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tsa posted:I'm not sure I've ever heard the phrase "christianphobe" used here, even though the (numerous) threads on it are far more critical and insulting of the religion than any thread on Islam. It's strange how Islam seems to be currently singled out as the only belief system that isn't to be questioned or debated. People make fun of 'reddit atheists' all the time, but more importantly, there isn't a large body of opinion in the superpower and its allies that supports invading and brutalising Christian countries and propping up bloodsoaked dictators on the grounds of holding off the threat of The Christians. See also: white people, racism against (also, you know, domestic islamophobia) Peel fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Jul 12, 2015 12:35
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Narciss posted:Other people may have different arguments, but mine has been that Islam is a worse religion than Christianity (in terms of "which would I rather exist in the world today?") because it's Holy Book, handed down word-for-word from God himself, explicitly supports rape, murder, forced conversion, slavery, and all kinds of nasty stuff. Did Christians do all that too? Yes. I think it's much easier for those things to happen when a fifth of the world follows a religion whose unquestionable holy book supports them. - a guy who's never read deuteronomy Every holy book supports genocide, murder, slavery, and rape if you want to selectively read it. They were all written in a different time. But the overall message in all of them is peaceful, and that's becoming more and more accepted as time goes on.
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Jul 12, 2015 15:02
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Volkerball posted:But the overall message in all of them is peaceful, and that's becoming more and more accepted as time goes on. Disagree on the last assertion here. The practice and development of various religions is anything but uniform.
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Jul 12, 2015 15:31
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The truest representation of Islam, Daesh, or ISIS, have banned eid prayers in Mosul.
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Jul 12, 2015 15:53
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drat even I know that at the end of ramadan its time for big family feasts and such.
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Jul 12, 2015 18:55
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Actually, no. Huh? In what way? The Qur'an is full of instruction on how to live ones life and raise ones family, and outside decreeing that everyone is now part of the larger Muslim tribe the basic cultural practices are unchanged. Unless of course you have a list of things that 6-7th century Arabs were commonly doing that Muhammad put an end to, or ones that he created out of whole cloth that were in direct opposition to established practices? Honestly, I figured this was pretty common knowledge, much in the same way the Old Testament codifies many practices that had been common in the Middle East at that time. Most of them pretty much awful by modern standards. Volkerball posted:
Does Dianetics? TheArmorOfContempt fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Jul 12, 2015 19:32
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Fizzil posted:The truest representation of Islam, Daesh, or ISIS, have banned eid prayers in Mosul. Would this be like if a Christian church banned the sacrament? Arguing its un biblical?
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Jul 12, 2015 20:16
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The stoning people to death thing isnt really that inhumane to be honest. I mean, most of them deserved it. Lets be real here. A homosexual? A woman driving a car? Why wouldn't you want these people tortured to death? It's really loving racist as gently caress to criticize these practices. Its their loving culture shitlord, get over it.
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Jul 12, 2015 22:24
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Crowsbeak posted:Would this be like if a Christian church banned the sacrament? Arguing its un biblical? More like banning Christmas. Oh... fspades fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Jul 12, 2015 22:53
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Crowsbeak posted:Would this be like if a Christian church banned the sacrament? Arguing its un biblical? No, its just that the fact a hadith about men and women going out on prayers offends them, probably. The Qur'an doesn't mention anything about how to pray, or if there is eid prayers. Its basically a sweeping "gently caress you" to all of the sunni schools though, which is a sign ISIS is going full on wacko mode.
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Jul 13, 2015 00:03
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Volkerball posted:- a guy who's never read deuteronomy The guy was giving his opinion on which one is WORSE. Islam is THE WORST by far imo and considered to be by most reasonable people. It's hilarious that so many supposedly "progressive" people in this thread give the free pass to Islam and even Sharia law, or at the very least will continue to say "yeah but" when a fair point regarding Islam is made. Also where is the evidence that Islam is progressing in any meaningful way aside from the pie charts and stats posted here that not surprisingly have zero sources attached?
