It’s like every time I go to Europe, it’s the same two or three Muslims waiting to greet me. There they were in Dublin, Hamza Tzortzis and his crew, and now I come to Oslo, and there they are, the same Muslims parked outside the Humanist Congress (Google translation).
Islam Net believes Congress is based on “the erroneous assumption that humanism is the way forward for humanity.” Islam Net and its affiliates are not surprisingly more faith in Islam as the way forward.
– Islam is a world view that is not only sensible, but the basis for our values and morals, said the press release.
That’s all nonsense, of course: Islam is a primitive religion with a violent history, and like all those Abrahamic faiths, is all about praising a non-existent patriarchal deity. Islam is the past, atheism and humanism are the future. And if Islam is the basis for our morality, why is the Islamic world such a hellhole of barbarity and opression? (I’d also flip that around and ask, if Christianity is such a moral and righteous faith, why are American Christians so fervent about making the rubble bounce in their bombings of Islamic countries?)
I have no problem with the Muslims putting up their information booth outside the congress. However, what really annoyed me about them was that they were quite dedicated in intruding on the discussion on twitter, using the congress hashtag #humanist2011 freely while not actually attending the congress. We were getting constant exhortations to come out and visit their booth, and they were positively manic in raving about some survivor of the Utoya killings who was a convert to Islam, which was widely considered to be extremely tasteless and inappropriate.
They also got rather frantic when the twitter conversation was about Taslima Nasreen’s talk — you want to annoy an Islamist? Just let a Muslim woman speak. I looked into a few of the angry Islamist tweets: new accounts with almost no history, created just to spam the conference. Bad show, very bad show. They made no new friends with their behavior.
I couldn’t really tell from the translation: was their talk part of the conference?
Yet another reason not to tweet.
Not sure if this approach has been taken with them, but something that may worth asking them in the future.
What is the actual plan and approach to carry humanity forward via faith in {insert religion here}?
Just like the political conservatives, there is this grandiose idea that faith will carry them forward (or just plain capitalism will magically solve everything for the political conservatives). But what does this mean in practical terms? Are all laws to be changed to Sharia law? And which approach to Sharia law will be taken (modernists, traditionalists, and fundamentalists look at those laws differently)? Who will be the leadership? What will be the basis for qualification for that leadership?
One of the ways to expose a lie is the start drilling into the details. Eventually, these types will slip up and you will expose something very telling (e.g. they likely have some specific people in mind to be in charge when their “faith-based initiative” is complete). Get them to admit to problems of today instead of pointing out their massive flaws of the past (although that is always nice too).
Couldn’t help but think of M*bus and his ilk, irrational people who get all tweaked up and generate enormous amounts of pointless spam. It is as if they actually believe that truth and facts are settled by how many times something is repeated and/or how loudly. (Like conservatives.)
The Islamists were NOT part of the conference. They had a tent or booth set up in the square outside the conference building.
I think Taslima would be offended if you called her a muslim. She’s Bangledeshi. But yeah. Her mere presence is enough to cause the mouths of muslim fundamentalists to froth in hatred. Her books are banned in Bangledesh and many parts of India where she lives.
@Tis,
I don’t know a lot about Twitter but I would have thought that actually hijacking a hashtag, since it somewhat defeats the concept, would breach their rules. Then again, I am a naive non-twitter-er-er-er so it probably goes on all the time.
I can see that their talk was not part of the conference; I wonder what sort of attendance they managed ;D
They even went as far as threatening one of the conference attendees with violence (not Tzortis himself, but one of his sycophants). It was indeed offensive – intrusive and tasteless.
unbound #3:
Western capitalism will never tolerate the prohibition on interest, but it always seems to me that the aspects of Sharia the Islamist nutters are most concerned about are the social restrictions, just like their Christian social conservative counterparts in the U.S. Here, they’re willing to run the country into the ground and take the world economy crashing down with it; their priorities lie almost exclusively in prohibiting premarital sex, birth control and abortion.
Well from where I sit (to pee), it wouldn’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference. Even if the most moderate form of Sharia were implemented, you’d still have the hardliners stoning women who leave their homes unveiled or unescorted.
People with penises.
Penises.
