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| Arabia |
| Orson Scott Card: How Sharia Destroys Islam. |
| 2006-04-06 |
| EFL'd to get to a (not "the") good part. Go read it all, you'll be glad you did. . . . Freedom of conversion is at the core of freedom of religion -- indeed, at the core of freedom of any kind. If you cannot change your mind, your stated beliefs, and the religious community you choose to associate with, you are not free. What I find most amusing is the widespread belief among Muslims that this Sharia law is essential in order to preserve Islam. Don't they see that it is exactly this law that destroys Islam wherever it is enforced? To the degree that the law demanding the death of anyone who converts away from Islam is actually enforced, to exactly that degree the nation that enforces it is not a Muslim nation. Indeed, there are no Muslims at all, wherever that law is enforced. Because religion is absolutely not about mere outward compliance with the law. It is about belief -- it is about what a person believes in his heart. But in a nation where conversion away from Islam means death, then no believer can be sure that his own obedience is purely a matter of conscience. If a person "believes" in Islam, but there has ever been a moment when he thought, "since I can't convert to another faith anyway, what's the point of learning about any other way of thinking?" then that person is not a Muslim. There is no faith under compulsion. Any nation where Sharia is enforced is not a Muslim nation, and none of its people are Muslims. If they cannot choose not to be Muslim, then they have not chosen to be Muslim. Without freedom not to believe, faith is a sham even if you think you are sincere. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #15 Not all Muslims demand death for "apostasy." I try to keep abreast of activities of Baptist missionaries in sub-Saharan Africa, some of whom work in Muslim areas. They do not find many converts among Muslim tribes, but they do find some, and the converts survive. Ostracism may feel worse than death, but you live. The problem is that the speakers for Islam and the suppliers of Imams to the world are the Saudis and Egyptian Qutb-ites and their ilk. And they, as Card says, are too hate-filled and afraid to dream of risking freedom of religion. If there is going to be any reformation in Islam, where will it start? It can't start in Egypt or Saudi-controlled Arabia anytime soon; they're already swamps where it'd take a lot of courage to stray from the party line. Pakistan and Afghanistan seem to be trying to be more "Muslim" than the Arabs. Turkey seems to be falling into the Muslim Brotherhood camp too. And I'm not aware of any major Muslim theological schools in sub-Saharan Africa any more; certainly nothing as respected as Al-Azhar in Cairo. And scholars from within the "Great Satan" have a hard row to hoe to get respect around the world. They'll be asked why they don't change their own country first: Not a pleasant prospect for the rest of us. If there is a reformation, it is only going to succeed to the extent that it can convince other Muslims that the new way is holier than the Wahhabi way. And that's a big problem. As long as the debate has to do with how many rules you can keep, the only way to beat the Wahhabis is to be more anal and aggressive than they are. Even if the reformation is Sufi-type, with a focus on the inner life, there will have to be enough outward expression of this inner life in holiness (as understood by Muslims) to make an impression. We might be able to live with this "holiness as understood by Muslims," but that's not certain either. I leave out the Shiites because I don't see them transforming the Sunnis; the accumulated differences seem too great. |
| Posted by: James 2006-04-06 17:01 |
| #14 Besides the fact that nobody could conceive of Mohammed being a nice guy ... nobody can conceive of Islam ever letting a book like LAMB be made about Mohammed. It would be worse than the explosion about to hit SouthPark. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-04-06 16:54 |
| #13 phil_b got it in one. Doesn't matter if treating your women like livestock is a bad thing. What matters is that it results in a boatload of chilluns. |
| Posted by: BH 2006-04-06 16:40 |
| #12 OSC is correct in his assessment of what makes a faith vital. I agree with him 100% in that respect. All the critical commenters are not criticizing Card on what makes a good religion and what constitutes religious freedom: rather, it seems to me that they are evaluating the possiblity of Islam to have it's "reformation" given the dynamics within the religion itself. I feel the problems people talk about are relevant, but not causitory: they are the inevitable results of some core decisions made within the religion that give it its character, and which, in turn, influence people by means of what acts are approved and disapproved. The core decision I think Islam made was to set up Mohammed as the Ideal Muslum Incarnate, the template all Muslims must fit, as a counter to the Christian core decision to set up Jesus as the Ideal Christian, the template all Christians must fit. (Judaism did not even entertain the decision.) Now I submit that the Jesus, as depicted in the Gospels, is a pretty nice all-around good guy: he tells stories, he goes to parties whose raucousness makes the Pharisees suggest he's fond of the bottle, can't stand pretentious pricks, and pulls scandalous people out of trouble: If you had the option of choosing him as a neighbor, he'd be on your short list. More importantly, when one of his pals, in an obvious sign of loyalty, cut a guy's ear off to defend him, Jesus REBUKED him. Forget about patching the ear back miraculously, and realize that the guy was adverse to violence being done on his behalf. The Gospel of Thomas was rejected from the canon partly because his depiction of the Child Jesus is totally unrecognizable: I read it, and I kept thinking, "This is SO wrong." because I was reading about a brat using miracles to zap people who bullied him. Heck, I have a hard time convincing people that Jesus Might, as a child, have punched out some bully's lights for picking on the new kid in the block, but killing the bully for insulting himself. Just. Not. Right. Even if you want to believe everything was forged, the forgery was consistently spun to portray a pacifistic Jesus. Now, I won't detail what we all know about Mohammed, but just ask yourself this: would you want HIM as your neighbor? Did he PERSONALLY discourage ALL violence done on his behalf? Remember, organizations rot from the head down. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-04-06 15:58 |