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Jul 13, 2015 01:13
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There are American political groups that advocate the supplanting of secular law with biblical law, even in only parts. You're correct in seeing both attempts as similar anti-modern movements (that need to be crushed), but wrong in thinking its religiosity that's the cause. Christianity as a religion didn't 'advance', and the problem within Islamic countries is not the lack of 'advancement'. It's about the power balance between political ideologies within each community. In America, the literalists/fundamentalist/reaction are marginalized, in Islamic countries they're dominant (or ascendent). Islamism, in spite of what islamists themselves claim, is a political ideology just like any other, and it's not a particularly inventive one either (it's just yet more proof that supremacist thought is not limited to any one identity or community). However much propaganda value it is for the islamists (and the christian-supremacists) to claim that islamism is the 'authentic' Islam, it's just not true. Like, let me put it to you this way. When people point to stuff like the crusades, the usual response is 'well that period is over, christians have calmed down now'. Okay, but the attacks against Islam justify themselves on the quran, and how much worse it is. Okay, so if the actions of a community are based on its holy book, and how violent it is, then has the christian bible 'chilled out' over the preceding centuries? Has it been edited greatly? Not really. edit: Now the cause of the dominance of islamic reaction is related to missteps of the west and the cold war, which can be true without denying the agency of muslims themselves. Obviously I'd like the trend to be reversed, but realistically there's no much I or any non-muslim can do about it. The Islamic robespierre has to come from within. What we can do is marginalize the muslim literalists in the west, as you would marginalize any other similar movement, but you have to do that without be discriminatory against the broader community as whole. rudatron fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 02:11
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Ramsus posted:Islam is THE WORST by far imo and considered to be by most reasonable people. It's hilarious that so many supposedly "progressive" people in this thread give the free pass to Islam and even Sharia law, or at the very least will continue to say "yeah but" when a fair point regarding Islam is made.  As Rudatron basically covered, there are PLENTY of Evangelical groups in the US, in large numbers, that would LOVE to implement religious law, and push legislation through in multiple states skirting closer and closer to that goal.Its just more difficult to happen here due to the fact that we have a fairly stable government and justice system. But trust me, Islam is the worst right now....but many Christians would love to join them in repressive theocracy.
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Jul 13, 2015 02:28
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“Islamophobia” is usually used to describe western anti-muslim bigots. What a waste of a perfectly good word. As a clinical term, “Islamophobia” would better describe a form of PTSD experienced by victims of daesh -- a fear of Islam induced by trauma. I think people who have piled onto refugee boats to escape daesh probably have, among their other problems, Islamophobia. GuyDudeBroMan posted:The stoning people to death thing isnt really that inhumane to be honest. I mean, most of them deserved it. Lets be real here. I believe I share your outrage. There's a documentary about to air on London's Channel 4 that may change some people's minds, although I know nothing about the political bent of “Dispatches,” “Channel 4,” or “The Spectator”: http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/television/9577492/dispatchess-secret-footage-inside-isis-is-ghastly-but-unmissable-says-james-delingpole/
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Jul 13, 2015 03:20
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CommieGIR posted:
Well I wouldn't go so far as to compare people that would like to ban gay marriage and abortion to places where they currently hack off limbs, murder homosexuals, and stone women to death for being raped.
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Jul 13, 2015 03:37
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Ramsus posted:Well I wouldn't go so far as to compare people that would like to ban gay marriage and abortion to places where they currently hack off limbs, murder homosexuals, and stone women to death for being raped. I would. They're the enemy. ISIS is, too, of course, but one enemy is closer at hand.
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Jul 13, 2015 03:42
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Panzeh posted:I would. They're the enemy. ISIS is, too, of course, but one enemy is closer at hand. Ah, taking the god stance of every sin is equally bad.
