Reza Aslan absolutely destroys CNN and Bill Maher on Muslim violence

[traininthedistance]

I think he's right about a few points, but ultimately, pretty misleading.  It's true on one hand that there are plenty of nice, progressive Muslim people and there are secular Muslim countries.  And, sure, Bill Maher is not an expert on Islam or the world outside America.  I suppose that's an important point to make for balance, especially when some people are bigoted and hate Muslims in America.

But, I think you can say that Islamic ideology fosters and promotes these major problems like terrorism and disrespect for women's rights.  Islam is not a progressive religion.  By that I mean, Islam is a set of rules for every facet of life and those rules do not change.  Islam is a religion, but it also contains a set of cultural norms that date to the early middle ages in Arabia.  Is there dispute about those rules?  Sure.  Many Muslims believe music is allowed.  Many Muslims believe that women should be allowed to travel alone.  But, the general attitude is that these rules are not debatable or permissive if you find a clear statement from the Islamic scriptures.  In that way, Islam more resembles Christianity in Europe before the reformation democratized Christianity with vernacular texts. 

Once you create that baseline, that you have a book with the perfect revealed truth on how to live your life in every facet, it's inherently at odds with these Western values that Resa Aslan supports like feminism and human rights.  While it's true that some people reconcile Islam with our values, but that's more about those people becoming secular than it is about Islam embracing equality for women or whatever.  Turkey's more modern progressive policies are all about how Turkey became a secular country, not about Islam at all.   

I don't claim to be (nor really wish to be) an expert on this issue, but this strikes me as a pretty gross oversimplification in both meanings of the term, one that honestly deserves the label "orientalist". Obviously political Islam, especially the Wahabbi strain of it, is a serious problem now and is in dire need of reformation.  But it's actually pretty ignorant of history to claim that it's all part and parcel of some unbroken chain of austere fundamentalism that's innate to the religion- I mean, Wahabbism is actually a relatively recent development along the lines of the Puritans and Calvinists, and to assume that its attitudes regarding practice can be reliably back-dated to earlier eras is just as silly to assume that the Christian world was living with Puritan morals in the Dark Ages.

I mean, the Abbasids were far more tolerant of Christians and Jews within their borders than Christian kingdoms in Europe were of Jews and Muslims during that time period; and there were plenty of practices and attitudes of theirs (and their contemporaries) that would be slammed as "heresy" and "idolatry" and "liberalism" today.

Mikado's post over in another thread deserves mention here:

In your view, why has the Saudi government, i.e. the House of Saud, not been overthrown, and replaced by a more modern government, one in which a family does not own the country?

The family, in essence, owns all the wealth.

Is it because the government keeps the citizens in a good standard of living?

The days when a family rules a nation is a concept from the middle ages.

The House of Saud is impossible to understand without looking at its origins as the military wing of the Wahabbi movement.  The austere desert tribes of Nejd and this pious, fierce rejection of any kind of "shirk" or attribution of divine properties to things besides Allah had built up legitimacy in raiding into Ottoman-protected Hedjaz and modern southern Iraq throughout the 19th century, destroying shrines and such, and when Ottoman power and protection evaporated after the First World War, Abdulaziz ibn Saud and his followers quickly conquered and annexed the Hedjaz, the old Islamic holy land, and promptly began demolishing everything they saw as pseudo-pagan. 

The House of Saud's legitimacy (and, remember, king Abdullah is the son of ibn Saud himself...they're still only one generation in despite the kingdom existing for 90 years now) based its legitimacy on its firm commitment to Wahhabi tenets like destroying the shrines of the Prophet's companions and imposing that austere radical monotheism on the people of the Hedjaz, who had traditionally been far more willing to go to the graves of various major early Islamic figures to ask for intercession when praying.  If you wonder why Saudi Arabia's laws are so harsh, it's because, despite how party-animal-ish the Saudi princes themselves are, their entire rationale for power is the imposition of Wahhabi austerity on the Arab holy land.  Their decadent oil-wealth driven lifestyle does erode their credibility, but it leads them in turn to go back to their founding principles to the extent of spending massive amounts of money to promote Wahabbi principles abroad, even to the extent of funding "missionaries" of sorts to other Sunni Islamic countries to tell them about how they've been practicing Sunni Islam "incorrectly" for the past 1000 or so years.  Basically, ibn Saud inspired his followers and conquered the Islamic Holy Land on the principles of commitment to impose radical, austere, absolute monotheism on said Holy Land, and as corrupt as the House of Saud is in its personal conduct, they take care to outwardly pay lip service to that original mission.

[traininthedistance]

I don't know how to respond to this.

Obviously you don't, seeing as you appear to have completely misinterpreted everything I just said.

You're not really disputing my specific points

I was in fact disputing the idea that "the rules do not change", because a cursory look at historical practice indicates that they demonstrably have over time.  And, of course, I dispute the conclusions and attitudes that flow from that particular error.

you're just saying that it's uncouth to talk about a religion and somehow racist or Eurocentric to criticize Islam.

Um, no, that's not what I was doing?  I mean, yes, some of your particular criticisms seem to stem more from stereotyping and an incomplete view of history, and I was calling that out.  That doesn't mean that all potential criticisms of Islam are off-base or racist or whatever, and please don't try to strawman those words in my mouth.

If you actually said, "well, Islam is not political or oppressive towards women, only Wahhabi Islam is political and socially backwards."  That would just be incorrect.  There are no masjids where they preach feminism, pluralism and acceptance of gay people.

And, well, that's not what I said, is it.

Obviously, everyone defines their religion in a unique way and history is incredibly complex and interdependent.  You can go back and connect Islamist movements to all these other political, ethnic and social factors.   But, the ideas matter, the religion matters.

Good to see you acknowledge that.  Now take a moment to try and understand how and why it's in tension with some of the more sweeping pronouncements you've made in this thread.  (And for the record I do agree that "the ideas matter".)

[traininthedistance]

Where is Xahar to really spice this thread up when you need him?

Yeah we need his contributions here pretty desperately.

I'll admit that I'd love to see him lay down some actual explanations and facts rather than just outrage and snark... but at this point I'll take what I can get.