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Reform within Islam?
Sam
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
In light of Christian societies becoming more secular, churches have found themselves scrambling to adapt, ultimate ending up with various denominations of the same religion that reflect opposite social and political beliefs. Even that grand old Tolkienesque monstrosity the catholic church decided that purgatory wasn't real, so all your semen that lived its life splattered against a paper towel went home to Jesus after all. Everybody wins right?
The largest Islamic entities, and most mullahs seem to have an aversion to going against the grain.
For example, there is no holy license to create a franchise legal system from the folks who brought you The Quran
Shar'ia is a crock of shit, and is granted no legitimacy except through what is effectively a form of branding.
Then, there's the fatwa's. Fatwa does not actually mean kill people who don't like to do the shit we do.
Quoth wiki-
Therefore a fatwa on Rushdie's Satanic verses would be "This shit sucks, I would wipe my ass with the pages except my shit doesn't stink because I'm a mullah"
and not
"Kill this motherfucker. If a non muslim kills him let him fuck your wife in thanks"
Yet most mainstream Islamic institutions (i.e most Islamic countries) seem averse to secularism, when the stupidifyingly obvious fact is that without secularism, the fundamental principles of a religion are inevitably subverted and mullah-shat upon.
The largest Islamic entities, and most mullahs seem to have an aversion to going against the grain.
For example, there is no holy license to create a franchise legal system from the folks who brought you The Quran
Shar'ia is a crock of shit, and is granted no legitimacy except through what is effectively a form of branding.
Then, there's the fatwa's. Fatwa does not actually mean kill people who don't like to do the shit we do.
Quoth wiki-
A fatwā (Arabic: فتوى; plural fatāwā Arabic: فتاوى), in the Islamic faith is a religious opinion on Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar.
Therefore a fatwa on Rushdie's Satanic verses would be "This shit sucks, I would wipe my ass with the pages except my shit doesn't stink because I'm a mullah"
and not
"Kill this motherfucker. If a non muslim kills him let him fuck your wife in thanks"
Yet most mainstream Islamic institutions (i.e most Islamic countries) seem averse to secularism, when the stupidifyingly obvious fact is that without secularism, the fundamental principles of a religion are inevitably subverted and mullah-shat upon.
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Actually it's pretty much exactly what fatwa means. Many Arabic language newspapers have a "ask a mullah" section where people write in to ask if it's permissible to do all kinds of silly things, stuff like "Is it permissible to ever use an oven again if pork has been cooked in it?" The replies that they get are fatwas.
As for the topic: I'm not really sure what you're saying, other than that it will take a long time for extremist Islam to become remotely modern. I agree with this.
It's not about extremism, it's about the lack of secularism. Before the tut tutting moral endorsement uncles like O'Reilly hijacked the word, it referred to the notion that it is detrimental to any society to have specific cultural beliefs enforced to the point where things are being regulated that do not in any way affect others
I respect that Islam can play that much of a role in people's lives, but aren't we looking at the equivalent of enshrining Ask Abby (more like Ann Coulter) columns if a Fatwa can be interpreted as divine will?
The Catholic church conceding that you can choose to believe in purgatory is the equivalent of the Communist party of China calling themselves communist.
Yes. I never said this was not fucked up, I'm just saying it's not like every fatwa is a death sentence.
No but the fact that Fatwas have as much credence as they do when there doesn't seem to be a very efficient screening system for Mullah candidates when it comes to people who will cause harm in other people's lives, and that isn't limited to issuing death sentences, it applies to all the shit that falls out of their mouths on subjects like women, homosexuality, freedom of religion, etc.
Aren't Purgatory and Limbo different things, though?
My theory is that most Islamic countries are so backward is that western oil money and political influence has kept rigid structures in power as long as they support our ends. Iran is slowly creeping its way towards secularity (granted they have a long way to go), being one of the only countries not directly underneath America's boot over there.
I do know countries like Saudi Arabia get away with the shit that goes on in their countries only because of the support of western powers. The exceptions to this are enemies to the west that are politically and economically shat on, and thus have no choice but to be radical.
Granted there's *alot* more to it than that, but overall I think the US and Britain have done much, much more to keep those countries from being secular than not.
I think that verses like play a part too. I don't believe that all muslim societies enact shit like this. There exist moderate and liberal Muslim societies in India, Dubai, Malaysia, China and Turkey as well as liberal/sane schools of thought in the more bizarro places. But it is in the Quran so it's fair game to take issue with it right?
