I’d definitely agree that it’s very hard to separate all of this stuff into distinct threads, exclusive to one another. That swath of deplorables described above, from Morocco to Indonesia? Pretty much every one of those nations has a long history of being on the wrong end of colonial domination. Most of the places with dreadful governments, or no real government as we’d conceive it, are also places that have been fairly ruthlessly plundered by folks from outside, and have had their indigenous middle class pretty much co-opted by the same global robber barons. The Crusades certainly grew out of a complex mix of politics, economics, and the consequences of late feudalism in general, but Christianity was a crucial part of the mix as well; it would have been nigh on impossible to get all of those usually antagonistic actors to work together on much of anything without the Church’s leverage. And yeah, there are quite a few places where you really can’t separate the what’s going on in the nation from the nation’s Islamic beliefs.
It’s also one thing to say categorically the UK and France created the Nazis, as if that absolves the Germans, and quite another to admit that the botched ending of WWI, and the inability of the victorious powers to call Hitler’s bluff in the mid-thirties, led pretty much inexorably to the sort of thing the Nazis ended up being. It’s not about moral guilt so much as it is about the complexity of interlinked events. Simple proclamations–it’s Islam’s fault! It’s Christianity’s fault! It’s capitalism’s fault!–aren’t terribly useful, but they are clear. More nuanced, complex explanations don’t have nearly the same appeal, and all of them make pretty much everyone look closely at their own societies and histories, and no one gets off unscathed.
All major religions define stupid shit that is irrelevant or unknown to the large majority of their followers. If you go to a church, a mosque or a Hindu temple and ask random people why they are there, you will get similar answers. Most of them are there due to superstition (the health of their family, wealth etc.), peer pressure and fear of death. Most of them don’t give a shit about the length of their moustache (unless perhaps peer pressure dictates it). I know this is a hard concept to swallow because it doesn’t fit your dehumanizing speech but Muslims are just people, with dreams, wishes and fears largely identical to those of the followers of other major religions. Look at the rich kids of Tehran and you will see that there’s not much zealotry in the elite new generation of an Islamic Republic. Instead you find a lot of “gangsta” poses and duck faces. Sound familiar?
I’m sorry but this makes no sense unless you literally believe that various religion Holy Book is written by God, religions are by definition the views of their leaders and followers. A religion is like the Constitution, it has no power, except for how the people interpret it. Even that isn’t all that powerful unless there core group of believers who are willing to fight for it. So yes the various Pope in the Vatican, and I guess for some of the Crusade the Holy Roman Emperor in Istanbul are responsible for the Crusades and the Inquisition. My knowledge of this era is pretty shallow, so I’ll believe Wombat when he says it is complicated I’m a firm believer that there seldom simple solutions to complex problems.
That said sometimes we over complicate things. The only AP class I had in high school was American History, with a wonderful teacher. The teacher had us spend a lot of time analyzing the root causes of the Civil War, and sure enough, the AP test had a question on the civil war, so I dutifully regurgitated them. Forty years latter, I’d save myself a lot of writing and just say “Slavery”. I doubt I’d get a passing grade with one-word answer, but I’m not sure it is a worse answer than the pages I wrote.
Simply eliminating Islam and the Quran tomorrow isn’t going to transform Morocco into Montana, much less Syria into Sweden, over night. On the other hand, the many disturbing things about Islam (as it is currently practiced by most Muslims), from the treatment of woman to the intolerance of other religions, to the prohibition of charging interest aren’t compatible with the 21st century. A medieval religion which is taken seriously by a majority of the population, coupled with horrendous governments and exploitation by the west has resulted in the mess the region is in. I bet the average Muslim in the Middle East goes to Mosque more in a week than average Christian goes to church in year.
Every religion can be politically/culturally twisted into something else. Buddhism for example,which explicitly forbids any form of violence, has been used to facilitate it. Yet Buddhist terrorist isn’t a thing while Islamic terrorist is. Why?
The answer to that is simple: it’s relatively easier to bend Islam towards supporting violence/autocracy/subjugation than most of the other major religions. And this goes doubly so for Islamic ultra-conservative movements like Salafism.
Thus the real problem isn’t so much Islam itself, but the cultures that have embraced it in the worst ways possible making them fundamentally incompatible (to various degrees) with Western democratic values.
