resolve, and definitely not being addressed properly by the short term vote-chasing politics of the minute :mad:
In the Uk I think that at the very least the State should not fund any religious teaching Muslim or Christian. And all schools, even private ones, should be subject to the same academic standards. Not a single hour spent brain-washing yourself memorising religious texts, not one single hour spent teaching values antithetical to our society.
Oh, okay. If all you’re really saying is that the Qur’an has more violence than the New Testament, and that you think this makes it more difficult to encourage liberal Islam than liberal Christianity, that sounds reasonable.
But Christianity also has had to bend its “Word of God” to arrive at some of its liberal, tolerant interpretations. E.g., the scriptural accusations in the Book of Acts against Jews as Christ-killers, murderers, and deniers of God’s word have fueled much Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic violence, a lot of which has been rejected only because of deliberate reinterpretations by Christian leaders within the past century.
And plenty of Christian groups (e.g., the Scottish Covenanters) have used Old Testament exhortations to violence as their justification for slaying the “enemies of God”. There is nothing in Christianity per se that necessitates the development of a “liberal, tolerant” interpretation of it. Christian scripture (including the OT, which Christians also regard as the word of God) still says what it always said about slaying enemies of God, and the prohibition of male homosexuality, and the subjection of women, and the enormities of Christ-killing and Christ-rejecting Jews, and so forth.
If some modern Christians (and Jews) can turn away from those aspects of Judeo-Christian scripture towards a more liberal, tolerant interpretation, I think it’s reasonable to hope that some modern Muslims can do the same. (Many already do, of course, but we seem to be talking here about the chances of liberalizing those forms of Islam that are currently illiberal and intolerant.)
I get what you’re saying but the Koran is not The Bible. It extremely explicitly states how you have to live your life. Not allegories we can reinterpret but explicit instructions backed up by hundreds of years of scholarship that absolutely demand women be treated in a certyain way, that explicitly make it the duty of a man to beat a woman in certain circumstances.
Add to that the life of Mohammed - who is meant to be the example of how to live. A man who among his good deeds and sayings was a slave-owning warlord whose words justify atrocities and murders. The NT and the life of Jesus gives plenty of the wriggle room that the Enlightenment flourished in.
There simply is not the room to interpret the Koran and associated teachings in a liberal fashion that the Bible has. It is the inerrant word of God and the original language version is the only canon. All translations explicitly lack religious authority so you can’t just re-translate uncomfortable passages or leave out bits you don’t like to make it more palatable. This is a huge handicap for those seeking a more liberal Islam.
The Koran simply does not support a liberal democratic way of life. Quite the contrary - it mandates, in no uncertain terms, a lifestyle, law and values that is not consonant with liberal democracies and backs it up with the harshest of penalites on Muslims who try and argue otherwise.
Imagine the Old Testament was dictated by a Jesus who led a conquering and enslaving army and no NT. A Jesus who promulgated laws backing up the worst of the OT and whose words have come down to us verbatim. Imagine a christian society based on that.
True, but much of the Bible in the Old Testament is equally definite about The Rules for proper conduct. And many Christian sects have used those OT rules (as well as NT prescriptions like Paul’s statements about celibacy and the role of women) to justify repressive social laws.
Moreover, the majority of Jews (who do not accept the New Testament, including the more “tolerant and liberal” teachings of Jesus, as the word of God) have also now adapted to a modern, secular, tolerant society. So clearly you don’t necessarily have to have the NT Jesus in your scriptures to develop a liberal and tolerant religion.
Well, that is certainly the interpretation of it put forth by modern Islamist fundamentalists like Wahhabis or Salafis. But there are many interpretative traditions within Islam that don’t support that kind of narrow, literalist view of Qur’anic inerrancy. The major tradition known as Hanafi Sunnism, for example, rejects the idea of legal penalties for blasphemy (a view that’s been rather lost sight of in the current turmoil over the Muhammad cartoons!). Much of the Muslim Sufi tradition, particularly among sects like the Chishtis, emphasizes the central role of non-violence and love towards all people. And modern liberal Islamic traditions insist that Qur’anic statements have to be read in a broader way that stresses pluralism and ethics, rather than in the narrow historical context of seventh-century tribal wars.
