Reza Aslan absolutely destroys CNN and Bill Maher on Muslim violence

[bedstuy]

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.   

[bedstuy]

Here's the disconnect: 

Is Islam necessarily violent?  No.  But, just look at the borders between Suni Islam and other sects.  You have India & Pakistan, Northern Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank.  At some point you need to recognize the pattern.  And, the counter-examples don't really disprove the link either.  The places where you don't have Islamic violence are basically all secular strongman regimes where some nationalist group or the military keeps things under control by force.

Sure, Islam doesn't necessarily lead to any specific type of Al Qaeda or ISIS type regime.  But, it is an inherently political ideology with fundamentalist doctrine that resists change and stands in opposition to the pluralist, liberal principles of the West.  People want to deny that because it feels all nice and eccumenical, but it's just a fact about the current state of Islam.

[bedstuy]

The Crusades were like 800 years ago dude.  And, nobody is saying that there is no problem with Christian/Jewish/Hindu/Buddhist fanaticism today.  It's just that Islamic fanaticism is far, far more prevalent and harmful at the moment, by several orders of magnitude arguably.

[bedstuy]

But you're attributing that to being a problem of Islam in and of itself. The vast majority of Muslims are not members of ISIS.

Oh also the Holocaust. Christians did that (although the Nazis had a bit of a weird relationship with the rest of Christianity, much as ISIS does with the rest of Islam).

I explained my position earlier.  Islam is particularly totalistic and fundamentalist and particularly at odds with modernity. 

And, you can't just list things that were done by Christian people.  ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, etc. they don't just happen to be Muslim.  Their entire ideology is attempting to create an Islamic state in exact accordance with the Islamic holy texts.  That is an extreme version of Islam.  Nazism was not an extreme version of Christianity. 

[bedstuy]

Well, I stand by my theory.

The Crusades. Around 1300 years after the beginning of Christianism.
Now. Around 1300 years after the beginning of Islam.

This is the Muslim Crusades.

What about the period from 7th to 10th century when Islamic armies conquered from Spain to India?  That was also the Muslim Crusades one could argue.

[bedstuy]

Here's the disconnect: 

Is Islam necessarily violent?  No.  But, just look at the borders between Suni Islam and other sects.  You have India & Pakistan, Northern Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank.  At some point you need to recognize the pattern.  And, the counter-examples don't really disprove the link either.  The places where you don't have Islamic violence are basically all secular strongman regimes where some nationalist group or the military keeps things under control by force.

Sure, Islam doesn't necessarily lead to any specific type of Al Qaeda or ISIS type regime.  But, it is an inherently political ideology with fundamentalist doctrine that resists change and stands in opposition to the pluralist, liberal principles of the West.  People want to deny that because it feels all nice and eccumenical, but it's just a fact about the current state of Islam.

Hmm? India is not a Muslim country. And if you meant to compare the Muslims in India vs Pakistan, the divergence is fairly recent and due to Pakistani foreign policy, not sectarian reasons. The spread of Islam in a good chunk of South and Southeast Asia occurred by means the Saudis would consider sacrilegious. For example the Sufi saints who spread Islam through music throughout South Asia, including areas which are now in Pakistan.

I think this is a cultural issue more than a religious issues. The desert cultures of the Middle East are extremely backwards and it's reflected in the type of religion they practice.

India is a partially Muslim country.  There are more Muslims in India than there are in any country besides Pakistan and Indonesia.  And, you can't say there is no Islamic terrorism in India between the insurgency in Kashmir and the Mumbai attacks.  Obviously, nationalism is a major issue in India and Pakistan too, but religion strife is a factor there. 

And, on top of that, your point is pretty nonsensical.  Islam is a religion largely based on the Arab culture and language.  Islam codifies the Arab culture of the Middle Ages and elevates that lifestyle to unquestionable perfection.  The solution is that Islam needs to change and become less fundamentalist and extreme.

[bedstuy]

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.

I don't know how to respond to this.  You're not really disputing my specific points, you're just saying that it's uncouth to talk about a religion and somehow racist or Eurocentric to criticize Islam.  You're both saying, I don't know much about this topic and making these broad, unalloyed assertions about "Wahhabism."

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.  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. 

Just think about it this way.  Islam is supposed to be a set of perfect texts that explain how to live life in every facet.  Not only in "Wahhabi Islam" or "radical Islam," in mainstream Islam.  That is not something that is easily moderated or squared with social progress.  You can sometimes find new interpretations that help your religion keep pace with society, sure.  But, if you believe that the scriptures are perfect and should dictate every part of life, that's not helping matters.  And, that's a major problem in the world today.