Really? Well, I guess that they weren’t true Muslims™ ;P
@ Jacques: Really? A fundamentalist religiot threatening violence? I’m shocked, shocked I tells ya.
I wonder what would happen to a couple atheists attending an Islamic conference, accosting the speakers, setting up an information booth outside, and spamming their twitter feed?
I’m sure they’d just get mildly criticized on a blog: “Tiresome and ill-mannered atheists.”
Riiiiiight.
One of the highlights of the conference (not really, but it was funny), was just before lunch yesterday, when some strong gusts of wind picked up their tent and blew it away. Methinks they should have been praying to Zoraster instead.
Zoroaster was a prophet, not a wind god.
Hey, i was sitting with this page open and it installed a fake anti-virus program called “windows Security Center”and it’s a bitch, disables your .exe function.
‘Tis Himself, pour encourager les autres 15 August 2011 at 7:50 am:
More hot air has come from any one prophet than from all the gods humans have ever believed in.
Sounds exactly like the xian fundies.
The xian fundies created the New Atheists. They create No Religions by the millions just by being ignorant, vcious, and scary, examples of what not to do and what not to be.
Well, Quetzalcoatl then.
Being an atheist myself, I can’t necessarily disagree with the overall sentiment. But I thought it important to point out that Islamic fundamentalism is a relatively recent development; the apparently primitive beliefs really only arose in the 1950s. Islamic countries in the Middle Ages were just hanging out, doing things like inventing algebra, while Christian Europe was burning women for having funny birthmarks. The Islamic world is “a hellhole of barbarity and oppression” because some very manipulative people decided to justify their horrible regimes by corrupting a largely peaceful, progressive religion.
Well played, sir.
I’ve never heard of Taslima Nasreen, but if she’s got the Islamists’ knickers in a bunch, it’s enough of a reason for me to want to learn more about her.
“Islamic countries in the Middle Ages were just hanging out, doing things like inventing algebra”
Er, no, MJtheprophet, some people in some islamic countries were doing things like inventing algebra, but a lot of other people were bringing the benefits of islam to other countries, whether they wanted them or not, or hunting down the wrong kinds of muslim just as enthusiatically as christians hunted the wrong kinds of christian.
I think if everyone took the time to actually think critically about the tenets of religions, rather than just blindly following their holy people, there would be a lot less religious violence in the world. I was raised roman catholic and always taught that atheists were actually physically dangerous (like kidnap you and brainwash you into being a godless person rendering you unto hell… etc dangerous). And the sad thing is that people in our church community just blindly accepted that world view with no problem. It’s like, come on people use your BRAIN! (But then again, I was always in trouble with the church doesn’t help that I was almost kicked out of elementary school because I spent an entire class arguing that God did NOT create the earth). Here’s a hint, when your religious people are blatantly violating the teachings your religion presupposes, its probably time to start thinking about a new religion (or a lack of one, which is much better).
skmarshall #15
Two points:
1. Malwarebytes Anti-malware will remove “Windows Security Center”. Plus it’s free.
2. Please don’t use gendered insults on this website. “Bitch” is such an insult.
Hey, i was sitting with this page open and it installed a fake anti-virus program called “windows Security Center”and it’s a bitch, disables your .exe function.
It’s a browser hijack – don’t pay the $$ they want, your system is NOT actually infected with anything execept the scareware. Noscript is your friend.
The RCC still does. Cardinal Cormac called atheism the greatest evil in the world and blamed it on all the wars in history. Cormac is also up to his pointy hat in the church child sex abuse scandals.
Only the dumb ones these days. The smart Catholics are keeping a close and wary eye on the priests and not letting their kids out of their sight when they are around.
@ MJtheProphet
Much earlier. The Wahhabist’s who are currently spreading their batshit craziness around with the aid of petrodollars, started around the 1740’s.
The Salafist crazies claim to have got their start at the time of Mohamed (they would though, wouldn’t they?) Their violent jihadism is fairly new but not surprising as their views fall more and more out of step with current realities.
-Raven
I think all the priests in the rcc should be required to wear shock collars and anytime they touch a child, they get zapped with 10’s of 1000’s of volts. Classical conditioning with negative reinforcement MIGHT actually work with these people. Remember not only is it a sin, it’s a FELONY!
how do I in set text with the gray line next to it (like when quoting someone), do I have to do that in a word processor?
