On the Validity and Necessity of Atheist Criticism of Islam
Back in 2007, I wrote an article for Butterflies & Wheels entitled ‘Are the “New Atheists” avoiding the “real arguments”?’[1] At the time, the so-called ‘New Atheists’ (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others) were making headlines with their popular books debunking religion, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had stated that writers such as these were avoiding the ‘real arguments’ regarding Christianity, because they had failed to wade through libraries full of liberal exegesis and obscure academic theology before concluding that Christianity is a false belief system. Such theology, I argued, is in fact nothing more than an ‘attempt to mask superstition in a fog of pseudo-intellectual verbiage’, despite the protestations of liberal religionists that atheists weren’t ‘understanding’ the nuances of their faith. I wrote this as someone who actually has read voluminous amounts of liberal theology and apologetic texts as part of the research for my BA in Theology & Religious Studies.
This week, I’ve been reminded of this little spat between atheists and religious liberals, although this time the arguments have centred on Islam. Recently, there has been huge controversy surrounding the so-called ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ of a group called the Cordoba Initiative.[2] Gene Zitver, a writer at the centre-left blog Harry’s Place, wrote a post approvingly highlighting a 2003 speech at a Daniel Pearl memorial given by Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, head of the Cordoba Initiative, in which Rauf stated:
We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.
If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.
And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Qur’anic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.
It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.[3]
This may sound like a wonderful example of liberal Islam and interfaith unity, but the words ‘with the full authority of the Qur’anic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad’ immediately raised my eyebrows. I have previously written a four part Critical Examination of the Qur’an for Butterflies & Wheels, the second part of which is dedicated to The Qur’an and the ‘Abrahamic religions’.[4] Looking at what the Qur’an actually says about Jews and Christians and their respective beliefs it is far from the case that ‘the full authority of the Quranic texts’ validates the idea that a Muslim can say ‘I am a Jew’ or ‘I am a Christian’ without meaning something radically at variance with the plain meaning of those words.
I proceeded to write a critical article looking first at the highly dubious claims of Rauf, comparing them to the words of the Qur’an and concluding that his ‘interfaith’ approach in reality still lends itself to a kind of cultural imperialism, in which the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Christian’ are co-opted to mean something closer to a Muslim, just as the Qur’an ‘borrowed’ numerous characters from the Bible and then claimed them as ‘Muslims’ (Abraham was supposedly a Muslim, Jesus was supposedly a Muslim, and so on).[5] Following from these initial observations, I then went on to criticise the entire ‘interfaith’ enterprise, arguing that secularism and pluralism are the true answers to religious differences, and that therefore ‘there is no need for Jews and Christians and Muslims to pretend they worship the same God, rather they should simply respect the others’ right to worship who and what they wish, provided they do so within a secular framework of mutual respect for each others’ rights and freedoms’.
My article, it turned out, was far more controversial than I expected. A number of liberal Muslims responded with anger and disappointment (‘mean-spirited’, ‘depressing’) as did a number of non-Muslim readers who saw my approach as being some sort of ‘attack’. Shiraz Maher, a well-known British liberal Muslim writer who has done sterling work exposing Islamist groups in the UK, wrote a response at his Standpoint Magazine ‘Focus on Islamism’ blog, in which he described my piece as ‘silly’ and went on to write at length about the views of a 20th Century liberal Muslim theologian named Abul Kalam Azad, whose writings apparently disprove my ‘woefully narrow’ approach to the Qur’an.[6]
Private correspondence from some other well-known British liberal Muslims (who will remain nameless) included the claim that I am ‘clearly unaware of how the Qur’an is interpreted’ and that ‘missing out on crucial matters such as how the Qur’an is interpreted is an oversight which is very difficult to justify’. These words, as well as Maher’s somewhat involved response, reminded me immediately of the ‘arguments’ of Rowan Williams. While the religion in this case is Islam, the claims are very similar. Williams claimed:
There are specific areas of mismatch between what Richard Dawkins may write about and what religious people think they are doing. There are few things more annoying than people saying ‘I know what you mean’.
