RE: When will the Middle East become majority Atheist?
March 9, 2015 at 9:29 pm
(This post was last modified: March 9, 2015 at 9:33 pm by Regina.)
I would like to think ISIS have made at least some Middle Easterners wake the fuck up about their religion. You'd think surely it has.
Turkey is already a (relatively) secular Muslim country and some Muslim countries are (again, relatively) less austere and open to modernisation (I'm talking the maghrebi states excluding Libya, and Jordan, maybe a few others).
I can't see an atheist majority there in our lifetimes though, Islam is just too entrenched in the legal systems of those countries and holds too much power. Religion doesn't like relinquishing power.
Muslims also have to lose this "defend the image of Islam at any cost" mentality they currently have. If Islam is going to modernise and reform the way Christianity has, they have to start being more reflective and actively seek reform. That can't happen while any criticism of Islam is met with complete condemnation.
Turkey is already a (relatively) secular Muslim country and some Muslim countries are (again, relatively) less austere and open to modernisation (I'm talking the maghrebi states excluding Libya, and Jordan, maybe a few others).
I can't see an atheist majority there in our lifetimes though, Islam is just too entrenched in the legal systems of those countries and holds too much power. Religion doesn't like relinquishing power.
Muslims also have to lose this "defend the image of Islam at any cost" mentality they currently have. If Islam is going to modernise and reform the way Christianity has, they have to start being more reflective and actively seek reform. That can't happen while any criticism of Islam is met with complete condemnation.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
