When does protecting Islam go too far? Can one decry the religion without hating the people?

[octopus]

@andros

I am frankly shocked to agree with this. No offense.

(With the caveat that I’m thinking of a subset of Islam, not the religion as a whole.)
.

I don’t care what people believe up until the point people start getting stoned and beheaded for minor things. Worship trees, crystals, Spaghetti, or whatever but put down the sword and the stones!

[tomndebb]

@octopus

Because the most intolerant aspects of the religion are actually parts of governments such as Saudi Arabia. When people are being stoned to death for adultery based on a crackpot book rational people have every right to critique the source material and those who preach and indoctrinate hundreds of millions of people.

That, however, is not “Islam.” It is Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. It is a twisted version that is not even Wahhabism among the Daesh of Syria and Iraq. I am not claiming that those are not aspects of Islam–but they are not Islam. What is the point of decrying or blaming everyone who shares a Muslim belief when it is not everyone who is engaged in those practices?

By that logic, the radicals of the Mideast are correct to condemn “the West” since “the West” has engaged in colonialism and has supported dictatorships that have perscuted Muslims–and if you have not stopped “the West” from doing those things, you are as guilty as any Muslim you condemn for not stopping Daesh.

[Hank_Beecher]

@tomndebb

I am curious why you feel a need to disparage Islam rather than focusing on the actual sources of problems such as Wahhabism or Salafism and so on.

Do you consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be Salafist?

[andros]

@Hank_Beecher

Do you consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be Salafist?

Do you consider Anglicans to be Protestants?

[Hank_Beecher]

@andros

Do you consider Anglicans to be Protestants?

There is no single correct answer to your question, nor to my question that prompted your’s. If I was counseling others to limit criticism of Christianity to Protestants, or to non-Protestants, it would be reasonable for others to expect me to be able to explain which group I considered Anglicans to be a part of, in the context of my advise to them.

[octopus]

@tomndebb

That, however, is not “Islam.” It is Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. It is a twisted version that is not even Wahhabism among the Daesh of Syria and Iraq. I am not claiming that those are not aspects of Islam–but they are not Islam. What is the point of decrying or blaming everyone who shares a Muslim belief when it is not everyone who is engaged in those practices?

By that logic, the radicals of the Mideast are correct to condemn “the West” since “the West” has engaged in colonialism and has supported dictatorships that have perscuted Muslims–and if you have not stopped “the West” from doing those things, you are as guilty as any Muslim you condemn for not stopping Daesh.

You are correct in that it is lazy to critique the whole of a culture or religion for terrible parts. It’d be better to say that elements of the faith need reform or discarding to be more compatible with modern times. That does require a judgement to be made about what values are superior and even that strikes some people the wrong way.

[tomndebb]

@octopus

That does require a judgement to be made about what values are superior and even that strikes some people the wrong way.

No judgment will make everyone happy. However, taking the time and making the effort to understand the facts of a situation is still better than the sort of lumping that we see going on in reaction to terrorist acts.

[Buck_Godot]

nm

[Hank_Beecher]

Majid Nawaz does a good job of explaining what happens when protecting Islam goes to far: it gives cover to Islamists, the greatest victims of whom are progressive and reformist Muslims.

ISIS Is Just One of a Full-Blown Global Jihadist Insurgency

The danger of not recognizing this relationship between the ideology of Islamism and the religion of Islam is twofold. Firstly, within the Muslim context, those liberal reformist Muslims, feminist Muslims, gay Muslims, dissenting Muslims, and minority sects—all these different minorities-within-the minority of the Muslim community—are immediately betrayed. By failing to name the ideology and isolate it from everyday Islam, we deprive these reforming voices of a lexicon, a language to deploy against those who are attempting to silence their progressive efforts within their own communities. We prevent a conversation around ending Islamism’s appeal while also reforming traditional Islam. If it has “nothing to do with Islam,” there is nothing to discuss within Islamic communities. In this way, we surrender the debate to the extremists, who meanwhile are discussing Islam with impunity.

The second danger is in the non-Muslim context. What happens if you don’t name the Islamist ideology and distinguish it from Islam? President Obama in his last U.N. speech referred to a “poisonous ideology,” yet failed to name it. Most people, who are understandably in need of some guidance on such topics, may well assume that the ideology they must challenge is Islam and all Muslims, ergo the rise of current populist xenophobic trends within Europe and America.

We should be able to distinguish Islamist extremism from Islam by clarifying that Islam is simply a religion and that Islamism is a theocratic desire to impose a version of that religion over society. And once we do that, we are then able to clearly identify the insurgent ideology that we must understand, isolate, undermine, refute, and provide alternatives to. It is precisely this distinction that I have spent the last few years advising Britain’s Prime Minister Cameron on, and I would like to think that is why Cameron corrected Obama on this very issue at the United Nations.

Many non-Muslims claim that they are powerless to address Islamism, let alone refute it, because they are outsiders. However, just as one does not need to be black to care about the struggle against racism, one need not be Muslim to speak against theocracy. To do so, after all, would be in defense of Muslims first and foremost. Europe and Europeans are especially well placed to speak in a secular way about why theocracies were never really good for humanity. (Just look at the Inquisition.)