And that’s where the trouble begins. If these cultures had remained within their own locale I wouldn’t have cared about any of it. But they didn’t. Migration has been ongoing for several decades now leading to population groups that haven’t integrated in the slightest.
There’s several reasons for this failure of integration. The two big ones are the multiculturalism approach to integration by Western governments (an abysmal failure) and the continued influence the nations where the Islamic culture originates are exerting over their ‘former subjects’.
This makes it an easy target for the populist right and causes the left to kneejerk into Isamic exceptionalism and apologist behavior despite having railed against the Christian church for the latter half of the previous century for pretty much the exact same things Islam is guilty off.
So no, being negative about Islam isn’t bigotry, it’s realism.
Or any other sufficiently transcendent, all-encompassing ideology, such as fascism, communism, hard-core libertarian capitalism, racial superiority-based stuff, you name it. Religion is, though, a supremely accessible, tightly packaged, and socially acceptable route to extremism.
Indeed, those who disbelieve - it is all the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them - they will not believe.
Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing, and over their vision is a veil. And for them is a great punishment.
And of the people are some who say, “We believe in Allah and the Last Day,” but they are not believers.
They [think to] deceive Allah and those who believe, but they deceive not except themselves and perceive [it] not.
In their hearts is disease, so Allah has increased their disease; and for them is a painful punishment because they [habitually] used to lie.
It explains a lot. Religion whose “holy” book is so called unchangeable “word of god” that on its very second page speaks about me, my family and every single person I know as having disease in our hearts and as deserving of painful, great punishment.
Excuse me but fuck this piece of shit book. World would be vastly better place without it. And yes I am aware most muslims are (hopefully) peaceful. But they would be peaceful without this religion too.
These are good words which capture the point I was trying to make far better than I did.
On the separate “It’s not the religion that’s the problem, it’s the political leadership” question, I kind of agree with both sides.
It’s not meaningful to talk of a religion as if some platonic ideal exists. The religion is the religion as practised and preached. If a trait is shared by Islam as practised in Saudi Arabia and Iran and Pakistan and Indonesia then that is a trait of islam as generally practised. Part of the reason the other thread pivoted to communism is the apologists trot out the same no true scotsman defence in both cases.
BUT it’s not helpful to condemn or appear to condemn an entire religion! So talking about the political and cultural leadership and islamic preachers being complicit in a system of social and political control strikes much closer to the thing we might actually want to see change, and seems much more likely to win the support of liberal muslims. So looking at this discussion I think this is a much more productive line of advocacy!
I can’t help but feel I haven’t made my point terribly well, but I’m putting it out there anyway.
Also keep in mind that when it was originally recited by the prophet, it was memorized and written down on little bits of paper, and generally dispersed. It was after the prophet’s death that his followers started the project of putting together the quran, and when they did that, what method did they decide on to put it together? Was it chronological, in the order of earliest recitations to the latest recitations at the end?
Nope. It was ordered by the length. The longest recitation is first, and the shortest recitation is at the very end. So the people that put it together afterward chose that method, and it’s stayed the same since then. So you can’t tell by reading it which recitations came first and which came later, so when there are contradictions, you can’t tell from the order in the book which ones should take priority.
I think religion is a form of entertainment and a system for people to vent stress.
The most poor countries are also the most religious, I think the cause of this correlation is poor people need religion, because it give them strength.
Religion also intertwine with culture and help people have a identity. Many people need a feel of being a member of something, a race, a cult, a sport club… and religion help fulfilling that desire.
If I don’t like religion or not, is not important, because 99.99% of all human race do, and I am powerless to change that.
The position of religion is: We know everything about everything, and we have the absolute truth.
Fortunately most religious people I know don’t behave like that. So seems people is good natured and cool about it. Like… religion is retarded shit, but most religious people is cool.
In a way (when greed are not into account and other exceptions) 99% of all people is good and cool. Is the other 1% of people that will use religion (or any other excuse) to be an ass.
Is islam a good excuse to be and asshole? seems so, but so do many other things, so is moot point. I believe is moot point, but other people can disagree.
(hope my point is easy to understand, because I don’t want to offend anyone here. I respect persons. I don’t respect ideas).
