The "Evils of Islam?"

The house of Saud is actually quite secular, as are the governments of Turkey, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain,Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Algeria, Kazhakstan, Azerdbaidjan, Indonesia, etc....
On another thread someone repeatedly referred to "Iraqi Ba'athist Fundamentalists," which I found rather amusing, since the Ba'ath party was Marxist in nature, and had many Christians in high places (Tariq Aziz comes to mind).
Saudi support for Wahhabism is more a situation of paying off the opposition than supporting an ideology.
Anyway, I think these nations are strong evidence for the separation of religion from rule in modern Muslim nations.
In addition, one should remember that, not unlike many protestant organizations, Islam is disputational in nature. There is no supreme head like the Pope, and even "sects" like Shia, Sunni, Ismaili, etc... support numerous mullahs with differing viewpoints.

Hmm...by your earlier criteria Judaism would be an Eastern religion. the same folks who label everything east of Italy as "Oriental" include Judaism and Jewish thought as "Eastern." Aren't semantics fun?

Re: Islam is/isn't a church-state institution?

Actually, I called the statement that "Islam is an evil faith" ignorant. I am dismayed that five people (so far) share this ignorance. One reason for the friction between east and west is this mistaken notion of "superiority" embraced by the US and Europe. I personally think that any notions of superiority by any civilization are fallacious.

Hobitbob


I don't understand. What earlier criteria.
However, If Judaism is an eastern religion, not that it matters, so is Christianity. Remember the three religions Islam, Christianity and Judaism have the same father and worship the same God. It is indeed ironic based upon that they should be so intent on hating and killing each other over the millennia

Judaism is most certainly not the basis for western tradition. Western tradition is far more a Greco-Roman product than a Judeo-Christian one.

And with that provocative statement, I will back out of this discussion. I didn't mean to hijack hobitbob's thread. This is properly a discussion about the "evils of Islam," not about the origins of Western civilization. I'm sorry if I got us off-topic.

Indeed, modern Christianity is an example of a Near Eastern mystery cult having adapted to bellicose Germanic tribal ideals.

LOL - They are hardly "Quite Secular" - FAR FROM SECULAR! - they are very Islamist (radical and/or fundamental Islam) and we all know it, especially the House of Saud. The House of Saud enforces the extremist form of Islam called Wahabbism, throughout all Saudi Arabia.

This is a good assesment:
http://techcentralstation.com/102003A.html

The State of Islam -- 2003

By Daniel Drezner Published 10/20/2003

Post-9/11, there's been a lot of gnashing of teeth about the role that Islam plays in the promotion of terrorism and general hostility to the West. It is often stressed that Islam encompasses more than the Arab Middle East, and should not be conflated with the ideology of Osama bin Laden or his cronies. Surely, true Islam is not fundamentally anti-Semitic, for example?

The Organization of the Islamic Conference last week had its 10th Islamic Summit, which seems as good a venue as any to mull the state of the religion in 2003. So, let's go to what outgoing Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad said in his welcoming speech:

1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategise and then to counter attack....

We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them....

We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.

Of late because of their power and their apparent success they have become arrogant. And arrogant people, like angry people will make mistakes, will forget to think.

They are already beginning to make mistakes. And they will make more mistakes. There may be windows of opportunity for us now and in the future. We must seize these opportunities.

When the European Union -- which knows from anti-Semitism -- declares that a speech is anti-Semitic, you know a line has been crossed.

What's scarier, that Mahathir Mohammad said this or, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the reaction from the crowd?:

The Indonesian President, Megawati Soekarnoputri, joined a standing ovation for her Malaysian counterpart, Mahathir Mohamad, after he called on Muslims to consider Jews as their enemy, it has been revealed.

All 57 leaders at a Conference of Islamic Nations summit applauded the comments, which have renewed regional tensions ahead of next week's APEC leaders' conference. Among them were several key figures in the post-September 11 world, including Ms Megawati; the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai; President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Al Jazeera's coverage of the reaction to the speech had more bon mots:

"I don't think they (the remarks) are anti-Semitic at all. I think he was stating the facts," Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher added: "There are people wanting to create trouble, invent problems that do not exist... I would advise them to read the whole speech, which was a speech addressed to Muslims asking them to work hard and affirm their personality."

And Fahmi Huwaidi, an Egyptian political analyst, told Aljazeera: "Nowadays, any criticism against the Jews and the Jewish policy is considered anti-Semitic.

"This proves how far Israel and its allies have succeeded in sanctifying Israel, preventing any side from criticising it."

He added: "Such a common view proves Muhammad's comment on the extent to which the Jewish global influence has reached."

