It’s very strange, but lately I find myself paying less attention to atheist white men on Islam, and more to ex-Muslims like Heina, Maryam, Tauriq, Taslima, and Marwa (have you noticed how deep the talent pool is here at FtB?), and those are leading me to other ex-Muslim authors like Kunwar Khuldune Shahid and the other writers at Ex-Muslim blogs, and I’m finding my view of Islam is become a lot messier and more complicated. I’m simultaneously less sympathetic to the religion and more interested in the people.
I consider increasing complexity to be a good thing. Diminishing the influence of the uninformed is also a good thing.
It’s amazing what you can learn when you listen to people, rather than tell those same people who they are, what they believed and why they believe what they believe now. Lots of nuance and complexity will be found. Something no poll will ever show and no spherical model will ever encompass.
The biggest problem with the modern discussion of Islam is that it only focuses on the fanatics, and ascribes their beliefs to everyone. Like if we assumed that all Christians are just like the Phelps clan. Because so few people in America actually know any Muslims, it’s easy to believe stories about them. Same thing happens with Atheists.
hoku, #2
The problem with Islam and the Muslim populations isn’t fanaticism and terrorism. That’s an American- and European-centered viewpoint.
The problem with Islam is suppression of free speech and a very oppressive stance towards women, LGBT, non-Muslims, and apostates. That’s what you’ll see dominate the discussions that ex-Muslims have of Islam. Think of the discrimination women, gay people, people of color and atheists face in a country like the United States and imagine something 10 times worse. That’s what it is like in most mainstream Muslim societies.
The biggest problem with the modern discussion of Islam is that it only focuses on the fanatics, and ascribes their beliefs to everyone. Like if we assumed that all Christians are just like the Phelps clan.
*cough*SamHarris*cough*
OK, he doesn’t actually say that’s what all Muslims or Christians (as the case may be) are like. He just says they’re the only authentic believers in their respective traditions; the rest don’t count because they don’t take their faith “seriously” (whatever that means).
How is Harris not basically being a garden-variety sectarian in that in @4 from EK? ‘Mormons aren’t real Christians because $ARCANE_SOPHISTRY” is functionally the same statement.
What a garbage set of ‘thinkers’ have been set over us.
Saad @3
I agree with half of your statement. The terrorism fear is stupid, counterproductive, and ignores the real problems. I think the latter half of your comment is the direct result of fanaticism gaining control. I don’t think it has anything specific to do with Islam, if the fanatical right-wing Christians in the US took over I don’t think the results would be much different from the Middle East.
Where we run into trouble is in the US there’s a tendency to say that “all Muslims are terrorists sympathizers, and if they aren’t why aren’t they denouncing the terrorists?” Westerners tend to ignore the fact that almost all victims of Muslim terrorism are other Muslims. We just think of everything as it relates to us.
As for the part about mainstream Muslim societies, how are things in Indonesia on that front? And how about Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan? I’m honestly curious, because I know very little on that part of the discussion.
Eamon Knight @4
I love the way people claim that this small part are the only true believers, so the rest don’t count. That is until its time to count their influence, then there’s well over a billion. Like how Evangelicals claim that Catholics aren’t Christians but happily include them when claiming Christianity as the worlds largest religion.
Harris – and all the others like him – is a bit of a mystery to me. How can anyone talk that way about non-representative groups of fanatics in a couple of (traditionally opposed) subsets of a widespread religion as though they are typical or representative of all the adherents of the religion itself?
A billion Catholics are not represented by the IRA, nor any of its offshoots, just as Protestants are not represented by the Orangemen of Ireland and their various supporters. And. they. never. were, even though those of us who are old enough can remember the various chants and insults flung around about Catholics/Protestants depending on where we lived and what schools we went to in the 50s and 60s a long, looooong, way from Ireland.
Just as it’s not true of Christian fanatics, it’s also not true of Muslim and Hindu fanatics. These people – different in faith but similar in horribleness – just go to demonstrate that vile and nasty people can arise and organise in any group if circumstances favour that.
hoku, #6,
I’m not saying it’s something unique to Islam. I’m saying it has to do specifically with Islam as it is practiced today. They’re in a dire need of reform. In the Middle East and large parts of Pakistan, women are absolutely ruined. It is a very dehumanizing brainwashing that they are subjected to since a very early age to the point that many of them don’t even realize they’re just a shackle short of being slaves. The “these Islamic principles are here to protect us” narrative is all too common.
Turkmenistan is absolutely horrid but that’s because they’re a North Korea-ish government and not really because of Islam. Indonesia is among the better Muslim nations, but they still have issues with discrimination of the Ahmadi sect and women’s rights. I’m not familiar with what things are like for Uzbekistan.
Practices like arranged marriage, forced marriage, child marriage, genital mutilation, punishments for dress code violations, extramarital sex, women being denied the right to work, women being denied educations, open persecution and marginalization of apostates, non-Muslims and LGBT is rampant and too engrained in the general population.
Wikipedia’s page on Human Rights in Uzbekistan
Saad @9
I know you’re not saying that. My point was just that people like Harris are saying that. They use the barbaric acts of the few powerful to say “all Muslims are evil and worship a god of death!” In reality, most Muslims are just people, and a religious dictatorship or semi-dictatorship of any faith would produce similar results.
hoku, #11
I completely agree. I actually couldn’t possibly agree more because my entire huge family and friends of my family are all Muslims who are just people. They’re incredibly hospitable. They feel happy when treated nicely and hurt when treated poorly. Harris is dead wrong to paint them like they’re a scourge. But the vast majority of them are also sexist, homophobic and very intolerant towards apostates. And this is the status quo. It’s how it is across the board.
Consider the case of homophobia, racism and sexism in the U.S. Many, many such people here are also “just people.” That’s the picture I, and many other ex-Muslims, want to paint. That’s the comparison I’ll put to you: If you’re familiar with the mistreatment of gay people, women, atheists and people of color in America (not just officially by the government, but the general awareness and view towards them in society), just think of the same but on a worse level in Muslim nations.
Saad @12
That’s almost exactly what I picture.
I never thought I’d see that day when PZed quoted a Pope approvingly.
Strange, that’s also the problem with conservative Christianity.
Sadly, this sort of thing appears to be the default for “civilized” peoples. The most powerful, which is typically a male warrior/land-owning caste, imposes its control over everyone else, including women and those who don’t conform to the accepted lifestyle. And then they encode the shit in religious mores. People quickly forget how long and painful the process of changing that was in the West, and we look at Muslim countries today and wonder why they aren’t exactly like we are now instead of the way we were in 1900.
Hear! Hear! People are people; it is the zealot who, by insisting on purity of essence, try to make people subject to the zealot’s own obsessions.
Because there is no foundational myth for atheism many atheists are inoculated against this zealotry, unfortunately it does not stop some atheists from trying to adopt the role of zealot and insisting that you, me and others toe the (party) line and not see flaws in other atheists.
Your support has been essential, PZ.