But I also think it's important to remember how difficult it was to reform Christendom into the "secular West." It took hundreds of years from the start of the humanist movement, and passed through a rather unpleasant nationalist phase where hundreds of millions of people were killed in wars or poorly-thought-out social experiments.
There have been Islamic civilizations that were more advanced than their Christian/European contemporaries. I think a lot of the real ugliness came in the 20th century where Theocracies had to contend with US and Soviet influence.
They are, and it was Limbo that was determined to have no basis in scripture. Purgatory is beyond completely different in purpose. It's kind of surprising how they would get conflated, what with Dante's comedy and all.
I'd more blame Hamid Al Ghazali, and The Incoherence of Philosophers. Islam is not opposed to modernity unless you interpret it that way, and he did. Which was a big deal at the time and in following centuries.
To what extent did Dante just make that shit up? I was under the impression that he took very vague conceptions of what Limbo and Purgatory were, and then sort of ran wild with them, along with the entire theoretical structure of the afterlife.
Step right up and buy your relatives way into heaven!
He did, but in the same way that tabloid rags take stories that prevent them from getting sued. Only in his case it would have been excommunication and probably getting burned at the stake. So ignoring all the crap the basis for his writings are at least somewhat allowed/acknowledged by the Church.
Those are indulgences, which are more to be blamed on the plague as a sort of backdoor way to get around missing the last rites sacrament. Eventually it became the equivalent to a golden handshake, but then it was abolished around that time because of it.
Also, the US and USSR are hardly the first influences that the Middle East had to contend with. Colonization of the region goes back a good long ways, and you could easily point to how the British drew their lines on the map without regard to tribal politics and interaction as part of why the region is so prone to blowing up.
thats a good point. and probably why iran is more modern than the rest since they are predominately shi'a. correct me if im wrong, but aren't most other mid east countries split between the two sects?
The other side of the coin is the unholy alliance between certain sects of Islam (Wahhabism) and the autocratic regimes of places like Saudi Arabia. If the West stopped propping up the autocrats, or pulled and Iraq-style "regime-change," it's possible that these sects would lose the support of the population; but then you are still left with the problem of Muslims turning to other fundamentalist sects to oppose the perceived negatives of Western culture.
I think that the problem may be with the West, specifically the cultural mores that have been promoted for the last ~70ish years as a result of the relationship between political citizenship and economic consumerism (you are a good citizen if you are a good consumer, and being a good consumer means consuming things you don't need as fast as possible). Perhaps if we changed those cultural mores to something more, dare I say, wholesome, people in non-Western countries, like the Mid-East, may be more likely to adopt the bonafide good things (secular humanism, science, philosophy) without having to adopt the bad things (consumerism, selfish individualism).
Sects and tribes/ethnicities. Sunni, Shiite, Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Pashtun, Hazara, a bunch of others that I've never heard of but can probably trace their roots back millenia... There's a reason it's considered one of the most difficult regions to 'fix.'
I find it interesting that the only thing keeping sunni and shiites from killing each other in iraq was the threat of some asshole killing them both. where does the grudge culture come from? is that from islam or from the tribal culture?
Which ties back to my general point: yes, Islam was more advanced than Christendom. But when Christendom morphed into this new secular enlightenment civilization (a radical shift that has not happened in Islam), Islamic civilization could not compete. If it could, it wouldn't have gotten taken over by European colonists and chopped up in the first place. (Another turning point being the utter inadequacy of the Ottomans in WW1).
The Sunni/Shia animosity goes almost as far back as Muhammad—and was, incidentally, originally tribal in nature as well. It stemmed from a disagreement over which group of people should have rightly succeeded Muhammad's rule, and I always forget the details. But over time, the Shia side accumulated theological additions anathema to the Sunni side (such as the idea of the Mahdi, a sort of messiah figure in Shi'ite Islam)—more reasons to call each other evil unbelievers.
The being a desert shithole in the part of world every would be despot likes to ride through and smash your century old irrigation system vs a temperate, energy rich, and well watered region just maybe had something to do with Islams relative decline too...
I mean, the early Muslims conquered a lot of places that were a lot more hospitable than the Arabian peninsula. They could have just moved.