Ann Coulter just wrote a book about how liberals are actually demons.
A lot of the fundie cults and the Mormons teach that nonfundies and nonMormons are either demon possessed or slaves of satan.
Which means the number of demons, demon possessed, and/or slaves of satan outnumber the True Xians (whoever they claim they are) in the world by some huge factor depending on the cult.
For the Mormons it would be ca. 600 to 1. The LDS god doesn’t look too powerful here. Especially since it created the demons and satan in the first place.
HNS_Lasangna@28
surround the quote with blockquote tags
the quoted text in this post looks like this
<blockquote>how do I in set text with the gray line next to it</blockquote>
@ HNS_Lasagna
[blockquote] with the little arrow brackets instead of the square one’s I’ve used. (eg’s below in “Allowed tags”) See this Link.
You should also add “Text formatting” Toolbar to Firefox. Link.
[/off-topic]
@Abelard,
Bangladeshi is a nationality and muslim is a religious allegiance. That said, Nasreen might well be miffed to be called muslim.
I had not heard of Taslima Nasreen before. I just read the Wikipedia entry on her, and she sounds like a courageous and fascinating person. I would like to read one of her works, can anyone recommend a good introductory piece?
@ theophontes
I’m actually a safari man myself, used to use chrome and opera, but since apple released the debugging feature for safari I find it much easier to interface with, than say i.e.7 or firefox. I suppose both have their strengths, I just prefer safari. That said thanks for the advice. Cheers!
sorry to be off topic
OT @ skmarshall #15
Once you have followed the previously offered advice, or have otherwise removed the malware, you need to fix the executable file association.
If you have a grip on the registry, you can probably fix it yourself. But here are some pointers, depending on your flavor of Windows. (To post the actual repairs here would seriously disfigure the thread.)
XP: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm download the exe fix (small reg file)
Vista, 7:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950505
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/windows-7-unable-to-open-programs/1d790eb7-62c1-4a40-8917-7c5bbef628c0
OK, maybe posting registry contents would have looked better than that last link. :p
Abelard #6
She would probably correct anyone assuming her to be a Muslim, at least. I think PZ’s intent here was to note that these sorts of fundamentalists would be really annoyed by a woman speaking (*gasp!*), and that she could be identified with Islam (former Muslim, Muslim, profiled as a potential Muslim) would be even more annoying.
PZ is usually much more careful about phrasing such things, IMHO.
No scientific innovation came out of the Arabic peninsula after the establishment of Islam. Those good old times tales of science flourishing in the Middle East refer to before the 8th century.
Nice to see PZ met some old friends, I hope you said Hi from me…:-)
To the best of my knowledge, no significant scientific innovation has ever come out of the Arabian peninsula (there’s no such place as the “Arabic peninsula”, so I guess this is what you meant). But claiming that there was no scientific innovation in the Middle East under Islam just demonstrates your ignorance and prejudice.
Science did flourish in the Islamic world between the 8th century and 15th century. See science in medieval Islam.
Yeah, I got that. But there are many more reasons muslims would want to disrupt her talk or do even worse things. She has had several fatwahs issued against her since the 1990s demanding her death. She is one of the most outspoken voices against religious oppression and for women’s rights in India. If you haven’t read her before, you should pick up one of her banned books. It might seem kind of cliche now to read the biography of a young religiously oppressed girl in Bangledesh, especially after the success of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, but Nasrin’s 1999 biography was the first to really illuminate this struggle for young women in that part of the world.
Her character actually reminds me a lot of PZs, lol. To give you an idea why muslims hate her so, here is a small excerpt from a 2008 interview with the Middle East Quarterly regarding muslim accomodationists like the islamic scholar Nasir Abu Zayd. (who sadly died last year) The MEQs interview with her can be found in it’s entirety here
@Tis’
Malwarebyte is great. Unfortunately, the only thing it doesn’t remove is the google redirect virus. In fact, having tried all the free antimalwares, none of them remove it. Why is it so hard to remove the redirect virus?
Not that it matters. My hard drive went to hell anyways. I am now using my dad’s laptop. :(
Okay, I just have to ask, PZ:
Why do you use the word “primitive” to describe *ANY* religion?