[...]
When believers pick up Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, we may feel as we turn the pages: ‘This is not it. Whatever the religion being attacked here, it’s not actually what I believe in’.[7]
In a similar manner, Maher claimed: ‘Standing is, I am afraid, falling into to the woefully narrow (and wrong) view here of seeing Islam as a monolithic entity with only one “correct” view’. Writing of the approach of Azad, Maher stated: ‘It was – and remains – a profound principle challenging the exclusionary beliefs held by some Muslim scholars about the supremacy of Islam and their binary division of the world into believers and non-believers’.
All of this is very similar to the arguments employed by liberal Christian intellectuals, and basically boils down to:
Claim 1: If an atheist reads a religion’s ‘holy book’ and find it to be full of vile, ignorant, and divisive material, the atheist is being unsophisticated in his or her approach. The atheist is ‘siding with the fundamentalists’ and consequently is not worth listening to.
Claim 2: If an atheist is to understand a ‘holy book’, they cannot simply read it, but must instead read it through liberal theological interpretive frameworks, and must understand that the ‘true message’ of the ‘holy book’ is something that emerges through the reflection of generations of interpretive communities, not through the plain and clear words that are actually printed on the page.
Neither of these arguments holds water, and are no more impressive when put forward by liberal Muslim apologists than when put forward by liberal Archbishops. These ‘arguments’, in Islam and in Christianity, are fundamentally intellectually dishonest and can only be the result of massive self-deception on the part of their proponents. There is really no case to answer, but I shall quickly knock down these claims again:
Response to Claim 1:
There is no logical reason why a supposed ‘holy book’ should not be taken at face value. This is especially the case in Islam, given a central belief in Islam is the claim that the Qur’an is a perfect, divinely authored text. This is not simply a ‘fundamentalist’ belief, but rather a mainstream belief. In fact, given the centrality of this belief, the use of the term ‘fundamentalist’ in regard to Islam is more problematic than with Judaism and Christianity because, as Sam Harris notes, ‘most Muslims appear to be “fundamentalist” in the Western sense of the word’.[8] That is not to say that most Muslims are violent extremists, but that most at least pay lip service to the idea that they intrinsically view the nature of the Qur’an itself in exactly the same way as the extremists do.
Given the fact that the Qur’an is widely presented as the final revelation of the creator of the universe and a perfect text, it seems entirely logical and reasonable that anyone, ranging from the humblest simpleton to the loftiest intellectual, should be able to pick up the book, read it, and have their eyes opened by the divine message it contains. This is arguably the far more authentic approach to the Qur’an. Seeing as it is presented as a divine book that basically dropped from the heavens and contains a message of ultimate importance and eternal validity, the idea that people should have to consult endless works of nuanced ‘scholarship’ in order to extract the message of the text is contrary to logic.
Upon reading the Qur’an, the message is rather clear. This is one of the things that commends Islam to converts – the much vaunted clarity and simplicity of its message. My view of what I have found through multiple readings of the Qur’an is already available at this website, so I won’t bore readers by repeating it, but suffice it to say, I find the book both crushingly boring and at the same time a repository of some of the worst pre-modern ignorance, bigotry, and brutality. If it were written today as a political manifesto it would, without doubt, be widely condemned as ‘far-right’, ‘extremist’, and so on.