So I think you can take comfort from the fact that the kind of liberal, tolerant reinterpretations of Islam that you’re hoping for do actually exist. It’s just that at present they’re not strong enough and are being violently resisted by militant extremists trying to radicalize their co-religionists on the basis of fears of a global “crusade” against Muslims in general. The more we understand and encourage the liberal, tolerant Muslim traditions, the more we undermine the “my way or the highway” radical Islamists who would like to stamp out everything in Islam except their own brand of violent fundamentalism.
The 5 central tenets (which are fine liberal statements) just cannot be supported by the Koran in the way such reformulations of Christianity can but more power to their elbow.
I somehow doubt most Muslims would recognise liberal muslims as muslims at all and judging from the organisations listed, they seem an insignificant minority swimming against tradition and the current tide of history (not to mention the counter-productive imapct of western foreign policy and TWAT).
Either way I feel we’re many many decades from this postion even becoming a significant factor even within western democracies.
Look at Malaysia, often seen as the poster child of multi-cultural tolerance.
I envy the USA it’s ability to absorb immigrants into the melting pot and the strict seperation of church and state. Of course they don’t face the challenge of absorbing a growing muslim population into a liberal democracy while the very actions of the democracy is further inflaming feelings.
I certainly don’t want to see one law of Muslims another for the rest, which is why I favour policies of no compromise whatsoever on liberal values at home and in our foreign policy (eg no torture, murder etc etc). There’s plenty wrong with western society and many good aspects of Islam but in the end I want to live in a secular society. I fear the sort of compromises Blair is forcing is the thin end of an unsavoury wedge.
? Was that a whoosh? Of course we do. Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the US, with 5–7 million members, mainly due to immigration. The difference is that the UK has a much higher percentage of Muslims, due to its former close colonial ties with largely-Muslim countries like India.
Me too. And I agree that the best way to defend those values is to have a strictly secular government, with legally protected freedom of religious practice, but not religious domination of the law.
One step I think many western European countries could usefully take, in order to promote these principles, is to dis-establish their official churches. The Church of England certainly has much less political influence in the UK than, say, Shi’ite Islam does in Iran. But it still looks kind of inconsistent for us to preach to Muslim countries the ideal of strictly secular government, when so many of our own Western governments still formally acknowledge some variant of Christianity as their official religion.
Do you think that the current concerns about defending secularism in the UK might help drive such a disestablishmentarian movement there? Could true separation of church and state in Britain ever be achieved, do you think?
No whoosh, but as you say it’s an insignificant % number in a huge country. In the UK they are an increasingly influential voting bloc, particularly as significant populations are clustered in inner cities and can swing constituencies. There is at least one Muslim MP - a straight-up reasonable liberal guy I saw being called a non-muslim by a representative of a radical group in a recent debate.
I’d love to see disestablishment but don’t see it happening in the UK. We seem to be moving towards empowering religions to interfere more and more in our lives. We even allow creationism to be taught in the new academy schools, which are heavily sponsored by religious groups.
In response to the OP, I think Europe as a greater whole (to the extent that such an entity can be said to exist) is probably going to need to produce an actual leadership that’s capable of dealing with an actual problem. I read and liked the article that was linked, but the entire thing does seem to presume a continued, two-faced ‘Axis of Weasel’ approach for the Continent, something that I’m not entirely sold on.
For years now a sizeable number of Europeans have been buying into the anti-American populist sideshow. It didn’t benefit them, or us, but it did benefit their leaders in preserving their electorates and in trying to find common cultural ground for further unification. Complaining about America is fun and gets you votes, whereas yelling about Islam gets you murdered. Of course, the Middle East is much closer with thousands of immigrants arriving everyday, an unknown number of those are unreasoning fanatics who will violently refuse to assimilate, but don’t look at that, not when the Americans are fat and don’t love trees.
Either people will wake up and see this as a style of leadership far too frightened to do anything but chastise its own guard dog, or they won’t. If they do then I think Europe could not only be better for it, but might actually start to find the unity and common ground they seem to so desperately want. An identity that exists outside of the whole moral relativism, post-colonial self-loathing in which so many of them seem so hopelessly mired. If they don’t, then Europe as a collective whole will continue to decline. And yes, that’s what I’d call it.
Jan Sobieski, where art thou?
The second question is whether, at this point, the United States gives a damn about what happens over there. If real trouble broke out, forty years ago we’d have sent a box of ammo and a note telling them to hang in there, nowadays I think we’d be just as likely to send a crate of burkhas and a letter politely inviting them to go fuck themselves. It’s been a long couple decades, and I’m not sure anyone knows just how much damage has been done to European-US relations by the rhetoric. I suspect it’s greater than most Europeans realize, especially if Washington’s plastic smile in the wake of the cartoon situation is any indication.