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Jul 13, 2015 03:50
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Uroboros posted:Huh? In what way? There was pushback from some other Arab tribes against Mohammed and there's a definitely an Islamic tradition that views Mohammed as bringing a relatively new way of life, which is one of the reasons they give for the suddent Arab conquests. Previously they had been polytheistic savages and then *bang* they had a divinely ordained structure to society and surged into dominance. It's historically highly questionable but it's dominant enough in Islamic cultures that it tends to get repeated in introductory overviews of Islam and generally seeped into the popular consciousness. Now as MIGF pointed out it's a problematic thesis in part because we have almost no idea what Arabic tribal life was like outside of the Quran itself and a few reports from various Roman historians about the Arab tribes they employed. It seems Islam definitely brought in some cultural changes, the no alcohol thing was new. Exactly what the changes were though, and when they actually became part of Islam, is much harder to judge. The covering of women was certainly something aristocratic women in the area did before Mohammed (Athens had a tradition of noblewomen being covered) and some people believe Mohammed 'democratised' this. Of course there's no explicit command to veil women in Quran so it's equally possible that his injunction that the women of the prophet should be behind a curtain from the world could have referred to his wives/daughters having private space in his household and later came to mean general veiling as the Arabs adopted other cultural norms. It's pretty much imposible to take any certain position on whether the Quran was a codification of Arabic culture, a reinvention of it or just made some basic adjustments. Also I really dislike the basic tenet of many posters in this thread that there is some platonic ideal of any religion, one enshrined in their holy book. I can see fundamentalists taking that position, it's simple and easy to grasp, but it's simply incorrect. It requires separating the 'religion' from its practice and followers. It suggests that there is a 'correct' interpretation of that main text that you can get at without needing to understand or know about other interpretations or the context of the work itself. Frankly the fact that you're sharing a theological space with Daesh and Young earth Creationists should give you pause regarding taking this as your starting point.
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Jul 13, 2015 04:55
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Political Islam is to Islam as Michael Bolton is to Michael Bolton in “Office Space.” “Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.”
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Jul 13, 2015 06:20
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Ramsus posted:Well I wouldn't go so far as to compare people that would like to ban gay marriage and abortion to places where they currently hack off limbs, murder homosexuals, and stone women to death for being raped. I agree that they shouldn't be compared but it's disingenuous to say that the religious right just wants to ban gay marriage. They didn't drop the issue of criminal punishments for homosexuality until the supreme court basically forced them to. They want gay people to be completely rejected and marginalized by society, not just denied a certain legal right from the government.
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Jul 13, 2015 06:34
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ISIS, Islamophpbia and the End of Sunnism. By Mohammad Fadel The recent dust-up involving notorious “new atheist” Sam Harris and popular anti-religionist HBO comedian Bill Maher, on the one hand, and popular movie star Ben Affleck, on the other, has reopened debate that first came to the public fore in the immediate wake of 9/11: Is Islam inherently violent or inherently incompatible for contemporary liberal political norms? Is it, in the words of Harris, “the mother lode of bad ideas” in today’s world? If it is, then it would seem that public intellectuals who fail to denounce it — as they did in the case of communism or fascism — are failing in their obligations as intellectuals in fundamental ways. Affleck’s response was that the position advocated by Harris and Maher is dangerous insofar as it threatens to stereotype, marginalize and even dehumanize almost a fifth of humanity and is deeply wrong insofar as neither Harris nor Maher can claim to know the content of Islamic teachings on these various issues in an authoritative fashion. Affleck’s response is correct as far as it goes, but it does not respond to the charges laid by Harris and Maher: If in fact Islam is as they describe, should the propriety of our response to those terrible ideas be influenced by the quantity of the number of people in the world holding them? Indeed, one might say that to the extent profoundly destructive ideas have a grip on larger (rather than smaller) numbers of people, the responsibility to denounce such ideas becomes even more pressing. Likewise, saying that their description of Islamic doctrines is reductionist is not responsive to the legitimate concern that certainly some Muslims hold to the doctrines that Harris and Maher criticize, nor does it provide an answer to the question that many people genuinely wish to know, namely, what is the content of authoritative Islamic teaching regarding a familiar range of contentious issues that are held to be important by mainstream liberals? Affleck’s response implies that the only way we can legitimately know Islamic doctrine so we may responsibly criticize it is to engage in a rigorous empirical examination of what actual Muslims believe and how