Much is made of the idea that Islamism is a modern deviation that doesn’t represent any authentic tradition within Islam. Broadly speaking, I accept that argument. The influence of European Fascist ideas on the jihadist movement, for example, is very clear, beginning with Haj Amin al-Husseini’s involvement with the Nazis.[9] However, there is a danger that in condemning Islamism as deviant and unrepresentative, self-deluding liberal Muslims can come to the conclusion that Islamism has nothing to do with their faith, which is absolutely not the case, as can be seen through a reading of the Qur’an. Ayaan Hirsi Ali made this point very clearly in a debate with Ed Husain of the British liberal Muslim think-tank The Quilliam Foundation, when she argued that when it comes to the beliefs of Islamists, ‘it’s not just a matter of them believing it’, but it’s a matter of those beliefs being drawn clearly and directly from Qur’anic texts:
Every time Muslims try to defend the principles [of moderation] and say it’s not the Prophet who said it, they [Islamists] will open the book. I mean, I was a Muslim; I was also a fundamentalist, and I was drawn to it because it was very consistent with what was said [in the Qur'an].[10]
To read the Qur’an and other Islamic texts in an ‘unsophisticated’ way is arguably not to fail to read these texts properly, but is rather to take these texts and their message seriously, and therefore to approach them with intellectual honesty, respecting the actual message and intentions of their authors.
Response to Claim 2:
The idea that a ‘holy book’ has a meaning or meanings that can only be properly understood if that book is read through the commentary and interpretation of scholars again negates the core principle that, as a divine text, its meaning should be unambiguous and accessible to all. The idea that atheist critics fall down because they are ‘unaware of how the Qur’an is interpreted’ is also bogus, and deliberately slippery. A clear example of this being false is that we are all well aware of how the Qur’an is interpreted by Islamists and jihadists. To suggest that their interpretation is the only interpretation or necessarily the definitive interpretation would be false, but the idea that atheist critics have no idea about how the Qur’an is interpreted at all is manifestly untrue.
When reading the Qur’an from a non-Muslim perspective, it is not hard to see how the Islamists have come to many of their conclusions. The Islamists take the text seriously and really believe that it contains a clear, unambiguous, divinely authored message. The moderates, by way of contrast, consistently fail to accept that the text has a face value meaning, and that that meaning was quite clearly intended by the author(s). Instead, they will approach the text in the manner described by Maher in his writing on Azad. For example, the Qur’an is unambiguous in its condemnation of ‘idolators’ and ‘idolatry’. Idolatry, according to Qur’an, is ‘unforgivable’. Contradicting the Qur’an, Azad instead claimed: ‘If an idolater honours and worships God in his own way, he should not be shown any disrespect, because the honour and worship of God is, in any event, still the honour and worship of God’.
For Maher, Azad’s ideas offer a ‘profound principle challenging the exclusionary beliefs held by some Muslim scholars about the supremacy of Islam and their binary division of the world into believers and non-believers’. Maybe they do, but they do not do so by authentically following the plain message of the Qur’an, but rather by negating it. The idea that ‘scholars’ who present Islam as dividing the world into believers and unbelievers and believe that Islam is supreme amongst religions have somehow ‘misinterpreted’ their faith is farcical, for throughout the Qur’an this is precisely the worldview that emerges. When religious liberals sugarcoat the clear meaning of their religious texts by claiming that we should not look directly at the text but rather at the writings of liberal ‘interpreters’ of the text, they are not basing their argument on anything approaching a logically coherent position, but rather on wishful thinking and self-deception, and they offer no firm, objective criteria by which such ‘interpretation’ can be seen as authentic. In both liberal Christianity and liberal Islam, theologians and thinkers, as I have argued previously, do nothing more than attempt to mask superstition in a fog of pseudo-intellectual verbiage.
Why attack moderates?
This is a question that also emerged from my criticism of the position of Faisal Rauf, and it is worth answering. I have found myself on both sides of the fence on this issue. Surely, we may reasonably say, in a world in which a radical form of Islam has considerable support and poses a direct threat to the security of the West, to criticise moderates who seek to promote a more sanitised and peaceful form of Islam is foolish and, as Faisal Gazi suggested to me, ‘nasty’. This argument makes some sense in terms of pragmatism, but it is at the same time ultimately unsatisfactory. There was a great sense of disappointment in some of the response to my writing, which seemed ultimately to amount to something like: ‘Look, we oppose the Islamists and the extremists, yet nothing we do seems good enough’. Again, I can understand that point, and on an everyday basis of course I am pleased to see the emergence of moderates who are seeking to divert Muslims away from extremism, but, at the same time, to exempt moderates from theological and philosophical criticism on this basis is condescending to them as fellow adults and also reinforces a worrying notion that as long as a belief system isn’t likely to immediately result in a bombing campaign then that belief system should be beyond criticism.