[bedstuy]

On the one hand Islam never had a reformation (and the following counterreformation) or an Age of Enlightenment, and it's a Law Religion with detailed prescriptions of behaviour, but on the other hand it also changed over the centuries. In the Middle East Islam became markedly more reactionary and narrowminded in the 18th century and AFAIK the reason exactly why this happened is not clear.

Regarding Islam's potential for change and coexistence with Western values it is worth noticing that Judaism is also a law religion and it has produced liberal versions - especially in the US - so why shouldn't Islam be able to do this under the right circumstances? Euro-Islam is already under development as a version adapted to the West. Also fx Turkish Alavism and versions of Sufism are far more liberal in many ways than mainstream Sunism or Shiism.

Nobody here said Islam couldn't become more progressive.  It's a very diverse religion with many traditions and there's always a potential for change.  But, you have to take these religions as they are and as their practice and ideology exists today. 

I think the comparison to Judaism is a good point though.  The liberal, progressive Jewish tradition is really born out of the history of Jewish people in Europe particularly.  Jews have been predominantly an oppressed minority.  You don't tend to preach theocracy when you're the oppressed religious minority, out of pure self-interest if nothing else.  So for Jews, the enlightenment ideas of separation of church and state and minority rights were extremely attractive.  You could add on to this the Jewish traditions of individual study and relative equality for women.  Remember, Christians in the Middle Ages wrote about how curious it was that Jews refused to beat their women. 

And, in the only place Jews have been the majority and dominant force, that's where we've seen the worst Jewish extremism and all the horrible things Israel has done in the West Bank and Lebanon.  We also see Jews like the Hasidim who have a tradition of troubling fundamentalism that I find similarly objectionable to Islam, if less dangerous and harmful at the moment.

[bedstuy]

We're both clearly oversimplifying a complex issue.  But, I think it's all to easy to just say religion is too complex and contextual to connect to current events.  That's sort of sticking your head in the sand though.  I understand the impulse.  I'm saying something that's very provocative and might raise some alarms for people. 

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.

I didn't say Islam doesn't change.  You actually have these different regional spins on Islam that have produced a much less harmful ideology.  If you go to Central Asia you see a pretty benign Islam where people are all too happy to drink vodka.  And, most Muslims are perfectly nice people. 

But, the idea in Islam is that it doesn't change and that Islam should touch every part of life and society.  Do people actually put that into practice?  Thankfully they don't.  But, you see how that ideology which is a central part of Islam creates these horrible problems in so many Muslim countries.

Is Islam the only factor creating those problems?  No.  Has Saudi Arabia exported an extreme version of Sunni Islam?  Yes.  Has extremist Islam risen often as a response to failed state structures, oppressive regimes and major global and political tensions?  Sure.  But again, my point is that ideas so matter and Boko Haram and Al Qaeda and ISIS are not getting their beliefs from some Wahhabi handbook, it's from Islam.

[bedstuy]

European modernity endowed the world with the glorious gifts of chattel slavery, genocide and totalitarianism. Clearly, the primitive cultures of the East must learn from our enlightened wisdom and embrace our values!

yep, and the Judeo-Christian USA is easily the "greatest purveyor of world violence" and has been for many decades now.  we surround Iran with dozens of military bases and then accuse them of "aggression".  such is why I've no tolerance for the "Muslims can't live in peace" bullsh**t, which is shared all the way down the spectrum from jmfcst to bedstuy.

Right.  Islam is an illiberal ideology that often clashes with Western or liberal values and their defenders around the world.  To you folks, that's a feather in its cap.  To me, that's a very bad thing.  But, that's sort of orthogonal to the discussion here.

[bedstuy]

Mainstream Christianity is the same way though. How many churches preach feminism and gay rights?

A significant number, especially in places like NYC, the UK and New England.  There many are others were feminism and gay rights are openly tolerated, if not condoned.

How many masjids have an openly gay imam and say that homosexuality is perfectly fine?  Basically zero.

And to respond to some of your other posts, you say the problem is Islam, not Wahhabism since it is all in the Koran. Yet you could say the same for Judaism or Christianity. The difference is that the extremists who want to literally interpret their holy books have been marginalized in more of Christian and Jewish societies (not all though like Uganda with their gay laws) than in Muslim societies.

