The consensus is that Islam is a violent, intolerant religion bent on robbing you of your freedom and your life. Well, if you turn to the Qur’an, you’ll find that, like the Bible, it has it’s share of both aggressive texts and passages that promote kindness and compassion. While an exhaustive study of the Qur’an might be helpful in getting to the bottom of the essence of Islam, it’s not something that I want to do tonight and, as we all know, even the devil can quote Scripture for his own purposes.
So I’ve been looking at how Islam is actually doing today at toleration. In 2009, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released what it claimed to be the first quantitative worldwide study on how governments and societies infringe on the religious beliefs and practices of individuals. The study scored each country and then ranked them. See Government Restrictions Index.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Saudi Arabia was number 1 with the most restrictions on religion in the world, and that Iran was number 2. Atheistic China, however, was ranked number four. It seems that Islamic countries don’t hold the corner on intolerance.
But if we look down the list at the countries with only moderate restrictions on the practice of religion, where France and Germany, for example, are ranked, we have eight Muslim majority countries: Bangladesh, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Chad, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan and the Palestinian territories.
And among the countries with the lowest restrictions on the practice of religion – where America is listed – there are 12 Muslim majority countries, 10 0f which place less restriction on religious freedom than we do: Sierra Leon, Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Djibouti, Mali, Gambia and Albania. (Pete the Elder and Lisa might be able to fill in some of the details about Senegal.) Just to round things out here, Kosovo and Lebanon were the two other Muslim majority countries with low restrictions but not quite as low as ours. Sierra Leon gets the distinction of being in the top 10 countries in the world with the lowest restrictions on religious freedom.
So, it seems that the Muslim bashers have committed the logical fallacy of hasty generalization: reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence. As we see here, this fallacy commonly involves basing a broad conclusion upon the information about a small group that fails to sufficiently represent the whole population. I’d say that it’s a common problem with bigots.
I certainly recognize that there are a lot of intolerant, even murderous Muslims in this world. I just don’t see how anyone can conclude, given the Pew study, that being a Muslim turns you into a fanatic who wants to destroy all non-Muslims. As Karen Armstrong muses, “There are some forms of religion that are bad, [and] just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too.” Huston Smith goes one more: “Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality.” But Smith also recognizes: “If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.”
11 comments:
I think you have misconstrued Islamic criticism and equating it with bigotry is a little absurd. For instance, Hitchens has said countless times that religion practice by an individual not infringing on others is perfectly alright. Hichtens and others are critical of any oppression of freedom as illustrated by criticism of China's oppression of human rights to Lebanon's Syrian National Socialist Party suppressing freedom of speech to the Vatican protecting image and subverting national law to Turkey's government denial of the Armenian Genocide.
Islamic criticism is two parts. One, criticism of the western press not willing to be critical of Islam under the absurd notion that one needs to be respectful of an individual's religion (just the press' hiding the fact the are intimidated to say anything about Islam). Such as the total lack freedom of the press support for the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. Or Comedy Central censorship of Muhammad on South Park, (maybe rightly so after the 100s of people who died following the Danish Cartoon) Interestingly, no one died when South Park portrayed a gay Jesus.
Two, criticism of theocracies are inevitable going to critical of the religion and their laws that govern society and impose on individuals. Since the only theocracies are Islamic, the Vatican (North Korean since the dead leader is consider a God). People are going to criticize both the religion and society since they are intertwined.
I think it is very important to bash Islam or any institution not because of your reasoning per se but the ability to exercise your freedom of speech. I am critical of not being allowed to be critical Islam. Also that historical Muhammad is a complete dick.
Great thing about Senegalese tolerance was that citizens got off catholic and muslim holidays.
They [the Islamo-fascists] gave us no peace and we shouldn’t give them any. We can't live on the same planet as them and I'm glad because I don’t want to. I don’t want to breathe the same air as these psychopaths and murderers and rapists and torturers and child abusers. Its them or me. I'm very happy about this because I know it will be them. It’s a duty and a responsibility to defeat them. But it's also a pleasure. I don’t regard it as a grim task at all.
--Christopher Hitchens
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
--Ann Coulter
I don't really see much difference except that Coulter wants to convert Muslims and Hitchens is a bit more gleeful about killing them.
Understandable positions, Hitchens was referring to the 9/11 hijackers and the spineless backbone of the left's argument that Osama Bin Ladin was voicing a liberation theology. Islamo-fascists are Muslims, Hitchens never said they were all Muslims. You are making generalization that Hitchens is referring to all Muslims. I can understand a person's desire to destroy people, organizations, governments that kill, maim rape innocent people. If Germany hadn't declared war on the United States during World War II there was a chance we wouldn't have entered the European theater saving hundred of thousands American lives but resulting in the extermination of the Jews. I think the liberation of Europe was better than the alternative of leaving Hitler in power. I am not sure how to reconcile the idea of a free global world while standing by as the Taliban create an Afghanistan that did this to women. Or it is okay for Kim Jong-il to starve 23 million people because his father is the eternal leader.
Coulter's article is far crazier but the idea of killing those who are hellbent on flying into buildings does make sense. Using force to stop people from harming innocent people is not that radical.
"I can understand a person's desire to destroy people, organizations, governments that kill, maim rape innocent people."
What about governments which invade countries (like Iraq) for absolutely no good reason, with the result of over 100,000 documented innocent civilian deaths. This is a level of killing beyond 9/11 by a factor of over 3,000. (Let's not even mention the two million Vietnamese civilians we killed dropping over 7 miliion tons of bombs over 11 years in North Vietnam -- 3 1/2 times what we dropped in all of WWII -- toward no good end.)