actual Muslims act. Such an empirical investigation, at its extreme, would require surveying of millions of Muslim individuals all over the world before conclusions about Islam could be reached. Not only would such a study be practically impossible, we generally don’t demand such precision in empirical studies before we accept the results of social scientific studies, even if we realize that the conclusions that can be drawn from such studies are, by their nature, incomplete, tentative and open to methodological criticisms. Reza Aslan, who was not on the show, also intervened in the debate, dismissing Maher’s comments as evidencing a lack of “sophistication” with respect to religion. Aslan, while correct to point out mainstream media’s consistent conflation of the actions of particular Muslim countries with the practices of all Muslim countries generally, also fails to respond to the core of Maher and Harris’ argument. Their position, ultimately, is that while it may be true that most or a large proportion of Muslims do not engage in the conduct that is generally condemned as “extremist,” it is nevertheless the case that such practices are often a normative part of Islamic teachings. Stoning of adulterers, of course, is only one such example. Aslan, however, is not interested in discussing the normative content of Islam or even other religions, asserting that there is no connection between formal doctrine and conduct, thereby reducing religion into purely a reflection of non-religious factors. Thus, instead of responding to Maher and Harris’ claim about the illiberal content of Islamic teachings, he instead dismisses that critique as irrelevant, while maintaining studious silence on the contents of orthodox Muslim belief. To take up Harris’ claim that Islam is “the mother lode of bad ideas,” I would say that if such a claim is true, in fact, it is trivially so. The same point can be said about any tradition of thought, particularly, one that originated in late antiquity and has survived into modernity. It is a trivial exercise to pick up standard works of Islamic law and find ideas that are repugnant to the modern world. But, it is also a trivial exercise to pick up classics of Western philosophy and law and find the same thing. Even Thomas Jefferson the most egalitarian of America’s founders, expressed views on gender equality that would disqualify him today from entering public office, or might even get him dismissed from a public office were he to express them openly. In this respect, Maher and Harris reflect the all too common historical amnesia common among liberals, who are too quick to forget the recentness of the egalitarian achievements of the liberal West — many of which only came into existence as part of the post-World War II settlement and have yet to become settled social realities, even among the relatively privileged — and too slow to acknowledge the radical changes that have taken place in most Muslim countries and even Islamic discourse regarding issues such as gender equality over the last one hundred years. Why can’t non-Muslims such as Maher or Harris recognize these changes? Perhaps for the same reason that even Muslims can’t: The profound weakness, or even the non-existence, of a credible institutional expression of Islamic teachings in the modern world means there is no objective source from which an outsider (or even Muslims) can know what authoritative Islamic teaching is. In the absence of such an expression, one can hardly blame non-Muslims — who wish to “know” what Muslims believe — for turning to the same sources that Muslims themselves do, such as pre-modern treatises of Islamic law that continue to be taught in seminaries in the Muslim world and are also translated and studied by Muslims in the West. It ought to come as no surprise then that Islamophobes, such as the Center for Security Policy, often cite passages from works like The Reliance of the Traveller as proof of the subversiveness of Muslim attachments to sharia. It makes no difference that modern Muslims may dismiss many of the rules found in such texts as not representative of their own views, or perhaps reflecting an Islamic teaching that might have been appropriate in a previous age but is not appropriate now; in fact, if a Muslim makes such a claim, he might be dismissed as engaging in taqiyya, or dissimulation of “true” Islamic teachings in an effort to protect Islam or spread it among unsuspecting non-Muslims. In this context, it behooves Muslims to keep in mind the adage that “not only must Justice be done; it must be seen to be done.” As long as Muslim doctrinal change remains undocumented in authoritative doctrinal statements — such as the treatises of Islamic law that serve as the formal basis for the study of Islamic law in Muslim religious institutions — that appear only in particular and occasional fatwas that rise and fall with the authority of the mufti who authored the opinion, then they appear, or risk appearing, as merely the idiosyncratic views of a particular Muslim. Indeed, it may even give the appearance of an insincere attempt at revising controversial Islamic doctrines by dressing them up in new garb to ward off criticism unaccompanied by a real commitment to change. Indeed, if Sunni Muslims are too indifferent to their law that they fail to articulate a meaningful expression of its content in the modern world, then the best that Sunnis can plead in their own defense is that historical Islamic law is irrelevant to their beliefs and actions. But it is this very nihilism that produces the ethical and political vacuum that authoritarian political regimes, corrupt oligarchies and religious millenarians have filled and created the political circumstances justifying Islamophobia. The fundamental problem that has given rise to both Islamophobia and ISIS is that in the modern age, after the