During the debates over religion that occurred during the Enlightenment, which were often framed in extremely harsh language, it was not violent extremists under attack, but the very notion of God, supernatural authority, and so on. The result of those debates ultimately was that religion in Europe took a beating and no longer represents any sort of threat to liberal democracy. Likewise, religious arguments in the political sphere are longer accepted on ‘divine’ authority, but must be articulated in such a way that they make sense in a secular context. While Muslim moderates are doing – or trying to do – good work in hindering extremism, they must also accept that the Enlightenment critique also applies to their beliefs, and that in the adult world people have every right to make criticisms, even of liberal religion, that may appear ‘nasty’ on first reading. If liberal Muslims are willing to trample on the beliefs of their less moderate co-religionists, then they must also be prepared to have their beliefs trampled on as well. No-one would consider that their personal political views should be exempt from criticism just because they are non-violent political views, and it would be an absurd and worrying precedent to be set were that the case. Religion is no different. Despite the fact that religious people seem to have a lot emotionally invested in their ‘faith’, the fact remains that religion, just like politics, is an ideology, and as such it is a perfectly legitimate target for criticism and debate, even if it is liberal and moderate in its nature.
There is one further point about moderates which has been well articulated by Sam Harris. It’s an argument worth considering. In the short run, pragmatically speaking, moderates appear to be a good thing, but their continued identification with a belief system that is extremely open to far less liberal interpretations may actually perpetuate the survival of its more irrational and beligerent forms. While moderate Muslims can criticise Islamism and offer alternative ‘interpretations’ of the Qur’an, they still maintain in doing so that the Qur’an does have some kind of authority. They can criticise the extremists, but they are refusing to address the fact that the fundamental irrationality of faith is the root cause of the problem with religion, not some dubious idea about textual ‘misinterpretation’. As Harris argues in relation to ‘spirituality, ethics, and the building of strong communities’:
Religious moderates seem to believe that what we need is not radical insight and innovation in these areas but a mere dilution of Iron Age philosophy. Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standards of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world. In what other sphere of life is such subservience to tradition acceptable? Medicine? Engineering? Not even politics suffers the anachronism that still dominates our thinking about ethical values and spiritual experience.[11]
Ultimately, Islam and the Qur’an do not pose problems because of ‘misinterpretation’, but rather because they belong to a world far from modernity and are actually of no relevance to modernity. Atheists have every right to point this out, even if it means criticising those who are nonetheless doing good work against extremism. Moderate Islam and moderate Quran’ic ‘interpretation’ offer no real bulwark against those who read the text of the Qur’an and take it at face value, as a perfect and divinely authored text. Only by acknowledging that any notion of a divinely authored book is simply false, by accepting the harsh reality that this book is in fact useless (and indeed dangerous) in the modern context, and by embracing human reason and freethinking will the curse of Islamic extremism ultimately be overcome.
References:
[1] Edmund Standing (2007) ‘Are the “New Atheists” avoiding the “real arguments”?’, Butterflies & Wheels.
[2] Ralph Blumenthal and Sharaf Mowjood (2009) ‘Muslim Prayers and Renewal Near Ground Zero’, New York Times, December 8th.
[3] Cited in Gene Zitver (2010) ‘Imam Rauf told synagogue audience: “I am a Jew”‘, Harry’s Place, August 19th.
[4] Edmund Standing (2009) ‘A Critical Examination of the Qur’an, Part 2: The Qur’an and the “Abrahamic religions”‘, Butterflies & Wheels.