What will Europe really do? My prediciton is a backlash against both Islam and its associated leftist support begins in the next decade or so, with right-wing nationalist parties across the Continent making large gains. This could be accelerated by a European perception that America has abandoned them to their fate. I just hope it doesn’t go too far, or coalesce around a genocidal madman.
I assure you that neither I nor any of my leftist friends have any love for Islam as exists, whatsoever.
The left tends to be rational and inclined to fuzzy Christian or agnostic. We support rationalism, enlightenment and free-speech. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Galloway represents anyone but himself in the UK.
I wouldn’t call it a likely prospect in the Scandinavian countries or other W.Eur. nations with established churches, either.
In that case, ISTM that the argument we should be pushing is not secularism per se but human rights. “Sure, you can have an official religion and religious involvement in government, since we do that too to some extent, but you still need to maintain legal protection for this basic set of human rights.”
And the best way to push that position is probably with carrot incentives rather than stick ones. Look how secularist Turkey has been able to resist several recent theocratic-type initiatives by Turkish Islamist extremists, because Turkey is shooting for the large carrot of EU membership, and they know that the EU won’t even consider letting them in if they can’t maintain basic rights and democracy in their society. Using stick incentives like threats of invasion, on the other hand, just seems to make the people madder and more sympathetic to their extremists.
The question is, what sort of carrot incentives can we offer to Islamist-extremist countries to become more moderate? (And when I say “we” here, I’m kind of ignoring the European focus of the thread title and talking about the rest of the world in general.) As far as the ME oil-producing ones go, I’d think that the first step would have to be sharply reducing our oil dependency. As long as they have us over a barrel (ha), there’s nothing they need from us, except the massive flow of petrodollars that we keep happily shoveling at them. They can be as repressive and barbaric as they like, and we’ll still go on begging to be allowed to give them our money. But if the addicts stop buying, what’s the pusher going to do? That’s when they’ll start needing our help, and that’s when we can start making conditions.
Another thing we have to figure out, of course, is what the set of human rights is that we’re actually undertaking to promote. Are we all agreed what those ought to be? Is everybody on board with women’s equality and freedom of worship and decriminalization of homosexuality and so forth? (I’m prompted to ask because it was essentially just yesterday, i.e., in 2003, that the US got around to decriminalizing homosexuality, or at least found that laws criminalizing it were unconstitutional.)
[QUOTE=tagos]
The left tends to be rational and inclined to fuzzy Christian or agnostic. We support rationalism, enlightenment and free-speech. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Galloway represents anyone but himself in the UK.
[QUOTE]
You’re correct of course, I was trying to refer to a certain breed of vile quisling and did a remarkably poor job.
Even assuming a total halt to immigration by Muslims – an unlikely prospect in the near term – the differential rate of reproduction would create a Muslim majority eventually. In Netherlands right now Muslims are just six percent of the population, but the “native” Dutch are breeding at well below replacement rate, while the Muslims are breeding at well above replacement rate. The Muslim minority will become less and less of a minority with every passing year, under those circumstances, and they aren’t likely to change with any great suddeness, either.
I do not think the Muslims want to murder the Dutch in their beds. I think though t that as they increase in numbers they will want to see laws more in keeping with thier values, and to try to influence the culture as well. They’ll probably start small – like, by trying to prevent people from drawing Mohammed. How long from there to women being stoned to death for adultery? Or will it happen at all? Can’t say. But for sure, things are trending that way.
Dude! World War I! World War II! Clearly, you fuckers could give a shit about your own safety.
True enough. But as has been pointed out, the violent extremists among Muslims tend to lead, if only through the threat of violence to their fellow Muslims. and Islam as we know it is a generally violent culture. And frankly, Muslims don’t seem to generally assimilate as easily as many other cultural/religious groups do. So even though many Muslims do not want to see Sharia laws in place, they might wind up with 'em anyway.
Saying that if trend A continues, situation B will result takes into account that trend A might not continue. And the current population trends obviously will continue, for at least a few years. These things don’t turn on a dime. The decline in European birthrates is a long-term trend, for example. It’s incumbent on you to show why it might rise. I agree that as European Muslims become more affluent, their birth rate will likely decline. But that will take awhile.
