As most people know, here in Canada we have just experienced two incidents in which a Canadian soldier was murdered in a most cowardly fashion by young men who were influenced by the Muslim extremism of the Islamic State terrorists. One was run down by a car in a parking lot, and the other was shot in the back as he formed part of a ceremonial guard at the National War Memorial.
Understandably the larger Muslim community wants to disavow any connection, and so do apologists for religion in general. In an interview Karen Armstrong spouts a lot of bilge, most notably here:
Wahhabists encouraged people to read the Koran directly, and ignore the centuries of interpretation by learned scholars. Now that sounds great and liberating, but people were then licenced to come up with many wild interpretations. In the past, no one read the Koran on its own; it was enmeshed in a wide swath of complexity that actually held radical interpretations in check. Now that check’s been lifted, and all kinds of freelancers like Bin Laden, who is no more qualified to issue a Fatwa than I am, have free reign to come up with these extraordinary interpretations.
What she is really arguing is that we should disregard the plain words of the Koran—not to mention the Sira and Hadith—which all endorse violence against unbelievers in favor of complicated and unintelligible interpretations which reverse the obvious meaning.
Here is how I see it.
The vast majority of religious adherents are decent folk, who imagine that their religion is all about encouraging the ordinary virtues such as generosity and compassion along with a few ceremonial observances exalting the supposed founder of the religion, whether Moses or Jesus or Mohammed.
They are told that their Holy Book is the Word of God, but most of them spend little time reading it for the simple reason that it is boring. Of those who do read it I would wager they do as I once did, letting the words flow through their mind without paying much attention to the meaning, reading with the mind on cruise control as I like to call it.
A simple example. The Old Testament is full of wars. As a layman I plowed through it all with no discomfort. Why not? I was no pacifist. As a history buff I think that the Allies in World War II were waging a just war. So surely a war that God commanded way back then was also a just war. I don't mean I reasoned it out; that was simply my underlying attitude.
However, once you slow down and let the words mean what they say, you have only two options. I saw that the Old Testament God was supposedly commanding the Israelites to invade the homelands of other peoples and to give them the choice between slavery if they surrendered or extermination if they fought. Once I understood that, I could not believe in the Bible as the Word of God. Some people would choose to twist their mind into a pretzel in order to go on believing.
That was my particular stumbling block, but there are other texts in the holy books which have more impact in the world today.
Each religion has its own wrong-headed form of fundamentalism when fanatics assume that every word of their holy book comes from God.
To start with the most ancient religion, there are fundamentalists among the West Bank Jewish settlers who are convinced that God deeded a specific parcel of real estate to the Jews as described in the Torah. Thus Muslims who may have occupied some of the land for centuries are nothing but vermin to be swept off just as the ancient nations were supposedly driven out by Joshua. Their numbers are not many, and of course even the rational Jewish majority are a tiny group compared to the Christians and Muslims.
Christians, as I see it, can develop two forms of irrationality from taking the Bible literally. One is a penchant for prescriptive morality. It is easy to prove from the Bible that "God hates fags" and that has prompted not only the futile picketing of the Westboro Baptists but also more dangerously the western Pentecostals who have influenced the Ugandan government to promulgate repressive anti-gay laws. The other form of Christian insanity is the conviction that the end is nigh, which they share with Paul and Jesus himself. If the world is to end within a decade or two, there is obviously no need to concern ourselves with long range problems like climate change or social justice.
Islam too has its problematic statements in its holy texts, most notably conversion by force, beheading of those who do not acknowledge the prophethood of Mohammed, and treating women as sex slaves. Let us note that all of these positions are endorsed in the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith. Take one chilling example from the Bukhari Hadith, considered to be quite authoritative:
When some of the remaining Jews of Medina agreed to obey a verdict of Saed, Mohammed sent for him. ... Mohammed then said, "Saed, give these people your verdict." Saed replied, "Their soldiers should be beheaded and their women and children should become slaves." Mohammed, pleased with the verdict, said, "You have made a ruling that Allah or a king would approve of."
For those who would claim that Islam is a religion of peace, let it be remembered that Mohammed personally led military campaigns against unbelievers, and that Christian North Africa and the Middle East were not converted to Islam by eloquent missionaries but by armies wielding the sword.