This is how Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar tried to explain the comments away to Voice of America: "The prime minister's statement is a statement calling for moderation, calling not to utilize violence to achieve our objective, start to think, look at the example of what the Jewish community achieved."

The Best Moderate Political Islam Has to Offer?

The scary and pathetic thing is, Minister Hamid Albar is correct -- relative to a lot of Muslim leaders, Mahathir's position is moderate. Mahathir embodies the moderate face of Islam. To his credit, he was at the helm as his country indistrialized. He was smart enough to appreciate the importance of the rule of law and the role of markets in fostering economic growth. He bucked the IMF's advice and imposed capital controls during the Asian financial crisis and lived to tell the tale. He pursued a number of policies designed to ameliorate ethnic tensions between the poorer but more numerous Malays and the wealthier ethnic Chinese. These feats are not easy for a developing country leader to pull off.

And yet, this man, the best that moderate political Islam has to offer, is rotten with flaws. Mahathir subverted his country's democratic traditions to suit his political purposes. He jailed his anointed successor for having the temerity to question whether the IMF might actually be correct. And the anti-Semitism is hardly new -- he blamed the Jews, specifically George Soros, for causing the Asian financial crisis.

The other parts of the speech spelled out very clearly what Mahathir believes should be appropriated from the West:

The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers etc. and they excelled in all the fields of knowledge of their times, besides studying and practising their own religion of Islam. As a result the Muslims were able to develop and extract wealth from their lands and through their world trade, able to strengthen their defences, protect their people and give them the Islamic way of life, Addin, as prescribed by Islam. At the time the Europeans of the Middle Ages were still superstitious and backward, the enlightened Muslims had already built a great Muslim civilisation, respected and powerful, more than able to compete with the rest of the world and able to protect the ummah from foreign aggression. The Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars in order to access their own scholastic heritage....

But halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilisation came new interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology. The study of science, medicine etc. was discouraged.

Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual regression the great Muslim civilisation began to falter and wither....

We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the defence of the ummah. Unfortunately we stress not defence but the weapons of the time of the Prophet. Those weapons and horses cannot help to defend us any more. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our defence. But because we discouraged the learning of science and mathematics etc. as giving no merit for the akhirat, today we have no capacity to produce our own weapons for our defence. We have to buy our weapons from our detractors and enemies. This is what comes from the superficial interpretation of the Quran, stressing not the substance of the Prophet's sunnah and the Quran's injunctions but rather the form, the manner and the means used in the 1st Century of the Hijrah. And it is the same with the other teachings of Islam. We are more concerned with the forms rather than the substance of the words of Allah and adhering only to the literal interpretation of the traditions of the Prophet.

There is actually a powerful critique of Islamic fundamentalism in this passage -- but the critique is exclusively over means and not ends. Mahathir explicitly denounces the use of wanton violence to exterminate the state of Israel. He's advocating the use of brainpower -- to exterminate the state of Israel.

What Mahathir wants is for Islamic countries to embrace modernization without Westernization and its tacky "Jewish" traits of human rights and democracy. However, it's no coincidence that the peak of Islam's power and influence came at a time when the religion was tolerant to scientific and religious views outside of the Quran. Although scholars Samuel Huntington and Benjamin Barber disagree, I side with the writer Jonathan Rauch in believing that it's impossible to embrace modern science without embracing the tolerance for free thought that is at the core of Western liberal thought.

I could very well be wrong, however. This is the trillion-dollar bet for the West for the next century -- hope that the Islamic world, in embracing modern science and technology, learns to tolerate views outside the ummah. Or suffer the consequences of a modernized but rigidly theocratic Islam.

The totalitarian regimes in the former Eastern Bloc, the Nazis, and the Showa Japanese government tend to prove this statement wrong.
As for the house of Saud. Obviously you and I interperet the data differently. The House of Saud provides funding for Wahhabism as a method of preventing political uprising.

and look what's happened to those...they're gone. They didn't survive because they didn't embrace free thought, and democracy. Is it any surprise that, in the early 1970's there was only 40 democracies around the world, and today, just 30 years later, there are about 120! You didn't just prove it wrong, you just added more evidence for, how it's right.




Yes, that's right, and the Saudi form of repression is particularly evil. Cutting someone's head off in a public forum, for speaking against the government, is evil - it's a barbaric practice. You do know, of course, that only Muslims are allowed in the large holy city of Mecca. Have you ever heard an Imam preach in Mecca before a crowd of half-million (usually broadcast by Al'Jazeerah TV) - the sermons are packed with hate speech, deceptions, lies, distortions of history, etc., etc. - the hate speech is particularly EVIL - akin to a KKK meeting!
Let's not even begin to discuss the Saudi financial support of Madrassah's (and not all madrassahs are evil little institutions, but enough of them are!) throughout the Muslim and Arab world, especially Pakistan.