What would be an “advanced” (or pick your antonym) religion?
What could muslims do to still be religious and still be exactly as devout or not as they currently are (not changing the quantity of religiosity) that would change the *quality* of religiosity to a non-primitive type?
I ask because I see the word used often in ways that I consider quite racist. I haven’t seen that from you. Rather, I see you using the word primitive to describe so many religions & religious people that it seems to have lost all meaning, not used in a limited way that causes it to imply a racist meaning.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you do have something specific in mind when you say “primitive”. I’d just like to know what it is.
One thing I would NOT like to see is that we assume that religions of technologically primitive cultures are necessarily primitive religions. It is possible to be culturally complex and/or advanced without being technologically so. And in any case, technology is not religion, so the description of one should not depend on the other.
I’d love to hear others chiming in on this as well.
–)->
I didn’t want to color the answers to my post, but now I do, so I’ll add:
Is monotheism more “advanced” than polytheism? than animism? than ancestor worship?
if so, why?
Does “cultural advancement” have something to do with whether something is an “advanced” religion?
If so, what does having an “advanced culture” mean besides having a Western one?
Does portraying certain religions as “primitive” imply that some religions are advanced? Wouldn’t it have to?
If it does… don’t we add to the conceit of those who think that their super-awesomely-abstract-and-complicated theology is “advanced” theology? Doesn’t that just reinforce their arrogance and their certainty that their theology must be taken more seriously than other theology?
Is abstraction a sign of advancement /progress / anti-primitivism in religion or theology?
Did I just throw a wrench in things by adding the word theology when I started out talking about religion…or was theology implied at the beginning since at bottom theology is just thinking about religion and that’s what we’re doing when answering these questions anyway?
Okay, go about your business….
Hi KG,
I explicitly said innovation, not preservation, transmission or building upon the work of others, like Greece or India. And of innovation, there wasn’t much to speak of after the 9th century.
I love that Crescent and Big Star song or as many of you may be more familiar with, the theme song to That 7th Century Show
Hanging out at, in the souk
Same old thing I did with Abdul
Not a thing to doooooo but smoke hookaaahhhh
No scientific innovation came out of the Arabic peninsula after the establishment of Islam. Those good old times tales of science flourishing in the Middle East refer to before the 8th century
Completely and utterly wrong. ALL advancements in astronomy, medicine, optics and mathematics that western thinkers relied on for later advancements were made under the Islamic Umayyad Caliphates. Prior to the 7th century the Arabian Penninsula along the red sea coast was just a patchwork of petty kingdoms united by the trade routes that ran through Mecca and Medina and on to Alexandria, which was the real central hub of Hellenistic intellectual culture until the 6th century. The Alexandrian schools were dominated by the Neo-Platonists at the critical time of Islamic ascendance. In astronomy, for example, this meant scholars were more concerned with proving Plato’s Timaeus right than they were with establishing mathematical rigor along the lines of Ptolemy. It was the Islamic scholar Alkwarizmi who brought back rigorous mathematics via Euclidean proofs to astronomy.
I’m not PZ, but I’ll put my answers in.
It’s belief in a fairy tale. “childlike” might be a better descriptor than “primitive”
Doesn’t exist. It’s an oxymoron. You’re just as likely to find a square circle.
That resembles my framing of atheism as well. I say that I’ve met a few people who had the good fortune to grow up as atheists, and to me they seem like characters from an advanced civilization out of science fiction. The TV series Stargate SG-1 also showed this idea as well in the first season episode about the Tollan civilization, titled “Enigma”:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v673/advancedatheist/?action=view¤t=BEFOREREASONANDSCIENCE.mp4
#47 Rob says:
An “advanced” religion could restrict itself to making empirically testable claims about transforming consciousness in beneficial ways, like Buddhism minus its woo. For example:
Buddhists ‘really are happier’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3047291.stm
Hi
Thanks for the advice. I’m the IT department at work so removal was not the problem. I posted because the hijack must have come from somewhere, either the page server itself or one of the sidebar ads, which i thought might have been important to management.
“2. Please don’t use gendered insults on this website. “Bitch” is such an insult.”