[5] Edmund Standing (2010) ‘On Imam Rauf and “being a Jew”‘, Harry’s Place, August 20th.
[6] Shiraz Maher (2010) ‘On being a Muslim Jew’, Standpoint, August 20th.
[7] Associated Press (2007) ‘Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers’, International Herald Tribune, October 13th.
[8] Sam Harris (2005) The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (London: The Free Press): p.110.
[9] See Edmund Standing (2008) ‘Jihadism and the “Dreamers of the Day”‘, Butterflies & Wheels.
[10] Centre for Social Cohesion (2009) The West and the Future of Islam: A debate between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ed Husain, pp. 17-18.
[11] Sam Harris (2004) ‘The Problem with Religious Moderates’, Beliefnet.
About the Author
Edmund Standing holds a BA in Theology & Religious Studies and an MA in Critical & Cultural Theory.
Excellent article, and well presented. Thanks.
I have never understood why people who called themselves “progressives” could not muster the intellectual integrity to reject a collection of some of the most archaic, intolerant, and discriminatory ideas that have ever been written down. I would think that it’s usually the preoccupation of the conservatives.
Great article, and it sums up a lot of what made me uneasy about liberal interpretations of sacred texts, and sums up a lot of my own ultimate conclusions about the compatibility of religion (in my case Islam) with modern and liberal values. (I’ll quibble a bit about the remark “The result of those debates ultimately was that religion in Europe took a beating and no longer represents any sort of threat to liberal democracy,” but let that pass.)
If all the scholars and exegetes have supposedly been misinterpreting the text for 2000 or 1400 years, and only now are liberal scholars reading it “correctly,” well…what’s wrong with the text that it can so regularly be “misinterpreted”? And speaking of not seeing Islam or any other religion as a monolithic bloc…who decides, exactly, whose interpretation of these texts is valid and who decides who has the authority to speak for “Islam” or “Christianity” or “Judaism”? Liberals might want to exclude the extremists from their definition of religion, but certainly the Islamists and other such literalist believers are themselves absolutely certain that the liberals are wrong and heretical — who’s to say who’s wrong, or right?
I enjoyed reading this well-written and coherent essay. I used to take a politically pragmatic view of moderates too, but recently I’ve been starting to wonder whether in fact the politics may ultimately benefit religious expansion, not the push to contain religious authority. I think it might be the case that the combination of moderates and extremists actually work together to further the cause of religion, which brings with it its inextricable baggage of moral authoritarianism. I definitely agree that the debate with moderates is worth having, and I’d also like to add that generally it’s more fruitful and enjoyable arguing with moderates than with fundamentalists – so that’s another reason it’s worth doing.
Great article. I agree that moderate believers are still a problem, although a lesser one than fundamentalists. When the question comes up of why we should “attack” the moderates, I always point out that moderates and fundamentalists use the exact same arguments to defend their beliefs. You know, science doesn’t know everything, you can’t disprove God, the Bible is a reliable source of authority, etc, etc. You can’t refute those arguments in a way that only targets the fundamentalists, but somehow leaves the moderates out of it.
Rowan Williams was quoted:
But he would likely say that of any description of his beliefs. That’s why “modern liberal theologians” seem to go to great lengths to never explicitly and concisely state what exactly they believe in. If they ever did, and you’d read their words back to them, they would probably still say “that’s not what I believe in”. “Modern” theology appears to be intentionally vague, nebulous and ambiguous, just so that they can always use this dodge.
The biggest problem with moderates, as I see it (and I am politically glad they exist to some degree – if all were extremists I dare say a lot of us nonbelievers would be dead) is they have no good epistemic resources to deny the interpretations of the extremists. Why? Because look at what they say, “Read theologian such and so.” Very little attempt to synthesize these arguments – and when they do they fail miserably, as we have seen (which is why most of their writings are just “read the liberal theologians, read the tradition) – because all they have is an appeal to an authority whose expertise cannot be determined. And then one just has dueling experts – the extremists have their traditions and moderates theirs, with no means to decide the correctness of either.
