What is needed is some honesty
Maajid Nawaz has a public Facebook post on Islam and denial. It’s related to this CNN video in which Sam Harris and Dean Obeidallah talk to Don Lemon:
Denial Helps No One
This debate between Sam Harris and my fellow Muslim Dean Obeidallah sums up the problem we liberal, reforming Muslims face.
Dear Dean, chopping off hands for theft (5:38) whipping ‘fornicators’ (24:2) and crucifixion as political punishment (5:33) as ISIS, Saudi Arabia and Iran do, are all passages found in the Qur’an.
What Sam mentioned, killing gays, is ostensibly commanded in numerous Hadith (a secondary holy source for the overwhelming majority of Muslims) including “Kill the doer and the receiver” (Tirmidhi).
In the age of the Internet, we cannot simply deny all of this on national television, and then wonder why people do not trust Muslims.
No, what is needed is some honesty. Honesty that we Muslims today have a disproportionate problem with vacuous literalism. Honesty that the scripture itself can be – and is – used to justify medieval barbarism. And honesty that those scriptures must be looked at by our theologians for the purpose of fundamental, systematic reform.
Ideas, holy texts and what’s written in them matter.
He’s right. The same is true of reactionary Christianity, and there’s no point denying that either. Books declared “holy” matter, because many people believe they really are holy and must be obeyed.
Of course, it’s also true that if I were to rape an unmarried woman, I could buy her from her father for 30 shekels and make her my bride. And that if I wish to have a slave, I should procure one from a neighboring country … because bible. And if I discovered my neighbor’s wife was cheating…I should stone her to death.
Or not…because our western moral code has progressed quite a bit further from those ancient prescriptions and prohibitions.
So, the issue is not really the fact that passages of dubious moral teachings are found in holy books. I seriously doubt that Congressman Keith Ellison (to name one), would be in agreement with those particular moral teachings of the Koran. Nor any of the Muslims of my personal acquaintance — all ensconced comfortably in the US.
It’s that there are some people who think these dubious moral teachings are — in fact — still something to be agreed to and enforced. What we’re seeing here is the Islamic Reformation — something Christianity dealt with (at some great cost in blood) a couple hundred years ago. I suspect their reformation will continue…as will the bloodshed…into the foreseeable future. And I don’t see how we can possibly impose our moral code on a people who are convinced that their code is superior (no matter how much we disagree with it). Sadly, they’ll have to come to the conclusions themselves.
What I wonder is if the Muslims are as good at ignoring passages as Christians? Gay marriage, bad because the Bible says so, but well it doesn’t really matter if you wear blended fabrics, eat shellfish, or play football (on Sunday, even). Why? The Bible says those things are bad, too, and that you should have the whole city stone your son if he sasses you (my poor son would not have made it past three…)
Do they also have strange, out of date passages like these that they recognize as strange and out of date, thereby able to be ignored, while all the other strange, out of date passages that are convenient for them to follow, such as woman-hating and gay-hating, are promoted to the status of a must do?
I haven’t yet read the Koran, so I don’t know, but if anyone does know, I’d love to hear. If not, I do have a Koran I plan to read someday (along with about 1000 other unread books on my list, many of which are more interesting), and will eventually know the answer to that question.
This isn’t to respond to you specifically, Kevin K, but to the thought generally that it’s wrong or arrogant to try to argue people with less power out of their beliefs.
“Sadly, they’ll have to come to the conclusions themselves.”
Yes and no. Forced conversion by fire (and, of course, the sword, to quote “1066 And All That”) is criminal and ineffective at least in the short term.
But we’re all human beings. We’re not dealing with parrots or something who have their own incomprehensible moral code.
There’s not only nothing wrong with discussing where beliefs contradict facts or where the consequences of their application will be suffering. It’s beneficial (even if unpleasant) to do that. It’s giving each other the benefit of others’ insights and experiences.
Yes, people have to be able to hear the message to learn from it, but that’s no reason to stop trying to discuss it.
Just because many missionaries were stupid or full of themselves or imperialists is no reason to give up on pointing out what we’ve learned when we can.
tl:dr; Good for Maajid.