Ow, sorry. Meant as non-gendered colloquial term for “difficult to remove when Malwarebytes won’t run and then even after you change .exe to .com, it’ll run but it won’t update because the installer you can’t find is an executable as well and since you’re the IT department as well as the graphic designer it won’t do to have the suits notice your computer is running in safe mode while you fix the registry, because perhaps you shouldn’t have been reading Pharyngula on company time in the first place”
Oh well… move along, nothing to see here.
Re Mark Plus @ 48
Not a good analogy. Later the Tollan got creamed by the Stephen Jays.
(vexing how one of the most best SF shows in the last generation, brimming over with barely concealed atheism can otherwise otherwise genuflect to so many totally a*holeish tropes and jingoistic fetishes)
— TWZ
James Frazer (link) on the inevitable replacement of religion by science:
In answer to the question, “What would be an “advanced”… religion?”: I would say a religion that has the courage to look at it’s history – to be self-critical and, in realising it has gone down the wrong fork in the road, retrace its way back to an engagement with reality and thence to science. In essence a religion that peaceably ceases to be a religion and re-engages its (former) adherents with the real world.
Oh Pooh! Double spacing in my last post – sorry, I don’t know what caused that.
Theophontes says that an advanced religion is one that ceases to be religion.
Rob says that there is no such thing as an “advanced” religion.
If either of these things are true, then there cannot be a “primitive” religion because there cannot be anything other than a primitive religion….the characteristics by which you judge the system are the characteristics of *Religion* not the characteristics of *Primitivism*.
If this is true, “primitive” is at least lousy thinking, worse it could be providing comfort and solace by allowing people whom you intend to critique to constantly believe that they are the non-existent exception, the advanced religionists.
At rock bottom, primitive is a racist synonym for folk from countries in the process of urbanizing.
I’m not seeing any upside to using primitive and a lot of downside. Does anyone have anything to add that would make “primitive” seem useful and more worthwhile?
btw: mark plus – I ignored you b/c it was unclear whether or not you were saying that to be an advanced religion one must no longer be a religion. “Only empirical claims” can include “Hundreds of zombies flooded Jerusalem during passover about 1980 years ago” but you said, “Like Buddhism without the woo.” so I was unclear. I’m still open to you making a case that something can be advanced and still a religion.
Hoever if the category is to be useful ….that is, if we are to use the word “primitive” in the present… then any system of determining which religions are advanced and which primitive would have to classify **Some** current, present day religions as advanced – as actually practiced, not just, “This religion could, in theory, be advanced.”
Are you making an argument that can divide todays religions into primitive and advanced, Plus?
More ignorant, prejudiced crap. Even if it were true that there “wasn’t much to speak of” after the 9th century (it isn’t – see here, for example), that still leaves more than two centuries during which Muslims (specifically the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties) ruled most of the Middle East. As for “building upon the work of others”, that’s exactly what science does.
Also wrong, though at a more detailed level. The Umayyads were replaced by the Abbasids, except in Spain, around 750 CE. There was far more scientific innovation under the Abbasids than the Umayyads, and it continued in Cairo under the Shi’ite Fatimids in the 10th and 11th centuries. The steep intellectual decline of Islam can be dated to the mid-11th century, when the main centres of Islamic urban culture were invaded by nomads from (variously) central Asia, Arabia and the Sahara.
But at that point isn’t it a philosophy and not a religion?
An advanced religion would be an enlightened oen that has eschewed Evangelism and evolved into a socially minded monastic order. Say a group of monks who take vows of service and poverty, do odd jobs around a community, sell their wares and use the profits to benefit the community or the poor. They don’t evangelize because the contentment of their order and their dedication to their cause is all the advertizement they need
Thanks for that clarification KG.
So the Monks from B5 basically…
The Wahabis have been active since the 18th Centuary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahabi
@ Crip Dyke
Sorry if the quoted text was a little verbose (it is a good summation of the issues at hand though).
With regard to your question of “primitive” versus “advanced” religion, I would first point you at the sequence explained in the piece I quoted in #52: “from magic through religion to science.”
There is a fairly smooth transition from magic to religion. As people move along this continuum, the religion displaces the magical elements more and more. People move their early (mis)apprehensions of nature from a direct relationship with nature to a direct relationship with the supernatural. (To thereby affect or control their natural conditions by unnatural intercession of a “supreme being”.) In this context the term “primitive” would refer to a position early on in the process of the religious development I describe here.