Excellent defense. It is wearying to read, again and again, about how one must use sophisicated means to read religious texts which seem–on the whole–so unsophisticated themselves (by modern epistemic and scientific standards). You did a raise a question in my mind, however, about the “direct threat” as you put it of “radical” Islam to the “security of the West.” You don’t mention the greater threat posed to the very regions/countires from which it presumably originates. Surely these are directly threatened, even more so than the West?
A great article. Another problem with moderates is that they feed the fundamentalist beast; that is, the fundamentalist mindset consistently gains strength by pitting itself against moderate/liberal usurpers within the faith. As someone with a fundamentalist background I can attest to the fundamentalist need for enemies, both within and without the flock. If one follows the debates within certain moderate/liberal Christian denominations today, one will often find that the fight is not between a secular world and the believer, but rather the moderate/liberal wing of a church and its more fundamentalist/conservative wing. I am assuming the same would be true within Islam, should a large-scale ‘reformation’ occur: any moderate reading of the Qur’an could be used as a further recruitment tool by those who have no trouble reading the ‘plain sense’ of the text. And since any moderate Islam would be moderated by its contact with Western, post-Enlightenment, thought, this could further the cause of the fundamentalist mindset in Islam as it has been in America for the past 30-40 years.
edmund and i are currently debating these two assumptions as they apply (or, indeed as i would argue they do not) to the Torah.
http://www.spittoon.org/archives/7670
it is not for me, of course, to say whether it applies to the Qur’an, but certainly if it does i think a rather more robust and specific defence is required than is currently made, although i don’t think the criticism of shiraz’s defence of rauf entirely justified. i personally think the “clarity of the Qur’an” argument isn’t terribly convincing at the moment – if it’s so clear, why does it need interpreting, then?
b’shalom
bananabrain
There’s one more point I just thought of — the Qur’an says time and again that it is “clear” (mubeen) and is in “clear Arabic” that should be easy to understand, but then it needs all this interpretation because it is self-contradictory and many verses are obscure. E.g., the varying penalties for zina (“unlawful sexual intercourse”) — “confine them (women guilty of ‘lewdness’) to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some (other) way.” (4:15), and then “The woman or man guilty of zina, flog them with 100 stripes” (24:2) — and for adultery both of these are superseded in the shari’ah by the command and example of Muhammad in the hadith ordering adulterers to be stoned. Generally issues like this are dealt with by saying that earlier revelations are superseded by later ones, but then there’s the problem of determining that. Some liberal Muslims reject the hadith literature completely since so much of the nasty stuff is in there (and are considered utter heretics by “orthodox” Muslims for it), but then they’re kind of stuck with this self-contradictory text and cut off from the tradition that was used to make sense of it.
Finally, and amusingly, the Qur’an goes on to claim, “Have they not considered the Qur’an? Had it been from other than Allah, they would have found in it much discrepancy.” (4:82) And then it acknowledges its own obscurity by saying, “He it is Who has revealed to you the Book wherein are clear revelations – they are the substance of the Book – and others (which are) allegorical. But those in whose hearts is doubt pursue that which is allegorical seeking dissension by seeking to explain it. None knows its explanation except Allah. And those who are of sound instruction say: We believe in it; the whole is from our Lord; but only men of understanding take heed. ” (3:7).
Of course, the Qur’an is self-referential. And it’s turtles all the way down.
Banana Brain – I would find your discussion with Edmund a lot easier to read without your distracting affectation of eschewing all capital letters. It’s a mistake to irritate readers at the outset with pointless attention-demanding affectations; at least I think it is.
Hello all, and thanks for the comments.