You can keep repeating that, it doesn't make it true.  Extremist Muslims believe in literally interpreting their religious texts, sure.  And also, almost every mainstream imam or masjid will too.  Find an Islamic scholar who says women don't need to wear a hijab.  Find an Islamic scholar who says bid'ah is acceptable.  Find an Islamic scholar who says a Muslim woman can marry a Christian man.  They don't exist in any significant numbers.

Islam is a different religion than Judaism and Christianity.  You have the sunnah which dictates all these basic elements of life.  There's nothing really similar in Christianity.  Islam is a much more fundamentalist religion the way it is practiced in most places around the world. 

Don't call my point nonsensical when it's pretty clear you are completely clueless about this topic.

You obviously have no idea how Islam has spread around the world or the current trends within it. Islam in the Middle East is essentially a codification of their way of life, which is pretty backwards in my opinion. Outside the Middle East that falls apart very quickly. And where it doesn't, like Pakistan, it is due to the influence of middle eastern oil money brainwashing kids with their Wahhabi ideology, which you seem to think is the entirety of Islam.

Islam is the codification of Mohammed's way of life and he was from Arabia.  That's literally what Islam is.  I agree there is diversity in Islam and there are less violent and more benign versions of Islam.  I think that has more to do with the countries and cultures that have adapted Islam than it has to do with Islam.  And, that's my point, Islam needs to be adapted into a more peaceful, modern religion that can coexist with a secular state and feminism.

Talking about India, the Mumbai attacks were perpetrated by Pakistanis, not by Indian Muslims. And Kashmiri Muslims (at least some of them) want either their own Muslim state or to become a part of Pakistan. That does not mean they want to establish a caliphate across the world. It does not mean they want to convert every non-Muslim in the world. The terrorist groups themselves do hold that view but that is because they have essentially been trained by the Saudis. How many Indian Muslims outside of Kashmir are in terrorist groups? How about Bangladesh or Indonesia or Malaysia? How many beheadings occur in these countries?

My original point was that Islam has bloody borders, the point Huntington famously made.  That's just a factual observation.  You can come up with countries that lack Islamic motivated violence, but there is a clear pattern.

You are making the correct argument against Middle eastern style fundamentalist Islam but why do you feel the need to include every Muslim around the world? There are very moderate forms of Islam being practiced around the world, and particularly in India and Bangladesh. The style of worship among poor Muslims in these countries (a mixture of Hinduism/Islam as well as idolatry of the Sufi saints) would probably get them beheaded in Saudi Arabia. So why do you feel the need to attack these people in addition to the real villains in the Middle East?

You're just putting words in my mouth.  Did I attack Muslims?  I've made claims about Islam in general.  Not specific folk theology versions of Islam practiced in one country, just standard Sunni Islam.

[bedstuy]

Right.  Islam is an illiberal ideology that often clashes with Western or liberal values and their defenders around the world.

the "difference in values" doesn't cause any clash -- the USA is happy to support the most brutal Islamist caricature so long as they allow the expatriation of oil profits.

That's not quite right.  Much of that is realist foreign policy, the United States is going to be guided by our own self-interest to a large extent, as is every other country.  And, in many cases, the US should re-evaluate our support for regimes that run their countries contrary to our values. 

I will say though, property rights are part of our values too.

[bedstuy]

..but the well-intended defences of Islam that tend to get wheeled out (and have been here) are pathetically weak and all too often rely on bad history.

Saying Islam has a complex history and exists in various shapes is neither a defense, nor a display of "weak history". Its just a warning against the simplistic arguments made by many in this thread.

Maybe my argument is simple, but I don't think it rises or fall based on history or a few counter-examples.  I think the counter arguments on those grounds are mostly just trying to muddy the waters to no real end. 

Let me just restate what my point is:

Take an example of a muslim belief:  A Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man.  We can agree that 99% of Muslims would agree with that statement, right?  So, if you believe that you get that idea from the Quran and the hadith and it's true because those texts are the divinely inspired word of God.  That type of unquestioning acceptance of any idea is dangerous.  Because if you're just trying to discover the true meaning of a hadith, you're not actually using reason or a humanist personal view of your religion.  That's the problem with ISIS, they shut off their conscience and reason because they've bought into fundamentalist religion. 

On the contrary, you have non-fundamentalist religion.  These people read their texts in a less rigid way and ask themselves, "what is the spirit of this message for me in 2014?"  They pick and choose how they read the Bible for example and interpret things in light of current wisdom.  That's all Islam needs to do, stop the rigid, rule based uncritical approach and adopt a humanist liberal version of their religion.