collapse of the authority of Sunni madhahibs, Sunni theologians continue to claim that Islam provides the moral grounds for the regulation of Muslim societies, but they have lost the ability and ambition to make this claim effective. As a result, a radical legal pluralism has taken root in the Sunni world, particularly in its Arabic-speaking regions, where every individual has become entitled to express an interpretation of the content of Islamic law. In the absence of a modern Islamic theory of the legitimacy of the state, law and democracy, it is no surprise that Muslims and non-Muslims repair to pre-modern texts when seeking to determine what the normative Islamic baseline on any particular issue is. When this normative vacuum is combined with the profound failure of the Arab state system to produce citizens willing and capable of cooperation in the context of a common political project, it should not be surprising that some Muslims take up interpretations of Islam and Islamic law that are apocalyptic in their scope and claims as an answer to the catastrophic failures of those states. The problem with Maher and Harris — despite their claim that they are taking liberals to task for their alleged silence about Islam — is that they are not asking the right questions from a liberal perspective: Why, after more than a century of theological and legal reform that has generally moved toward greater recognition of rights of women and non-Muslims, for example, has a brutally atavistic movement like ISIS found a home (even if one hopes it is only temporary) in the Nile-to-Oxus region, which was once called the heartland of the Islamic world by the great American historian of Islam, Marshall Hodgson? In my opinion, this is not because a reified Islam is teaching Muslims to reject liberal values as such, but is a simple and predictable reflection of the fact that political orders prevailing in the Islamic heartland have no interest in promoting liberalizing political values. The promotion by Arab ruling elites of a politically neutered, state-dominated Islam that is disabled from holding power accountable to a moral standard serves their authoritarian political project well, even if the cost is quite high: The failure to produce a reasonably acceptable political theology that can serve the needs and further the aspirations of modern Muslims inevitably will create groups like ISIS, at least as long as religion remains socially salient. Neo-traditionalist Sunni theologians, such as ʿAli Jumuʿa of Egypt, or al-Ḥabīb ʿAlī al-Jifrī, who believe that it is possible to re-create in the modern world the division of labor of late Sunnism — in which the state, usually military elites, provided coercive resources and the ʿulamāʾ provided moral legitimacy, binding the public to the state through a regime of taqlīd — will inevitably, even if belatedly, discover that modern Muslims will not willingly cede their moral autonomy to them. Instead, it might produce more theological radicalism, either in the form of increased atheism or religious apocalypticism. Sunnism was historically a centrist tradition that rejected the messianism of Shiʿism and the unforgiving puritanism of the Khawārij. Its centrism, however, was not born of a kind of ad hoc reasoning that called on Muslims simply to take middle positions between extremes. It was a centrism based on firm adherence to certain moral principles, including rejection of armed rebellion combined with a refusal to recognize as valid the illegal conduct of rulers; a readiness to overlook moral shortcomings of individuals constituting the community, whether rulers or ruled, combined with an insistence on holding each person accountable before the law for their conduct, even if that accountability was deferred and only theoretical; a recognition of the superior piety and learning of some, and even the possibility that some people may receive particular spiritual favors from God, but a rejection that such distinctions could result in the suspension of the law. In short, the political theology of Sunnism was centered on the sovereignty of law and respect for authority (not power as such). The historical tradition of Sunnism, however, assumed a certain kind of relationship between political leaders, religious leaders and the public that no longer exists and will not return. Until a new political theology is established that adapts the historical principles of Sunnism to the realities of a democratic age, we can continue to expect the persistence of groups like ISIS and the Islamophobic New Atheists. The failure of the Arab Spring to usher in a new democratic moment in the Arab world has deferred the day when the historical center of the Muslim world will be able to contribute productively to solving the challenges facing Sunni Islam in the modern world. It also means we have no reason to believe that the assaults of figures like Bill Maher and Sam Harris on Islam, or their influence on the public perception of Islam, will cease or decline in the near future, no matter what Ben Affleck says. ISIS, Islamophobia and the End of Sunnism Wez fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 08:55
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Wez posted:ISIS, Islamophpbia and the End of Sunnism. All true. Can I ask to be an Islamophobic OLD Atheist? I don't care for these Islamophobic New Atheists.
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Jul 13, 2015 09:18
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bitey posted:All true. You agree with the article but you are also Islamophobic?
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Jul 13, 2015 09:33
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This is the only smart thing posted in this thread so far, and coincidentally it is also the only one that displays a knowledge of Islam and Islamic history.