Lisa, your point about the Qur’an’s self-professed ‘clarity’ is one I looked at in a recent post, where I took just the first 10 chapters and showed how many times it makes this claim:
http://edmundstanding.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/reading-like-a-fundamentalist-or-taking-the-quran-seriously/
As I argued there:
Be careful with that. It is a common delusion among religious moderates, many of whom are actually nonbelievers, that they constitute an essential buffer against extremism, and that fundamentalism can only be confronted from within the frame of faith. The reasoning seems to be that, if moderates abandon religion, fundamentalism will expand to fill the available spiritual space. This is nonsense.
In fact, it is a fair claim that confronting moderates will be more productive toward the end of disarming religion than joining them against the extremists. For one thing, they’ve never been challenged to defend their “beliefs”, and they may find it uncomfortably difficult to do so.
I was trying to find a bhtv diavlog where Will Wilkinson makes this point against a faitheist skeptic. I couldn’t find it, but this is pretty good. (Totally off topic, but damn do I wish I looked like Wilkinson!)
ophelia – it generally saves time if i irritate people straight away. they propercased me for the grauniad as well, which i thought was a poor show. trouble is, it’s so hard to establish a distinctive narrative voice on teh interwebs, dontcherknow – most of my correspondents don’t seem to mind but i apologise nonetheless to anyone that can come up with a phrase like “pointless attention-demanding affectations”, let alone use the word “eschew”, for which i myself can only thank “word of the day” toilet paper. i’m just gratified to be permitted to play with the grown-ups.
i dare say in principlopolis that argument doesn’t play well with the troops, as indeed it doesn’t in fundieville either, but i maintain that we are pretty good allies to have against these maniacs. the only trouble is that we are constantly accused by both sides of, well, playing both sides. and, of course, there is no way for me to maintain this position without the likes of the mcb, who, in my view, are not at all “moderate”, attempting to do the same. if anyone can provide a mutually agreeable operational definition of “moderate”, we might be able to get somewhere. it reminds me a little bit of ankh-morpork’s commander vimes’ objection to ephebian democracy, on the grounds that there is no way for him to have a vote without corporal nobbs getting one as well.
that’s not the way i argue it. i see it more as a sort of social contract – we try and keep a lid on the nutters and calm the buggers down, in return for which we get civil liberties. the trouble is that the nutters are winning at the moment because their arguments are simpler and, naturally, ascribe all the blame to the Other Lot, always an attractive rhetorical position.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Banana Brain – the way to establish a distinctive voice, whether narrative or argumentative, is with language, not typography.
I have never bought the argument that one needs to study theology in order to understand the Bible (or Koran, whatever). No one doubts that I can read, say, Rick Warren’s book about the Bible and fully understand what Warren is trying to tell me. I do not need to read other books explaining what Warren really means (for which I’d presumably need still more books to properly understand). If God is in any way responsible for the contents of the Bible, why can’t he be at least as clear as Rick Warren?
[...] of giving a pass, over at Butterflies and Wheels Edmund Standing argues that we shouldn’t stop criticizing Islam—even the moderate [...]
ophelia:
what about italics, then? lack of linguistic clarity is not usually cited as one of my failings, although there are always exceptions, particularly as my sentence structures tend towards the overcomplicated and, one might, i dare say, all things considered, use far too many clauses, subordinate or otherwise.
eric:
but who says that this rick warren, whoever he may be, understands the Qur’an? you may indeed fully understand what he’s telling you, but surely you’d have to establish that what he’s telling you is the same thing that the Qur’an is telling you?
ophelia:
what about italics, then? lack of linguistic clarity is not usually cited as one of my failings, although there are always exceptions, particularly as my sentence structures tend towards the overcomplicated and, one might, i dare say, all things considered, use far too many clauses, subordinate or otherwise.
eric:
but who says that this rick warren, whoever he may be, understands the Qur’an? you may indeed fully understand what he’s telling you, but surely you’d have to establish that what he’s telling you is the same thing that the Qur’an is telling you?
b’shalom
bananabrain
Marcus Brigstocke’s take on this seems to be the best one. Ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5pARGk5S4Q&feature=related
If atheist want to proselytize to believers to turn them into athiest, then by all means–go around attacking holy books and sacred beliefs—if on the other hand, their criticism is based concern for the betterment of the individual and society—-then criticise the BEHAVIOR—not the beliefs—to get results.
