Islam and ISIS

[KEND]

The recent confrontation between Ben Affleck and Bill Maher brought into the open many of the repressed feelings about Muslims the following I feel is an even handed article which urges us not to be influenced by the stereotypes of the right or the naivete of the left.

Bill Maher Isn’t the Only One Who Misunderstands Religion
By REZA ASLANOCT. 8, 2014 NYT
BILL MAHER’s recent rant against Islam has set off a fierce debate about the problem of religious violence, particularly when it comes to Islam.
Mr. Maher, who has argued that Islam is unlike other religions (he thinks it’s more “like the Mafia”), recently took umbrage with President Obama’s assertion that the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, or ISIS, does not represent Islam. In Mr. Maher’s view, Islam has “too much in common with ISIS.”
His comments have led to a flurry of responses, perhaps none so passionate as that of the actor Ben Affleck, who lambasted Mr. Maher, on Mr. Maher’s own HBO show, for “gross” and “racist” generalizations about Muslims.
Yet there is a real lack of sophistication on both sides of the argument when it comes to discussing religion and violence.
On one hand, people of faith are far too eager to distance themselves from extremists in their community, often denying that religious violence has any religious motivation whatsoever. This is especially true of Muslims, who often glibly dismiss those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam as “not really Muslim.”
On the other, critics of religion tend to exhibit an inability to understand religion outside of its absolutist connotations. They scour holy texts for bits of savagery and point to extreme examples of religious bigotry, of which there are too many, to generalize about the causes of oppression throughout the world.
What both the believers and the critics often miss is that religion is often far more a matter of identity than it is a matter of beliefs and practices. The phrase “I am a Muslim,” “I am a Christian,” “I am a Jew” and the like is, often, not so much a description of what a person believes or what rituals he or she follows, as a simple statement of identity, of how the speaker views her or his place in the world.
As a form of identity, religion is inextricable from all the other factors that make up a person’s self-understanding, like culture, ethnicity, nationality, gender and sexual orientation. What a member of a suburban megachurch in Texas calls Christianity may be radically different from what an impoverished coffee picker in the hills of Guatemala calls Christianity. The cultural practices of a Saudi Muslim, when it comes to the role of women in society, are largely irrelevant to a Muslim in a more secular society like Turkey or Indonesia. The differences between Tibetan Buddhists living in exile in India and militant Buddhist monks persecuting the Muslim minority known as the Rohingya, in neighboring Myanmar, has everything to do with the political cultures of those countries and almost nothing to do with Buddhism itself.
No religion exists in a vacuum. On the contrary, every faith is rooted in the soil in which it is planted. It is a fallacy to believe that people of faith derive their values primarily from their Scriptures. The opposite is true. People of faith insert their values into their Scriptures, reading them through the lens of their own cultural, ethnic, nationalistic and even political perspectives.After all, scripture is meaningless without interpretation. Scripture requires a person to confront and interpret it in order for it to have any meaning. And the very act of interpreting a scripture necessarily involves bringing to it one’s own perspectives and prejudices....The abiding nature of scripture rests not so much in its truth claims as it does in its malleability, its ability to be molded and shaped into whatever form a worshiper requires.
The same Bible that commands Jews to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) also exhorts them to “kill every man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey,” who worship any other God (1 Sam. 15:3). The same Jesus Christ who told his disciples to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39) also told them that he had “not come to bring peace but the sword” (Matthew 10:34), and that “he who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36).
The same Quran that warns believers “if you kill one person it is as though you have killed all of humanity” (5:32) also commands them to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5).How a worshiper treats these conflicting commandments depends on the believer. If you are a violent misogynist, you will find plenty in your scriptures to justify your beliefs. If you are a peaceful, democratic feminist, you will also find justification in the scriptures for your point of view
.What does this mean, in practical terms? First, simplistic knee-jerk response among people of faith to dismiss radicals in their midst as “not us” must end. Members of the Islamic State are Muslims for the simple fact that they declare themselves to be so. Dismissing their profession of belief prevents us from dealing honestly with the inherent problems of reconciling religious doctrine with the realities of the modern world. But considering that most of its victims are also Muslims — as are most of the forces fighting and condemning the Islamic State — the group’s self-ascribed Islamic identity cannot be used to make any logical statement about Islam as a global religion.
At the same time, critics of religion must refrain from simplistic generalizations about people of faith. It is true that in many Muslim countries, women do not have the same rights as men. But that fact alone is not enough to declare Islam a religion that is intrinsically more patriarchal than Christianity or Judaism. (It’s worth noting that Muslim-majority nations have elected women leaders on several occasions, while some Americans still debate whether the United States is ready for a female president.)
Bill Maher is right to condemn religious practices that violate fundamental human rights. Religious communities must do more to counter extremist interpretations of their faith. But failing to recognize that religion is embedded in culture — and making a blanket judgment about the world’s second largest religion — is simply bigotry.
Reza Aslan, a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, is the author, most recently, of “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.”