It would seem that the religious poison that the Saudi's have been supporting and exporting has come back to bite them in the behind.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/international/middleeast/09SAUD.html?th

if bombing innocent civilians is a cause for deciding Islam is evil then Protestants and Catholics alike must be evil - what about all those years of bombing in Ireland?

Religious texts are ancient and rooted in primitive societies with fairly rough and ready justice - 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' from the bible, dismissed by Christ who said 'turn the other cheek' - priests/imams/ whatever will believe the bits they want and twist them to manipulate the less educated to live as they dictate.

Paul (who may well have been gay? certainly didn't like women!) was the only one in the bible who seems to have forbidden women's place in the christian religion from anything I've ever read yet the whole Catholic church is based on this celibacy thing.

Most religions have a basis of reason - not killing, not stealing, looking after others kind of rules - then along come the priests who add a few extra little rules generation after generation.

WOW, I don't know where to start or if I should even bother.

Mr. Hobit, I am taken aback by your apologist attitude.

Quote; Women are oppressed.
-false. No more or less so than other faiths that originated in the near east. In the Sharia, women are granted the right to initiate divorces, own property, btring suit, and bear witness.

Well you sir are very wrong or at least misleading by slipping in "originating in the near east " perhaps this is supposed to make this more fair for Islam.
Mohammed said a women's word is worth half that of a man's.
Four woman witnesses are needed in cases. Men just one.
This goes on and on.
Conversion, you are also lacking in knowledge. You have three days make your choice, better be the right one. You could at least be a slave.
Slay the infidels! It is repeated over and over.
And yes 72 virgins for martyrs on the attack. Poetry aside this is believed. The whole Koran is poetry Steven King style.

Would you like ref. from the Koran, Ahadith or maybe speak to someone who lived the beautiful and peaceful life of submission? I am not a scholar on the subject of Islam, but I can read the Koran. I do have a brain. I will make up my own mind. I just hope people here don't blindly agree with your "interpretation".

Are you related to Karen Armstrong? Maybe you watched that lovely PBS show about Mohammed. Maybe you should learn more. You have two ears and one mouth, the two ears are to hear more.

BTW I see I'm just hatched, I hope this doesn't mean I'm destined to lay an egg.

I cannot believe how many people are taking the "I read the Koran and it says this and this" approach. Have any of you read the BIBLE?!?
This is fundamentalism taken to a new low!

No religion is evil but the people who follow it CAN be.

You probably shouldn't have.


Since I am nominally catholic, I found that remark pretty funny.


Considering Christianity and Judaism are also near eastern religions, it does even the playing field, now doesn't it?


Again, consistent with,and actually much more liberal that Christianity or Judaism in the seventh century.


What on earth are you talking about?


Actually, its slay the "non-believers," in other words the pantheistic merchants in Mecca, not those who are "people of the book." i.e. Jews and Christians.


While I agree that Stephen King was more poetry than dusty prose up til about 1990, I don't find much in the Qu'ran that compares to his twentieth century English (score one for seventh century Arabic). A good translation does keep the beauty of the original Arabic verse. The NIV translation of the Bible does the same in many places. The Vulgate has its own particular convoluted beauty.


I'm more than happy to provide them, if you desire.


Do tell!


I would suggest you do so.


Really?



Good for you.


I hope that forum members do their own research.


No, and I've unfortunately missed opportunities to hear her speak.


Nope, too busy doing research.


That's why I'm in grad school.


And two eyes to read with, and a brain to utilize in separating bovine residue from worthwhile info.


Like this one?

Most religions are ultimately about fear and control.

In response to 2Bad's comments about women in muslim countries, i would refer him/her to The Veil of Shame, Evelyne Accad, Naman, Paris, 1982 (?, possibly 1981). Read the chapter, "Women and the Quran." It is immemorial practices of patriarchal tribal values in the region which are responsible for the "oppression" of women in the middle east, not the Quran.

There are "translations" of the Qu'ran out there, mostly on the net, that do haev passages that say things like "kill everyone, eat babies, etc..." These are often done by hard core right wing fundy Christian organizaitons that have a bone to pick. I think 2Bad may have read one of these. Similarly, hard core right wing fundy Islamic orgs have put similarly poor translations of the bible on the net that say similar things. It all comes down to : "My god can beat up your god with one hand tied behind his back!" Sigh!

Hobitbob
Perhaps your question should have been Is religion evil.

God question. My answer: No, but people are.