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Jul 13, 2015 09:45
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Wez posted:You agree with the article but you are also Islamophobic? Well, sure. Granted, I am attempting to reclaim the word "Islamophobia" for purposes I deem more appropriate. "Until a new political theology is established that adapts the historical principles of Sunnism to the realities of a democratic age, we can continue to expect the persistence of groups like ISIS and the Islamophobic New Atheists." I almost fall into one of these camps. It's even flattering to think that my position might be one of "persistence." It makes it sound noble to assert that even though I'm not doing poo poo to fight daesh, at least I'm unlikely to substantially change my opinion about them.
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Jul 13, 2015 10:22
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bitey posted:Well, sure. Granted, I am attempting to reclaim the word "Islamophobia" for purposes I deem more appropriate. That's a pretty odd and self absorbed reading of Fadel's article. He isn't lionising New Atheists or Islamophobes or positioning them as force for good. He's explaining why they exist much in the same way he's explaining the existence of poo poo birds like al-Dawla and AQ. They are both a result of the failure of Muslim societies to produce post-madhab institutions that disseminate normative Sunni thought. What I would have assumed someone would take away from the article is that Sunni extremism is the result of material conditions rather than inevitable result of a reified Islam.
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Jul 13, 2015 10:57
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Wez posted:That's a pretty odd and self absorbed reading of Fadel's article. He isn't lionising New Atheists or Islamophobes or positioning them as force for good. He's explaining why they exist much in the same way he's explaining the existence of poo poo birds like al-Dawla and AQ. They are both a result of the failure of Muslim societies to produce post-madhab institutions that disseminate normative Sunni thought. What I would have assumed someone would take away from the article is that Sunni extremism is the result of material conditions rather than inevitable result of a reified Islam. Where are "material conditions" mentioned? Maybe I missed it. It looks to me like the whole article addresses only ideological conditions. Oh, why pussyfoot around. Did you even read the lengthy article you posted? It's nine months stale anyway, for crissake. One hint: nobody gives a rat's rear end what Ben Affleck thinks about Islam anymore. Here's the topical reference from the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln9D81eO60 bitey fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 11:03
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bitey posted:Where are "material conditions" mentioned? Maybe I missed it. It looks to me like the whole article addresses only ideological conditions. Yes that article was inspired by a public disagreement 9 months ago. Clearly conditions in the ME and Islam at large have utterly changed. Or maybe Fadel's point was that there isn't some magical Platonic form of Islam which has inspired ISIS but that adoption of Apocalyptic, violent religion is the result of a failure in Islamic theology due largely to its coercion by Arab dictators who have destroyed the moral authority of those Islamic teachers. Islamic teaching currently doesn't have respectable or authoritative thinkers and thus you have the reliance on much older texts. As the comparison he draws it's like someone arguing that true American Consitutionalists are fundamentally racist, anyone who truly believes in the US project is a racist. Based on the selective reading of the writings of the founders.
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Jul 13, 2015 11:50
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MrNemo posted:Yes that article was inspired by a public disagreement 9 months ago. Clearly conditions in the ME and Islam at large have utterly changed. What I also got out of the article is the dire need for an authoritative, central religious authority that can drown out the people interpreting the Qur'an into their own brands of apocalyptic, homicidal dogma -- but, if I read it right, that an establishment of such a powerful religious authority would have run counter to the interests of the ruling elite, who would rather just neuter the religious estate (like MrNemo says), and so this authority has not been given a chance to form.
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Jul 13, 2015 12:01
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“Until a new political theology is established that adapts the historical principles of Sunnism to the realities of a democratic age, we can continue to expect the persistence of groups like ISIS and the Islamophobic New Atheists. The failure of the Arab Spring to usher in a new democratic moment in the Arab world has deferred the day when the historical center of the Muslim world will be able to contribute productively to solving the challenges facing Sunni Islam in the modern world. It also means we have no reason to believe that the assaults of figures like Bill Maher and Sam Harris on Islam, or their influence on the public perception of Islam, will cease or decline in the near future, no matter what Ben Affleck says.” That's the conclusion of the article. That sums up what the article says. I'd like for a new political theology to be established that adapts the historical principles of Sunnism to the realties of a democratic age. I really would.