[Steve James]

No religion exists in a vacuum. On the contrary, every faith is rooted in the soil in which it is planted. It is a fallacy to believe that people of faith derive their values primarily from their Scriptures. The opposite is true. People of faith insert their values into their Scriptures, reading them through the lens of their own cultural, ethnic, nationalistic and even political perspectives.After all, scripture is meaningless without interpretation. Scripture requires a person to confront and interpret it in order for it to have any meaning. And the very act of interpreting a scripture necessarily involves bringing to it one’s own perspectives and prejudices....The abiding nature of scripture rests not so much in its truth claims as it does in its malleability, its ability to be molded and shaped into whatever form a worshiper requires.

+1

Afa Maher's criticism of Islam, I think it's useless since there's really no solution to a religion. It can be attacked, but what is the defense? Say he's absolutely right, so what next? What do we do about "it"? Or is it something that has to be done about the believers in that religion? If so, what's that? All reasonable solutions accepted, but let's hear some, religious or not.

[leifeng]

In his last paragraph Reza Aslan condemns the extremists but fails to tell us where the line between extremist Islam and non-extremist Islam is. In the other topic I asked an honest question from Zenshiite about the fate of a Muslim who converts to another religion according to the Shiite school of theology:

Probably if we make clear one simple question you wouldn't need to repeat everything at least to me for the years to come. My question is "What is moderate Islam?"
Let's say an adult-sane-male Muslim who was born to a Muslim parent decides to convert to Another religion. According to very clear riwaya from Imam Ali and Sadegh this person should be executed and even if he makes a confession and decides to come back to Islam after getting captured this wouldn't change his fate.

He tried to avoid answering my question because he knew that according to mainstream Shiite the fate of this person is sealed. So as a mainstream Shiite you either agree with this or you don't. If you agree you are rejecting human rights and if you don't agree you are rejecting your religion. So if someone wants to criticize this situation who should he attack?

A: The religion that says kill the convert or
B: The religious person who kills the convert as his religious obligation?

Bill Maher's answer is A and Reza Aslan's answer is B. Common sense tells me that Maher is targeting the root of the tree and Reza Aslan is targetting the branches. The problem with targeting the branches is that even if you cut a few they will continue growing on and on.

[leifeng]

Or is it something that has to be done about the believers in that religion? If so, what's that?

NEW WORLD ORDER

[vehu]

target the rulers of religiosity who manipulate hermeneutic discourses to support their own murderous machinations

target the religious person who kills the convert as his religious obligation

target the religion that says kill the convert

[Dajenarit]

It is a fallacy to believe that people of faith derive their values primarily from their Scriptures.

This statement is kind of nonsense to me. Scriptures are really the only thing that separate one religion from the other. Scriptures create the basic belief systems which allow a person to claim being an adherent to one faith or the other. Religious people like to pretend that they don't interpret scriptures at least partially literally when something distasteful in those scriptures are pointed out, but imo if a person didn't they wouldn't be marrying themselves to 1 specific religion in the first place. A Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist or Hindu, etc etc.. believe in certain unquestionable doctrines that separate their beliefs from each other. You wouldn't be able to confuse one for the other. There is room and a necessity for personal interpretation as we're all individuals supposedly seeking personal relationships with whatever you choose to believe at the end of the day, but there is a line, where you have to believe in certain things to be considered an adherent of that specific religion. If someone does interpret scriptures too liberally they're considered heretics or classified as being a separate sect or off-shoot from the mainstream belief system as passed down from centers of worship. If that weren't the case most people would be in much the same position as the Unitarian Universalists which most Christians don't even claim, nor do they claim Christianity. They've imo transcended a literal interpration of their scriptures and that frees them to pick and choose knowledge where ever they find it.. They understand that spirituality which is what religion has codified and exploited is merely an unqualified search for truth and meaning without limits or marriage to dogma.

If that statement was true, churches, mosques, temples or whatever would have been put out of business long ago because people would have no need for some preacher man, Rabbi or Iman to feed them a belief system based largely on a book that they read from some pulpit every week.