The problem, I agree, isn’t that “passages of dubious moral teachings are found in holy books”; the issue is rather that the books are holy, and the fact that a passage is found within them is deemed sufficient reason to follow it. We all read other books, and take wisdom and advice as needed, discarding what isn’t useful. There is no societal pressure to do something just because Twain or Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky said it. The honesty that is needed includes being honest in saying that holy books should be treated like any other books.
I would argue further that the problem isn’t the holy books, it’s the sovereign states that base their temporal law on it.
God/Allah can want whatever the fuck he/she/it wants and can choose to punish me eternally for my “transgressions.” That’s a gamble that I’m willing to take.
No temporal government has the right to be God’s handyman on Earth.
Christianity is just as bad and the only thing that separates it from Islam is that there is no place where it wields enough power to force its bullshit on the population through law. If that ever changes, they will be the same.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34357047
Note that this didn’t even require the Reformation to be overridden: Tractate Sanhedrin discusses this in the 300’s BCE. The Talmudists decided to interpret the law with utmost literalness, and concluded:
* The “son” must be old enough to be criminally liable (age 13), but must still be “a son” rather than “a man,” meaning that he must not have gone through puberty. They conclude that this can occur only in the 3 months immediately following the 13th birthday.
* The law applies to a “son,” and therefore daughters are excluded.
* The crime must contain all of the elements listed: repudiating and reviling the parents; gluttony; and drunkenness. This was further defined as eating a specified large quantity of undiluted wine and non-kosher meat, outside the context of a legitimate feast or celebration, outside the parents’ home, in the company of other drunkards, paid for with money stolen from both parents.
* The punishment was required to be done in such a way that “all Israel will see it and fear,” which means that it must be carried out in Jerusalem during a time of pilgrimage, BUT if the son ages out of the three-month window then he cannot be executed, the statute of limitations having expired.
Et cetera, et boring cetera. The point being that they found a way, within the context of their own system, to nullify a problematic element of their law. That’s interesting not because we should therefore all run out and convert to Judaism because they’ve somehow transmogrified it into secular humanism, but because generally speaking reform from within the system is how change actually takes place. Jettisoning the religion and inventing a secular-humanist culture from scratch is not only too much to ask, but is likely as not to result in the emergence of some new cult centered on some warlord, or other equally hideous outcome. See also: the invasion of Iraq.
I’m pretty sure Kevin is simply saying that arguing them out of their beliefs is not going to work. That doesn’t mean to stop putting the arguments out there; it just means that in the end they’ll figure it out when they figure it out. Unless we’re prepared to, say, slaughter them because they don’t value life the way we do…
Exactly. i dont trust Muslims who deny it , I dont Christians who deny it and I don’t trust Atheists who believe that the Quran has some special brainwashing power that the Bible doesnt.
One of the things that I always wonder is why Hinduism seems to get a pass . Female infanticide seems to be worse than anything any terrorist has come up with – in sheer numbers if nothing else – but you hardly see anyone mention it , except in passing.
And honesty that those scriptures must be looked at by our theologians for the purpose of fundamental, systematic reform.
Scriptures have been looked at by reformist theologians for at least a century and a half. And even the classical jurists hedged the severest Quranic punishments with so many qualifications that they were rarely carried out. (This is true for the punishments for apostasy, for example.) Hadith is a much-questioned source, with sahih hadith perhaps having a more legitimized status for Sunnis (and the hadith MN quotes is not sahih). That hadith were fabricated has always been widely acknowledged. (I think there is a Turkish govt project to reanalyze which sahih hadith are really really sahih.) .”1001 nights Caliph of Baghdad, Abbasid heyday” — except the Abbasid heyday is when the Mutazila theologians were in ascendance.
It isn’t just that islamic religious and cultural practices don’t match western democratic practices. It is that islam is considered by many of its followers, and they the most vocal ones, to be a complete prescription for living one’s life. There is no place for secularism at the personal or institutional or state level. The mullahs will decide it all for you and rule by fatwa. No room for separation of religion and state – islam is both. No room for elections, political parties, freedom of speech or choice. Ultimately no room for education, knowledge or science – unless in service of killing the infidels. Where islam is strong enough there canbe no peaceful coexistence. It’s all in the koran, go read it!