The Spread of 'Wahhabisation' is a disaster

[newthinking]

This spread of 'holy fascism' is a disaster
World View: 'Wahhabisation' is being used against other Muslims and Christians alike to subjugate women and crush dissent





Earlier this month, Saudi liberal activist Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, 10 years in prison and a heavy fine for insulting Islam. In fact, his crime was to establish an online discussion forum where people were free to speak about religion and criticise religious scholars.

He had been charged with "apostasy" in 2012, because of his writings and for hosting discussion on his Saudi Arabian Liberals website, and was sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes but on appeal a heavier sentence was imposed.


..........................................

Lashings and beheadings generally get little publicity except where a foreigner is involved. The local media is muzzled and foreign press for the most part excluded. This contrasts with the blanket coverage of the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, the al-Qa'ida type movement in northern Nigeria.

No such legal innovations are necessary in Sudan, where, earlier this month, Mariam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag was sentenced in Khartoum to be hanged for apostasy after first receiving 100 lashes. Born a Muslim but raised a Christian, she was given three days by a judge "to return to Islam" or be executed. The 100 lashes are apparently because she is married to a Christian and is eight months pregnant with their child.

Full Piece: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/this-spread-of-holy-fascism-is-a-disaster-9391052.html

[msongs]

2. aha the joys of religion nt

[Wounded Bear]

3. Religious fundamentalism is bad in all of its permutations...

but especially in the 'revealed' religions based on the Abrahamaic meme. The 'big three' of Chritianity, Islam, and even Judaism are all based on the same god, and he's a mean bastard. Unless the more enlightened factions of those groups start flexing some muscle to liberalize and marginalize the extremists, problems will continue to worsen.

[hobbit709]

4. you can't tell the fanatics of those three apart from their attitudes.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

5. It's unfair to lump Christianity and Judaism in with Islam, I think.

I don't see much to choose between the distribution of behaviours of Christians in America or Africa, of Hindus in India, of Jews in Israel or of Rastafarians in Jamaica, to pick four examples - in all cases, there are some whose interpretation of their religion requires them to do bad things (e.g. persecute gay people or attack members of other religions) and some who don't, and the ratios don't appear all that much different.

Likewise, there are some Muslims whose interpretation of their religion involves doing bad things, and some who don't, but the ratio is quite a lot less favourable.

Islam by no means has a monopoly on crimes committed in the name of religion. But, at the moment, it does seem to have a majority share.

You can find individual Christians, Jews and Hindus as mad and wicked (or almost) as the worst Muslims. But if you take 100 members of two religions and line them up from left to right by their views on e.g. women's rights, gay rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, crime and punishment, religious coercion etc then (I claim, although I admit I haven't done this rigorously) most religions other than Islam will have people approximately equally liberal or conservative in approximately equal centiles, but the n'th Muslim will be a lot further right than the n'th follower of most other religions.

It's important to note that there's a lot of overlap, though, of course.

[Wounded Bear]

6. Maybe...

but given the state of our news media, I suspect a lot of that "majority" exists in how often and how strongly events are reported.

One can make the claim that the body count is higher for Islam, but I don't see that much difference. Restricting women's rights is BAD, how it is enforced is a difference of degree. If there is one over-riding reason for America being "better" than some other countries, it is in how women are treated in general, and the US is slipping down the scale as fundies have their evil ways enshrined in laws around the country.

As I said, extremism is the problem here. If you listen to the RW talking heads, they frame it in a way that really lumps all Musliims into the mix, in the way they always connect the "muslim" and the "extremist" terms together when they report. Christians are never labeled so. You may be right in your statistical distribution theory, but it would be hard to prove or dis-prove.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. I think that "extremism is the problem here" is an oversimplification to the point of being wrong.

"Extremist" is not a terribly well-defined term. My problem with "Religious extremists" is not that they are "extremist", whatever that means, but that they are *wrong*. And, on average, I think Muslims are wrong about significantly more than followers of other religions.

In terms of evidence, it's hard to compare distributions of opinon across billions of individuals directly, but - I claim - comparing legislative regimes between majority-muslim and majority-something-else countries is a pretty good proxy, and has the advantage that with a little googling, or just wikipedia, one can see how many countries in each category do how well in e.g. freedom of religion, women's equality, freedom of speech, gay rights, free and fair elections, etc. And muslim-majority countries come out massively worse in the first two, and worse in the last three.