The next step in this progression is to lose faith in religion (which can be discontinuous and abrupt) and revert to a more direct relationship with nature. Though this time with a carefully observed, carefully tested understanding that is predictive and efficacious.
To my mind “primitive religion” is close to proto-science and “advanced religion” is as far removed from nature and rationality as one can go. Like the early and late stages of a disease. To be advanced in the sense of civilisation or being of practical use to humans, then religion would have to shed the woo and essentially stop being a religion.
As an example of this perhaps consider a time when the greek gods had cease to be the murderous, sacrifice-requiring monsters of old and had come to take on all the frivolousness of the greek upper crust. Eventually they would have descended into the butts of jokes and children’s stories.
(Aside: One can certainly imagine a progression from magic directly to science. I think for example of Feng Shui, which has an admixture of logic and woo. I can well think that over time pragmatism may whittle away the woo and advance the scientific aspects.)
……………….
Certainly not from what I have set out above. And even in the sense of religiously “unsophisticated”, this merely translates into “less delusional”.
In the context of urbanisation, I am not sure we are necessarily onto a good thing with mass urbanisation in the first place. If mass consumption and massive populations are the ultimate goal, then yes, you may have a point.
But not if environmental and social issues are to be addressed in a sustainable fashion. Here “primitive” – early on the right path – sure as hell beats “sophisticated” – far advanced on the wrong path.
Sure this site paints a harsh view of Muslims, but anyone debating them, will have noticed them using such tactics.
http://www.islam-watch.org/Warner/Taqiyya-Islamic-Principle-Lying-for-Allah.htm
But we should not allow them to get away with this, even if it makes us seem to be a bully. A lie is lie and we will not accept it from our friends, so why should we accept it from those who oppose us?
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Taslima Nasreen… Yay.
Islamist Jackholes, Boo.
:-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P
@ Rorschach (re: KG)
Rorschach, more about the dynasties of which KG speaks:
The Umayyads (661-750): A rather godless bunch that was substantially free of the dogma that would later beset Islam. They were rather self-serving in their attitude to religion and also very open to wine, dancing girls, poetry and music. (Richard Feinman would have approved.) They did consider themselves muslim though.
The Abbasids (~ 749-1258): Claiming descent from Muhammad’s uncle (al-Abbas), they overthrew the above for their “godlessness and opposition to religion”. They would run the show henceforth “on behalf of God”. They made up a lot of hadiths and isnads on-the-trot to suite their political (and financial) interests. They where less tolerant of others “of the book” like christians and jews.
The Mu’tazilites that arose in this period were in fact very focussed on rationalism, so we must grant them that. They where certainly not liberal though and started the “Muslim Inquisition” (Mihna) to root out alternative viewpoints (particularly the superstitious and mythological elements). They where obviously on a collision course with their own religion, but the whole process was reversed by al-Mutawakkil and religion gained the upper hand over the rational impulses.
Obviously there is no point in going into a whole Real Muslim ™ argument. The libertine or rationalist examples I have shown are obviously not that to which you refer. It is worth noting how much of what is good to come out of early islam happened in spite of (you might say because of) it being a very different kettle of fish to the types of islam one sees flashing across ones TV in modern times…
As with all religions, the demand for attention precedes the demand for obediance. Nothing is more frightening to them than a (fast)growing group of people that refuse to take them seriously.
At least they seem to know that violence would not serve their goals. I hope that they know that.
That neither the Umayyads, nor the Abbasids, nor the Mu’tazilites were fluffy liberals is neither here nor there. The plain fact is, Rorschach is determinedly ignorant about scientific innovation under early Islam, and repeats his ignorant prejudices every time the subject comes up: he is determined to deny that such innovation occurred, in the teeth of the facts.
@ KG
I trust you have pointed out Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā 980-1037) the polymath particularly praised for contributions to medical science:
(Link to Pffft.) He was both rationalist and muslim.
Or going back a bit more to Al-Razi (865 – 925), while sticking to medical science:
(link to Pffft)
Obviously the list is far longer. One point that could be made is that a person espousing blasphemies such as he made in those days, would probably be fatwa-ed to death nowadays.