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Jul 13, 2015 12:28
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The problem with this thesis, that the issue is a lack of central organization of a religion, is that it doesn't have any mechanical reason for being the case. Why would an authority have any more of an incentive to accept/oppose liberalism than the Muslim world as a whole, right now? Detaching it from being used as a political tool, sure, that would would do wonders, because you have leaders who transparently use such organizations for their own ends, so groups that oppose entrenched power may have a better time of it. Like, granted, there is a marked difference between catholics and protestants in the US, with catholics being more progressive, but there's a problem with interpreting it this way: the more conservative protestant churches tend to retain members much better. So liberal protestants are more likely to become atheists, which are more liberal than both (which lacks an authority). I don't think imposing an authority would necessarily change the political balance either way, thought it may reduce the deviation. rudatron fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 12:36
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rudatron posted:The problem with this thesis, that the issue is a lack of central organization of a religion, is that it doesn't have any mechanical reason for being the case. Why would an authority have any more of an incentive to accept/oppose liberalism than the Muslim world as a whole, right now? Detaching it from being used as a political tool, sure, that would would do wonders, because you have leaders who transparently use such organizations for their own ends, so groups that oppose entrenched power may have a better time of it. You're confusing the aim of defeating radical groups with the idea of 'liberalising' Islam vis a vi it's normative moral pronouncements. That's probably because you're assuming that the rise of radicalism has to do with a flat lack of 'liberalism'. Radicalism has taken root because of the crisis of religious authority triggered by dismantling of the madhahib (parastatal legal guilds) and the rise of the modern state. In response there has been no substantial political theory produced by Sunnism that responds to these changes save neo-Traditionalist political quietism and calls for an 'Islamic State', which misapprehend the historical division of labour between the state and the ulema. It's in this vacuum under authoritarian states that religious radicalism has taken hold. Although an interesting inversion of your Catholic example is that that lay Muslims can to take up more conservative stances than actual Sunni scholarship and mainstream Islamist parties. (See Sam Harris's much touted figures on support for apostacy laws compared to al-Azhar's fatwa.) Wez fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 13:22
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bitey posted:Where are "material conditions" mentioned? Maybe I missed it. It looks to me like the whole article addresses only ideological conditions. End of the madhabism, modern authoritarian states, mass literacy and 'democratised' religious interpretation. quote:Oh, why pussyfoot around. Did you even read the lengthy article you posted? It's nine months stale anyway, for crissake. One hint: nobody gives a rat's rear end what Ben Affleck thinks about Islam anymore. I've read it multiple times since it was published and spoken to the author online regarding it and Haykel's contribution to Wood's Atlantic article. quote:Here's the topical reference from the article: You are aware the article isn't actually about Ben Affleck or even Sam Harris?
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Jul 13, 2015 14:04
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bitey posted:“Islamophobia” is usually used to describe western anti-muslim bigots. What a waste of a perfectly good word. The armies fighting ISIS and the refugees fleeing ISIS are both full of Muslims.
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Jul 13, 2015 14:28
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I get that the intrinsic features of Islam aren't necessarily incompatible with modernity, (Assuming you go all contextual like Christianity today) but the whole soft to hard sanctions against people who leave the faith is a little concerning: Wikipedia: A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2010 found relatively widespread popular support for the death penalty as a punishment for apostasy in Egypt (84% of respondents in favor of death penalty), Jordan (86% in favor), Indonesia (30%), Pakistan (76%), Nigeria (51%), and relatively minor support in Lebanon (6% in favor) and Turkey (5%).[126 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam Now I expect the go to response to be "but this study is flawed" or "but Christianity 100 years ago was just like this/still is today" but given my ex muslim friends an the communities over at r/exmuslim it seems a bit baseless to simply dismiss. According to this study a significant plurality to majority of muslims in the **less extreme** countries think people should die for leaving islam. If the samples are accurate too we might be able to speculate that almost a third of the Muslim world believes death is the appropriate prescription for apostasy, which is pretty spooky an sad for the liberal people in those countries. This doesn't even consider what the sanctions for leaving the religion is like among more moderate groups. (Disinheritance, being disowned, ruining your relationship with your family.)