I think there is a core of violent Islamists who would very much like to see the West destroyed as a political, cultural and economic power. The bulk of Muslims could care less about the West, but would probably go along with whatever’s on the table with regard to the West, if their imams say that’s what needs to happen. And a LOT of imams are distinctly anti-Western. there are probagbly a few Muslims who love the West and would hate to see it go down. But they aren’t really the dominant influence in the Midddle East, are they?
Perhaps you should address my actual argument instead of other arguments it reminds you of, however entertaining they might be to you. Because I don’t see the parallel. There’s a clear and present possibility that Europe could be majority Muslim by the end of the century. Long before then, Muslims will exercise considerable political clout in Europe. This isn’t ideology, it’s demographics.
Actually, I’m a liberal. I can’t say for sure that Islam will overtake Europe, but really, you’re just not paying attention if you don’t see that the possibility is there. And Islam is innately more conservative than any brand of conservatism we now have in the US, and that includes the Christian fundamentalism that I have learned to detest, living in the South.
Europe will still talk about bringing Turkey into the fold of the West, but de facto is horrified at the thought that millions of a religion that empowers so many to go berserk over a few cartoons might soon comprise the most populous nation of Europe. I doubt any European diplomat will invest any political capital at all in restarting in earnest Turkish/European Union talks.
Is know Turkey has made a lot of changes and refmorms on the promise of being let into the EU, Can the EU back out now?
We can also look forward to more bizarre pronouncements such as Jacques Chirac’s warning about the French nuclear deterrent. In point of fact, Europe has no real defenses against a 9/11-like attack. They know it. So do the terrorists.*
Maybe, but the EU has an economy the size of the US. They should be able to afford to upgrade their armed forces.
But according to that scenario, the largest number of Muslims in this big demographic group will consist of, say, fifth- and sixth-generation descendants of immigrants. Do you really think that those people will still be as attached to shari`a law and similar non-European values as their great-great-grandparents were?
AFAICT, that’s not typically the case with the Dutch descendants of Indonesian Muslims who came to the Netherlands several decades ago. They generally seem to be considered quite well-integrated, despite still being Muslims and still not looking like “native Dutch”.
Lots of luck with that! the EU may have an economy the size of the US, but they don’t have the central government of the US. They are still made up of individual countries, the most powerful of which also want to do things THEIR way. Even assuming Europe as a whole could find the political will to integrate to the extent they could form a reasonably powerful AND deployable force (and find the will and concensus to actually use it) I have my doubts they could or would be willing to afford it. It would take some fairly fundamental changes to get the Europeans to re-orient their current, er, allocations of funds, away from all those nice social programs and into the military. Ever seen how much of our GDP the US spends on defense? Or just the raw figures on how much money we actually spend. Think the Euro’s would be willing to do that for a decade or two that it would take to bring up a viable force? I’m not seeing it.
As for the OP…strangly I’m in agreement with what Evil Captor is saying. He is probably as stunned as I am by this odd development.
I don’t know if that would matter though. This islamic anger seems to be based on a feeling of impotent rage due to feeling violated. My understanding of the islamic fanatic’s mindset is that in his eyes Islam is and was the greatest religion on earth. Now they are near the bottom of the sociopolitical totem pole and are being invaded all the time (Jews/Israel in the middle of the MENA region, US bases in Saudi Arabia, US commercialism and US values everywhere and threatening to end Islamic values) and they are pissed about it. Encouraging the government of Pakistan to try to be more moderate won’t change anything. What probably will work is promoting democracy so the people can see how inept and dangerous fanatical leaders can be. If people can see that radical islamists really don’t offer much aside from an outlet for impotent rage people won’t associate with them as much. Then again, most middle east countries already are partial democracies.
Lots of luck with that! the EU may have an economy the size of the US, but they don’t have the central government of the US. They are still made up of individual countries, the most powerful of which also want to do things THEIR way. Even assuming Europe as a whole could find the political will to integrate to the extent they could form a reasonably powerful AND deployable force (and find the will and concensus to actually use it) I have my doubts they could or would be willing to afford it. It would take some fairly fundamental changes to get the Europeans to re-orient their current, er, allocations of funds, away from all those nice social programs and into the military. Ever seen how much of our GDP the US spends on defense? Or just the raw figures on how much money we actually spend. Think the Euro’s would be willing to do that for a decade or two that it would take to bring up a viable force? I’m not seeing it.