I believe that most Muslims are peaceful people, but that is not the stance of its holy books, and the plentiful incitements to violence are there to be seized on by every mentally disturbed person looking for a pretext to justify his dark impulses.
Understandably the larger Muslim community wants to disavow any connection, and so do apologists for religion in general. In an interview Karen Armstrong spouts a lot of bilge, most notably here:
Wahhabists encouraged people to read the Koran directly, and ignore the centuries of interpretation by learned scholars. Now that sounds great and liberating, but people were then licenced to come up with many wild interpretations. In the past, no one read the Koran on its own; it was enmeshed in a wide swath of complexity that actually held radical interpretations in check. Now that check’s been lifted, and all kinds of freelancers like Bin Laden, who is no more qualified to issue a Fatwa than I am, have free reign to come up with these extraordinary interpretations.
What she is really arguing is that we should disregard the plain words of the Koran—not to mention the Sira and Hadith—which all endorse violence against unbelievers in favor of complicated and unintelligible interpretations which reverse the obvious meaning.
Here is how I see it.
The vast majority of religious adherents are decent folk, who imagine that their religion is all about encouraging the ordinary virtues such as generosity and compassion along with a few ceremonial observances exalting the supposed founder of the religion, whether Moses or Jesus or Mohammed.
They are told that their Holy Book is the Word of God, but most of them spend little time reading it for the simple reason that it is boring. Of those who do read it I would wager they do as I once did, letting the words flow through their mind without paying much attention to the meaning, reading with the mind on cruise control as I like to call it.
A simple example. The Old Testament is full of wars. As a layman I plowed through it all with no discomfort. Why not? I was no pacifist. As a history buff I think that the Allies in World War II were waging a just war. So surely a war that God commanded way back then was also a just war. I don't mean I reasoned it out; that was simply my underlying attitude.
However, once you slow down and let the words mean what they say, you have only two options. I saw that the Old Testament God was supposedly commanding the Israelites to invade the homelands of other peoples and to give them the choice between slavery if they surrendered or extermination if they fought. Once I understood that, I could not believe in the Bible as the Word of God. Some people would choose to twist their mind into a pretzel in order to go on believing.
That was my particular stumbling block, but there are other texts in the holy books which have more impact in the world today.
Each religion has its own wrong-headed form of fundamentalism when fanatics assume that every word of their holy book comes from God.
To start with the most ancient religion, there are fundamentalists among the West Bank Jewish settlers who are convinced that God deeded a specific parcel of real estate to the Jews as described in the Torah. Thus Muslims who may have occupied some of the land for centuries are nothing but vermin to be swept off just as the ancient nations were supposedly driven out by Joshua. Their numbers are not many, and of course even the rational Jewish majority are a tiny group compared to the Christians and Muslims.
Christians, as I see it, can develop two forms of irrationality from taking the Bible literally. One is a penchant for prescriptive morality. It is easy to prove from the Bible that "God hates fags" and that has prompted not only the futile picketing of the Westboro Baptists but also more dangerously the western Pentecostals who have influenced the Ugandan government to promulgate repressive anti-gay laws. The other form of Christian insanity is the conviction that the end is nigh, which they share with Paul and Jesus himself. If the world is to end within a decade or two, there is obviously no need to concern ourselves with long range problems like climate change or social justice.
Islam too has its problematic statements in its holy texts, most notably conversion by force, beheading of those who do not acknowledge the prophethood of Mohammed, and treating women as sex slaves. Let us note that all of these positions are endorsed in the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith. Take one chilling example from the Bukhari Hadith, considered to be quite authoritative:
When some of the remaining Jews of Medina agreed to obey a verdict of Saed, Mohammed sent for him. ... Mohammed then said, "Saed, give these people your verdict." Saed replied, "Their soldiers should be beheaded and their women and children should become slaves." Mohammed, pleased with the verdict, said, "You have made a ruling that Allah or a king would approve of."
For those who would claim that Islam is a religion of peace, let it be remembered that Mohammed personally led military campaigns against unbelievers, and that Christian North Africa and the Middle East were not converted to Islam by eloquent missionaries but by armies wielding the sword.
I believe that most Muslims are peaceful people, but that is not the stance of its holy books, and the plentiful incitements to violence are there to be seized on by every mentally disturbed person looking for a pretext to justify his dark impulses.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
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