| #11 3dc, do you mean the Medina crater and the Mecca mirror? |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-04-06 12:45 |
| #10 The cynic in me says there will be no chance of a change until after the Gulf of Mecca and the Bay of Medina are old geographic features. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-04-06 12:05 |
| #9 the need for an Islamic reformation from within. Islam has zero motivation to reform. By its own doctrine, it is far more glorious to die resisting the least alteration of doctrine than to submit to another's vision of their faith. The death cult nature of Islam is precisely what will carry it, lemming like, over the precipice of self-immolation. When a Muslim accuses another of irreligious conduct, one of them must be guilty of apostasy. So it is that no one (or an extreme few) has any motivated to cause genuine reassessment within Islam. They will see it as better to all join each other as one in This has already been shown in how very few of the moderate Muslims ever raise a significant voice against their radical imams. Yes, they may parade in public denouncing terrorism, but that amounts to Finally, such demands for preferential treatment give us full view of the lopsided world Islam reserves for itself. It demands full recognition of its tenets, right down to family law courts in non-Islamic countries abiding by sharia law, yet persists in forbidding any other religions to practice in nations where Muslims are in the majority. This theological one-way street is just that. Not a route to ascension, but an irreversible path to self destruction. It is now a question of whether Western nations will idly sit by and watch their quality of life and overall security crumble at the hands of Islam, or begin to make Islam's dreams of glorious martyrdom come true. Unless Islam, somehow, finds a path towards reformation, all that awaits them is death. Most likely it will not be their much sought after glorious martyrdom but, instead, perishing en masse upon a nuclear pyre. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-04-06 11:52 |
| #8 Even if Card makes a brilliant point, its not as if the followers of Islam are going to care much. A religion is what the practicioners do, not what the Holy Books say. The idea of militant Islam is to remove any and all distractions from a pure life because they seem to believe (with some evidence) that the Jihad happy guys can't avoid the stripclub when given a chance. By that same logic removing all other religious options is the only sensible thing to do. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-04-06 10:44 |
| #7 I think these words are well worth the time and careful consideration. Card represents my views on faith and force quite well, and the need for an Islamic reformation from within. The reformation needed is one like the Catholic Church and the Protestant reformation - it ended up saving both the Catholic Church and freeing up protestant Christianity. Islam need to find their Martin Luther and (Pope) St. Pius V. I personally do not hold out much hope that they will. If you read between the lines, I think you can draw my view that either Islam undergoes a reformation from within, or else we will be forced to destroy Islam as a fascist cancer on the world. Here are just a select few of the "Money quote" parts... "Any religion that believes itself entitled to kill anyone who deviates from or stands in the way of their holy law poses a danger to everyone else, until they give up that belief and renounce that entitlement. ... The truly faithful of any religion will insist on the right of people to lose faith and leave the religion. Any other position is, in fact, a confession of one's own lack of faith. ... A religion that refuses to compete on a level playing field with other ideologies is a religion that confesses its own inferiority. ... it is also certain, if history is any teacher, that a failure to resist Islamic terrorist-fundamentalism will have an even more terrible outcome. For, bad as war is, and frightful as a holy war would be, they would pale in comparison with the living hell of being subject to universal Sharia as interpreted by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. ... But tolerance of other religions does not mean we have to tolerate any religion that claims the right to kill unbelievers. To paraphrase Lincoln, freedom of religion is not a suicide pact. " You really need to read the whole thing - it is worth making the time to see this and think about it. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2006-04-06 10:21 |
| #6 Reminds me of #3 in this thread... only not quite as clearly stated. |
| Posted by: Grons Glomose4068 2006-04-06 10:16 |
| #5 Islam is not about faith, it is about submission. If you submit, you demonstrate faith, regardless of the motivation. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-04-06 09:53 |
| #4 Sounds like the same things I was saying a while back on my final turn from dislking Islam to my view now that it must either be reformed or eradicated. Its all about faith and force, beleif and compulsion. Glad somone in the "public eye" is saying these things. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2006-04-06 09:50 |
| #3 OSC says, "There is no faith under compulsion." To put it simply, that's not the way Islam looks at it. Allah really doesn't care what you believe as long as you pray, go on the haj, kill infidels, etc. |
| Posted by: mhw 2006-04-06 09:44 |
| #2 There is no faith under compulsion. Any nation where Sharia is enforced is not a Muslim nation, and none of its people are Muslims. If they cannot choose not to be Muslim, then they have not chosen to be Muslim. There is no Islam without Sharia, and since there cannot be Muslims with Sharia, then neither Islam nor Muslims exist. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-04-06 08:43 |
| #1 I like OSC but he completely misses the point here. All ideologies are in a Darwinian struggle. In the end it doesn't matter how you win, it only matters that you win. Death to apostates works in maintaining adherents. Why they adhere is immaterial. As I have said here many times, the issue is winning. How we win doesn't greatly concern me (assuming it works). |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-04-06 08:16 |