[Steve James]

It is a fallacy to believe that people of faith derive their values primarily from their Scriptures.

This statement is kind of nonsense to me. Scriptures are really the only thing that separate one religion from the other.

Well, religions existed before there was writing; and there are many religions that don't have texts at all. But, I think the writer's point was that all Muslims don't do the same things, despite what their scriptures say.

I think it's hard to argue that Christians do what they do because of the Bible. And they certainly don't do everything they do because of what is written in scripture. For ex., I don't think that the enslavement of people, the genocide of peoples, and the exploitation of people was caused by scripture or religion; but I know that religion was used to justify those things.

[Interloper]

How a religion is interpreted and practiced is very much a reflection of the conditions under which it exists. The cultures in which the religions were founded may have morphed considerably (most have) from then to today. So, over time adherents have had to re-interpret and otherwise adapt to fit civil society now.

This is certainly true of Christianity, Islam and Judaism as practiced in developed countries. However, there are places where resources are scarce, life is hard and conditions are harsh, and those conditions can give rise to a way of practicing religions that are as brutal as, or more so, than even the original version.

[Dajenarit]

Well I guess the heart of the problem is anyone believing in a scripture that has in any way, shape or form any justification for heinous acts like enslavement and genocide and then the denial of these parts of scripture. Its wanting to take only credit for good bits in your faith and the effect it has on the world, but ignoring that there are some pretty heinous beliefs in these same scripture. The moderate believers should collectively take some responsibility for the abuses others commit using those parts of the scripture that they try to deny. That denial allows misguided people to paint everyone of that faith with the same brush. Its denial and inaction that ultimately allows those extremists to get away with what they're doing. Who exactly has responsibility for the ways in which scriptures can be used to justify violence and oppression but moderate believers? Extremists by their nature wouldn't be able to do so.

A simple solution to me would be to remove or edit those parts of scripture that are detrimental to modern society and its values and sensibilities, but since the entirety of these scriptures are considered sacred unalterable words of God that will never happen. How can they have it both ways? Thats like eating cake and ignoring the icing or filling that's made out of arsenic. Most sensible people will scrape that shit off but some one else will eventually come along, eats some and starts passing out pieces to other impressionable people. Then it's pretended that it didn't come off the original cake in the first place. If they don't want to address those thing in their books they have to take responsibility when its used that way.

Like I said in another thread. I think its time for people to create their own modern spirituality that jives with the values and the scientific and philosophical knowledge that we've been fighting, dying, debating and arguing over for centuries without all the ancient, medieval baggage. We gotta stop pretending that we can't do better than belief systems that were tailored for there time and place in history but aren't as relevant as they can or need to be for the 21st century. That's just how I feel about the whole religion thing.

[Steve James]

I agree that people will need to adapt their religious interpretations to the conditions and needs of the time. However, those changes will still have to be consistent with those scriptures, even if interpreted differently. Hey, Catholic priests can't marry. Yeah, that practice makes Catholics "different," but that could change just as other things have changed. Witches aren't burned in boiling wax anymore, and people aren't tortured to confess their religious views. I.e., it's not a matter of whether religions change; it's just a matter of how.

It doesn't matter that one religion wants believers of other faiths to convert. That's been tried. It doesn't work in the long run.

[vehu]

is nobody really gon' make no thing out this...

[leifeng]

Now that I read more about this Reza Aslan I get it where he is coming from. If the religious institutions go down the likes of Aslan will also go down with them and would be out of business. On the other hand the likes of Maher would be out of joke.

[Bao]

How a religion is interpreted and practiced is very much a reflection of the conditions under which it exists.

Very true. IMO, it's better to leave "religion" out of the equation. Poverty, desperation, lack of education etc. has nothing to do with religion. Happy, educated people don't go voulentary to war or sacrifice themselves for religious causes.

If muslims automatically have a tendency to turn into terrorists we should really worry, because there are 1,6 billion muslims sprejad all over the world. Yet all of the terrorists seems to come from a very small geographic area where certain very tough circumstances prevail.

[leifeng]

Yeah many ISIS fighters seem to come from Europe. It should be a very tough geographical area. Let's donate some money to Europe.

[Bao]

Yeah many ISIS fighters seem to come from Europe. It should be a very tough geographical area. Let's donate some money to Europe.

ISIS didn't develop in Europe, or in the US. Why people in other countries join IS is another but very interesting question. But if you feel Europe is such a bad place with bad people, why not just bomb it? That's the language american understand - everything can be solved with violence and weapons... Ooops! That sounded just like ISIS ... Maybe they are in fact americans?