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Jul 13, 2015 14:32
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Crowsbeak posted:I was wondering but could anyone give a good summary on how besides just the obvious oil money wahabism became such a potent force. Did not the failure of secular forces itself help bring this on? Secular forces either got poo poo on hard by the West, turned into brutal, incredibly unpopular military dictatorships which persecuted the religious hard enough to spark a revolution, or some mix of the two. Iran is a good example of both, for instance - due to oil concerns and its strategic location, it was subject to repeated Western interventions and invasions throughout the 20th century, one of which was intended expressly to dismantle the democratic institutions in Iran and force it to remain an absolute monarchy...until eventually a popular revolution removed the secular pro-America Shah and replaced it with the current Islamic anti-America government. Oops! Same goes for other countries. Let's not forget that ISIS rose from "just another jihadist group" to "a major success that is considered a threat by the entire world" during their participation in the Syrian Civil War against a secular military dictator known for his brutal state security apparatus and who had very recently been involved in massacring peaceful protesters. Hell, half the reason ISIS has been so successful is that Assad is so horrible that the West can't bear to support him, even though letting him fall almost certainly means handing Syria to ISIS.
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Jul 13, 2015 14:52
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Nobody is pretending that many Muslims don't have illiberal views, that would be absurd (note, however, the wide variation of views even in your posted survey). The objection is to the idea that this represents an essential problem in some kind of well-defined object 'Islam', typically allied to policy prescriptions of excluding and targeting Muslims in Western countries and blowing up or tyrannising Muslims in non-Western countries, until Islam is either destroyed or has been sufficiently 'encouraged' to 'reform'. I wouldn't claim this sort of hostile attitude is exclusively directed at Islam - you see some lurid stuff in American liberal fantasising about the South - but when directed at Muslims it has teeth (and dollars, and bombs), so becomes a more pressing problem. See also: the absence of White History Month.
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Jul 13, 2015 15:04
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Ramsus posted:Well I wouldn't go so far as to compare people that would like to ban gay marriage and abortion to places where they currently hack off limbs, murder homosexuals, and stone women to death for being raped. No no no, I'd go that far. Between arguing that sex outside of marriage should be a punishable offense, and that women who have babies out of wedlock deserve public shaming, they want to get pretty damned close. A couple evangelical groups have gone as far as to propose death sentences for being gay, including helping push legislation in Uganda that does as much. They want to be ISIS. They'd love to have that power. They just want to be a Christian ISIS. Peel posted:The armies fighting ISIS and the refugees fleeing ISIS are both full of Muslims. That's the fun part whenever threads like this come up: The number one religious group targeted and massacred by ISIS is Muslims.
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Jul 13, 2015 15:14
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Peel posted:- but when directed at Muslims it has teeth (and dollars, and bombs), so becomes a more pressing problem. See also: the absence of White History Month. This view rests on the false notion that US foreign policy is influenced by Islam's features when I don't think that is an important factor. Americans have no difficulty permitting their government to maim and bomb. The american public or western public will support these behaviour thanks to ideological sociopathy and media manipulation. Being informed on the backwardness of Islam doesn't really change geopolitical outcomes. That the notion that We have to ignore these features else America will go in drone rampage to me seems misguided. Islam as a religion has some uniquely hegemonic features which are not the majority consensus, but at the same time are not rare. Is your view that the OP's original position is that we are to condemn islam so we can justify a callous foreign policy?
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Jul 13, 2015 19:23
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CommieGIR posted:No no no, I'd go that far. Between arguing that sex outside of marriage should be a punishable offense, and that women who have babies out of wedlock deserve public shaming, they want to get pretty damned close. Kind of always my favorite thing to point out is how much radical Christians and Muslims have in common. I'd be curious to see how much some prominent spreaders of hate on both sides would agree on if you placed them at a table together and just started the conversation with "so...homosexuals, your thoughts?". MrNemo posted:There was pushback from some other Arab tribes against Mohammed and there's a definitely an Islamic tradition that views Mohammed as bringing a relatively new way of life, which is one of the reasons they give for the suddent Arab conquests. Previously they had been polytheistic savages and then *bang* they had a divinely ordained structure to society and surged into dominance. It's historically highly questionable but it's dominant enough in Islamic cultures that it tends to get repeated in introductory overviews of Islam and generally seeped into the popular consciousness. Good Post, thanks. It felt like a rather straight forward assumption given how similar the stuff coming from the Old Testament seems to match the Qur'an, especially when we are dealing out punishments for apostasy, adultery, homosexuality, etc. I had assumed these are all things that were rather common in the Middle East during antiquity, and have pretty much remained that way for centuries due largely to the harsh environment that doesn't really foster change without really good reason. TheArmorOfContempt fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 21:50
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