They also started a few hundred years earlier. If you want to make the argument that religions go through fundamentalist phases, then Christendom would be in its 20's while Islam is just hitting puberty and becoming a teenager.
I was under the impression that being the safest route between two continents (Europe and China/India) was a massive boon to trade based empires, and that it was after some barbarian tribesmen decided they would like to conquor the world and then more or less did so was the point where the middle east went to shit.
Islam started itself out as a political power much faster than christianity did as well. Nothing suprising about getting more serious and political splits in an empire as opposed to an underground cult.
2. Christian sects most certainly did kill each other en masse for hundreds of years. Catholics tried to wipe out various groups of heretics, and the rise of Protestantism caused a bunch of religious wars in Europe. This was the whole rationale behind "separation of church and state" in America. The only reason Christians don't do this anymore is because Christianity stopped being the dominant cultural and political force around the time of the Enlightenment, and "Christians killing each other over doctrine" got replaced with "Nations killing each other over nationalism." Even so, Christian sectarianism continued to play a role in violence well into the 20th century—see the IRA, for example.
Catholics actually killed the dick out of each other all the time, it was just on a much smaller and more personal scale (barring stuff like the sacking of Constantinople and the Northern Crusades). The Italian families didn't exactly get along.
It was my understanding that they recovered just fine after Peter the Great and Mongols and all them. They just decided that science was the devil and quit trying to do cool things with algebra and astrolabes.
To further Qingu's point, Islam does hold together better as a religion than Christianity. That's because there isn't the inherent conflict. Let me elaborate. Islam is fairly clean cut because it was started by a warlord as a way to control the masses and seize power, and it never really tries to be anything different than it is.
Christianity, on the other hand, takes as its central figure someone who emphasizes the qualities of self sacrifice and care towards your fellow man. Now, when people bend Christianity to use it as a cudgel, it's easy to see that they're in conflict with the goals of the religion.
When you do this with Islam, where is the conflict? It was created to be a cudgel, and used as one through the ages. It's good at its job. One could argue that it's the fundamentalists who are actually "right" about Islam.
yeah fair enough. i went to catholic school and i forget that they just dont really want to mention that ever again.
That's completely ignoring connections people have to their land and their culture, outside of the fact that oh hey wait a central tenet of the whole religion is that Mecca and Medina are sacred cities. Medina's first name was Yathrib. Medina means city. Full name: Medinat al Nabi i.e. City of the Prophet (also medina al munarrawah the enlightened city). You're not going to get people to abandon such a place with much alacrity. Look at how long Jews and Christians have held onto their obsession with Jerusalem. This isn't a new thing or one unique to Islam or even religious people.
Plus Islam did spread into all those hospitable lands you were talking about; it's the Arabs themselves who didn't move; and why would they? They could bring all the resources of their empire to them.. You didn't see the brits or romans scampering off to go live in their colonies.
If anyone made a stupid choice of where to put their country it was the Israelis. They could have had a nice spot in Africa and they chose an arid desert surrounded by enemies. Seems mad, doesn't it? But you have to consider people's beliefs if you want to understand them.
Islam might be more militant than Christianity but to call it a cudgel is to take things too far. You have to take the passages in context. Also, why isn't anyone going on about how awful and militaristic Judaism is, when it's at least as bad?
And to call Muhammed a warlord again overstates things. He started out as a merchant and then a preacher; he later became a military commander as well, but I'd venture that that wasn't by choice. If the Quraysh and the Meccans had let the guy alone maybe he wouldn't have had to kick their asses hrmm?
If you want to talk about militant-by-design religions, you should read Deuteronomy 13 and 20. These chapters command you to commit genocide against people living in the holy land and apostate cities. The Quran never commands genocide. The Deuteronomistic histories (Joshua, Judges, etc) are likewise filled with God-ordered genocides, one after the other. These are the heroes of Biblical tradition.
Jesus can be interpreted as a moderating force. But throughout most of Christianity's history, he wasn't. Catholics used the Old Testament verses to justify the crusades against unbelievers in the holy land. After all, Jesus explicitly said he has not come to abolish the old laws but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). Furthermore, Jesus threatens plenty of violence against unbelievers—see John 3:18, Mark 13, and the entirety of the book of Revelation.
The reason Christians don't interpret the Bible "militantly" now is because the Bible is no longer a source of morality or social policy for most Christians.