B Brain – what do you mean, what about italics? You seemed to be saying that you reject capital letters because it is difficult to establish a distinctive narrative voice on the Internet; what do italics have to do with that?
That doesn’t really tell me anything either. Maybe you have so many other failings that few people get around to lack of linguistic clarity. Maybe most people are more polite than I am. Maybe you’re mistaken. At any rate – I consider the affectation distracting and self-regarding, hence irritating.
Eric Ross:
You wrote “I have never bought the argument that one needs to study theology in order to understand the Bible (or Koran, whatever). No one doubts that I can read, say, Rick Warren’s book about the Bible and fully understand what Warren is trying to tell me. I do not need to read other books explaining what Warren really means (for which I’d presumably need still more books to properly understand). If God is in any way responsible for the contents of the Bible, why can’t he be at least as clear as Rick Warren?”.
It’s quite simple, really. The claim that the holy text requires ‘special’ interpretation is in order to justify the employment of the priestly class of whatever stripe to do the interpreting for you. You, you poor lost soul, couldn’t possibly be trusted to find the true meaning all by yourself. No, you need the services of this robed/bearded person over here, and by the way, where’s your tithe?
There was a row when the bible was translated into English. The Church certainly didn’t want ordinary literate people to be able to work out its meaning for themselves.
bananabrain — Is it too much to ask that you actually read and understand my comment (#16) before responding to it? I never claimed that Rick Warren understands the Koran (Qur’an, whatever). Whether or not he does (or has even read it) is utterly irrelevant. And if I may be considerably less charitable than Ophelia, the reason you are difficult to follow is that you are a poor writer, and from what I can gather, not much of a thinker either.
morebeerplease — I know that the Catholic church in particular has long used the opacity of the Bible to its advantage. What they have never explained is why, from their perspective, is the Bible not more clear? Why should we not expect that from an omnipotent God who wants us to know him?
Your article, and its last sentence in particular which says that only by embracing your belief system and point of view will the rest of the world find salvation, indicates to me that you are a fundamentalist who has little or no time for the idea of mutual respect and tolerance. Do you really think that this attitude is the answer? Do you really think that the millions of Muslims in this world, not to mention the vast majority of the world’s population that is religious, will be more likely to give up on their most dearly-held beliefs and accept yours than they would be to accept the ideas of mutual respect and tolerance — not to mention the fact of sharing worship of the same One God (which we do)? Try to be realistic here. You obviously are either inherently superior to the vast majority of the world in your startling discovery that there is no “old man in the sky with a beard,” or you are grossly misunderstanding what many or even most religious people mean when they talk about God. Don’t you think peace comes through efforts at understanding each other rather than insisting that everyone else bow down accept your point of view? Just a thought…
To continue with my response to your article, I can see no logical reason why one should take seriously the fundamentalist interpretation of religion and cherry-pick (like they do) which parts of holy books to take literally, while claiming that other interpretations, of which there are many more adherents, are invalid. You seem to be playing right into the hands of the Pat Robertsons and Osama Bin Ladens of this world. Sometimes I wish all of you fundamentalists, atheist and religious alike, would go find some island somewhere to duke it out and leave the rest of us alone. But I know wanting to pretend certain people don’t exist is an infantile way of looking at the world, and it is only through mutual respect and understanding that we can all get along.
@tomabird, beautifully put. I dont think its necessary to bring down anothers faith to justify yours (or lack of).
[...] not the people for the record. Edmund Standing writing at Butterflies & Wheels explains, “On the Validity and Necessity of Atheist Criticism of Islam.” During the debates over religion that occurred during the Enlightenment, which were often framed in [...]