When it comes to pointless civilian slaughter, nobody at the beginning of the 21st century holds a candle to the U.S.-- mostly because we can, and because people think like Christopher Hitchens and Ann Coulter.
And, by the by, religion has no corner on dealing out death. The two most murderous people in the 20th century, Mao Zedong (over 50 million deaths) and Stalin (23 million deaths), were atheists. Hitler, whose religion is ambiguous at best, comes in third at 12 million. Next comes Hideki Tojo who killed 5 million civilians for reasons unrelated to religion.
This is off-topic of your original post, responding to your comment-
I said "I can understand". Never said supported. I can understand killing Ali Hassan al-Majid who killed 180,000 kurds in one year. Or Milosevic, or Saddam, or Bin laden etc.
War should be used as a last resort, is awful and benefits never truly realized, however
by calling the Iraq/Afgan senseless slaughter and having no good reason for it makes every other war America has fought even more senseless. Civil War- senseless, Lincoln should have sued for peace and saved 600,000 lives, who cares that the south wants to govern themselves. American revolution- completely retarded, countless deaths because of taxes. Germany tried countless times to conditional surrender, there wouldn't have been a Dresden. If body count is an indicator of war's worth, we should have sacrificed a small number of Jews and preserved millions of European civilians by accepting Germany's conditional surrender, though leaving Nazi Party in charge. Vietnam War- you already touched on it.
Saddam and his government murder and subjugated his own people. Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban killed their women because the women were raped by them. If all wars are senseless, the Iraq/Afgan war maybe the least senseless American War. Maybe a War's worth should be solely determined by body count, one civilian death is too much. But maybe there is a benefit in deaths fought on the idea that a free society is a good society. That maybe sacrificing freedom for life, makes life not worth living. I hope that these past five Iraqi elections is an indication of a free future for people that would have never otherwise experienced it without US intervention. (Completely agree that the wars were advocated for under false pretenses, and that we have fucked up numerous times throughout the war, however if some semblance of democracy is planted it may not be consider completely senseless, more like mostly senseless)
To your other point, I never once said that secular governments don't kill people. I have never claimed atheists were better than religious people. I was simply rebuking the notion that criticism of Islam stems from Islamophobia. That there is legitimate grievances against the actions taken by people of Islamic faith. Also that criticism of Islam tenets should be allowed and not exempt just because it is a religion.
Clarification- I agree that countries should not invade for no good reason (Iran-Iraq 80s, Israel 67 73, Kuwiat 90s, Vietnam 65). Iraq however is not necessarily under that category. A regime is not legitimate when it gasses it own people and should be removed by its people (though not really possible). So it should be the responsibility for free people to help them. America gained nothing from Iraq other than maybe a democracy and freedoms for another group people.
I do support Hitchens-stopping mass murders is important.
I think Myk's point that we tend to perceive Islamic nations as less tolerant than ourselves is well taken. It is an eye opener.
Pete's point that we should be able to criticize Islam is well taken. (However, I'm not sure the ideal use of freedom of speech is to "bash") Of course, after the Pew results it may be harder to criticize Islam for intolerance.
The invasion question has come up before, and it is a tough one. Everyone wants to help, but no one wants to be helped.
At what point would any perceived enemy of the U.S. have been justified in invading the U.S. to stop the annihilation of our indigenous population?
The assumption is that they promised to restore our government (with some minor changes) once those in power (and some collateral civilians) were eliminated.
Jim, as usual steps in as the reconciler. I suppose I don't ultimately disagree with what Pete has to say. My only point over all was that Islam -- comprised of some 1.5 billion followers -- is not this monolithic thing, and taken as a whole, is no more oppresive, unruly or murderous than any other group.
Christianity is hardly monolithic either. I, for one, am not about to be tagged with anything Pat Robertson has to say. (about 9/11: "the ACLU has to take a lot of blame for this").
Anyone looking at my list of tolerant Muslim countries will see that many of them are in West Africa. At the Pew website, there was an article about how, in many predominently Muslim West African countries, there is also a significant minority of Christians and traditional tribal religions. The article noted that there is almost no tension, distrust or resentment among these groups at all. For whatever reason, West Africans don't go around demonizing non-believers.
I agree...I have no problem with the Pew article, in fact I found it very interesting. I just had a little beef with the introduction, equating people who criticize certain Islamic groups, countries and tenets of Islam as simple Islamophobes I feel is incorrect.
Also none of the less restrictive countries listed have a government based on the literal interpretation of the Qur'an. Using Sharia Law to determine law and government structure of a country leaves us with Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Sudan, Iraq (prior to 2003) and Egypt. Compare that list to the Pew's list. Secular democracies with majority Muslims are fine. Its when the foundation of a country is based on Islamic laws that terrible oppression occurs. Individual use of Islamic Laws=fine- do what makes you happy, imposing on a populace=bad.
Side note, you touched on Sierra Leon as having the distinction of being in the top 10 for least restrictions. That country has so many problems I would be surprised if they could fit in religious intolerance.
Just a comment on the W. African phenomenon of tolerance. I'm not sure why this is the case, but some things to consider:
1. They are Francophone for the most part. Perhaps the French imparted some republican ideals of tolerance and that states should be, if nothing else, secular.
2. I wonder if W. African muslims identify with any sort of global islam. In my village many muslim rituals were extensions of animistic practices. The senegalese I knew supported the US against Iraq in the first gulf war. No sub-saharan Africans speak Arabic aside from the universal greeting- asalamalakum.
3. Pehaps ethnic divisions trump religious ones. During my first weeks in Senegal there were border clashes between Mauritanians (semetic features) and Senegalese. Many black Mauritanians became refugees in Senegal.
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