So, no, I don't think that "extremism is the problem" is accurate or helpful here. I don't think it can be accurate to characterise a fraction of the world's muslims large enough to determine the laws by which the majority of the world's muslim-majority countries are ruled as "extremists"; I think the problem is that religious coercion, sexism, homophobia, repression etc are part of the Islamic mainstream.

[intaglio]

15. What you ignore is that "extremists" are utterly certain that all others are wrong

Given that, how do you differentiate your claim that they are "wrong" from their claim that you are? In both cases the wrongness derives from faith.

Further you apply the fallacy of the argumentum ad populum as to the reasonableness of any given group of religions

[Donald Ian Rankin]

19. Doesn't that describe your views on e.g. evolution vs creationism? It certainly describes mine.

There's nothing wrong with being certain that you're right, *provided that you are*.

It *is* true, though, that being right and certain usually isn't as much better than being right and uncertain as being wrong and certain is worse than being wrong and uncertain. So it's usually better to err on the side of tentativity.

As to argumentum ad populam, I think that the idea that there are platonic forms of religions is a misguided one. "Christianity" (say) doesn't refer to a single set of beliefs which some Christians get wrong, it refers to a set of differing but linked beliefs. So if you want to look at how "reasonable" (your word, not mine) a given religion is, the right way to do it is to look at the distribution of opinions among its adherents, not to try and deduce some "platonic form" from its scriptures. What Christianity *is* is the beliefs of Christians, not your or my idea of what they ought to believe; the answer to "is Christianity for or against gay rights" is not "yes, it says here in the scriptres that it is/isn't", but "as practiced by X% of Christians yes, as practiced by Y% of Christians no".

[intaglio]

23. Actually there is everything wrong with certainty of correctness

For it precludes further investigation of your own of belief lack of belief and hence the investigation of those things you believe false. Certainty is, in effect, stasis.

The appeal to the popularity of "moderate" forms of religion does not prove those following moderation are not open to the appeal of the extreme nor does it guarantee the actions of those moderates in extreme condition. Mere statistical analysis shows nothing about those faiths except that there are always extremists who will act in ways inimical to others and and who will justify themselves by their certainty of righteousness. Indeed these extremists can point to the uncertainty of the moderate as demonstrating the lack of true belief of those persons.

You quite rightly discard the idea of a platonic ideal of both a particular religion and of religion in general because that platonic ideal will be different for all practitioners of faiths from moderate to extreme. To play with the word ideal, there is no such thing as an ideal religion except lack of religion.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

24. "The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning."

You go from "there is everything wrong with certainty of correctness" to "there is no such thing as an ideal religion except lack of religion" in the course of four paragraphs.

I agree that certainty is stasis; but when one is right one *wants* stasis, to avoid changing to being wrong.

[intaglio]

25. I did say I was playing with the term ideal - but feel free to insert your own gloss

The simple problem you face is that lack of faith does not imply the atheist is not curious or uncertain. One of the strengths of atheism that the impossibility of proving a negative leads to a constant inspection of faiths to see if anyone has demonstrated the positive - it is one reason that atheists score very high marks general religious knowledge quizzes. For example if a practitioner of Islam declares that the Koran is unique because it is the directly transcribed word of Mohamed, I know that person has been mislead because the transcription occurred 40 years after Mohamed's death, under the direction of the Caliph and that all conflicting versions of the tales were burnt.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

28. "there is everything wrong with certainty of correctness"

If only people practiced what they preached.

[intaglio]

30. Of course the converse is having a mind so open it might as well be Kansas

It is, of course possible to accuse someone of being close minded if no-one ever presents actual evidence for them to evaluate.

[Scootaloo]

9. "I claim, although I admit I haven't done this rigorously"

Come back when you have applied rigorous fact-gathering to collect data, instead of just asserting your mindless justifications for your own bigotry, please.

It's not an issue of "which religion is worse," - and certainly not, as you seem to assert, that the followers of some religions are inherently and uniformly more awful than others. The issues you purport to care about - purport - are made manifest due to political power.

As we know, politics tends to attract the worst examples of our species; the combination of wealth needed to get involved and the lust for power inhernet kinda makes politics a breeding ground for sociopaths. Now, you tke that already warped arena.. .and you hang a sign over it that says "religious devotees only" and no matter what religion shows up, you're going to get the real wild and whacky ones. And the longer that sign is there, the more self-reinforcement goes on. Each successive "generation" of politicians gets weirder and wackier, since they're all in competition, and trying to be "more religious" and "more political" than their competitors.

Doesn't fucking matter if your sign says "Islam only" or if it says "Bon Po only" you're going to get the rabid ones.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. At the point you're accusing me of the exact opposite of what I've said, it makes discussion hard.

I said

"It's important to note that there's a lot of overlap, though".

You said

"...you seem to assert, that the followers of some religions are inherently and uniformly more awful than others."

[Scootaloo]

12. I'll take your actual claim, over the spare fig leaf you try to cover it with

But if you take 100 members of two religions and line them up from left to right by their views on e.g. women's rights, gay rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, crime and punishment, religious coercion etc then (I claim, although I admit I haven't done this rigorously) most religions other than Islam will have people approximately equally liberal or conservative in approximately equal centiles, but the n'th Muslim will be a lot further right than the n'th follower of most other religions.

Your claim is that Muslims are just uniformly worse, and quantifiably so. You pose your admittedly fact-free opinion as certain fact. Then you try to cover up and weasel out with the "oh but there's overlap" line - no details on what overlap that is or how you reached that conclusion. And from this post it's pretty clear that this is exactly what you mean with that line, to use it as a cover for someone who notes what an ignorantly biased thing you just said.

You are, in point of fact, making the claim that Muslims are just worse than Jews or Christians, and that the reason they are worse, is simply because they're Muslims. You further expose this bias in your last reply to Wounded Bear.

Don't like being called on what you say? don't say it.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. Have fun talking to your imaginary friend.

Or, if at any point you want to discuss what I've said, feel free to do so.

[A Simple Game]

22. I don't know about any imaginary friend or even friend, but I agree with Scootaloo.

If Christian extremists took control of the United States, within 10 years you would see little difference between us and any Muslim country. Women's rights would be non-existent as would the rights of anyone not Christian or even just not the "right" Christian.

What would you call the Christian version of Sharia law? I'm not sure the Inquisition would work again.

[Jim Lane]

26. As an agnostic, I agree with Donald Ian Rankin.

You're absolutely right that things would be horrible if Christian extremists took over the United States. The point, however, is that, to see those results in many Muslim countries, you don't have to hypothesize about a small faction taking over.

In the United States, the Christians are in control. They're the majority in the population, yet disproportionately represented even more overwhelmingly in public office. They've used their power to achieve various official advantages (advertising on the money, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, prayers at governmental events) and, even more powerfully, unofficial ones (the cultural assumption of Christianity as the norm, the impossibility for the foreseeable future of an openly agnostic or atheist candidate being elected President).

Those are injustices. They pale, however, beside government-ordered beheadings of "infidels" as judged by the clerics of the majority religion.

Suppose I, as an agnostic, were given a choice. I will be placed into some country, I don't know which and can't choose which, but I can choose whether it will be majority-Christian or majority-Muslim. (People in Christian countries are probably better off economically, on average, so let's say my economic circumstances will be the same either way.) I would have no trouble choosing the unknown majority-Christian country. I have a lot of gripes about the one I'm living in now but the Muslims would, in general, be even worse to me.

[AlbertCat]

16. It's unfair to lump Christianity and Judaism in with Islam, I think.

Oh please! It's as stupid and obsolete as the others. And based on the same ancient superstitions.

[Tom Ripley]

11. +1000

[seveneyes]

8. Religion has no place in government

Any governments using religion to abuse members of its society should be shunned and given no assistance until they treat their people fairly.

[AlbertCat]

17. Religion....

..... is just ancient government.

[seveneyes]

18. Some appear to be stuck in the 7th century

And full of hate.

[Fairgo]

27. Wow. Thanks.

That is a concise and distilled slice of truth. Kudos! I am going to chew on that for the rest of the week.

[The2ndWheel]

29. Religion, like government

is just a form of organization. Every organized effort tries to expand as much as it can, in order to control as much as it can, because that's how it sustains itself.

[intaglio]

14. Off topic but

I read that, at first, as Wasabi-isation

[calimary]

20. Oh man...

Either way, it's quite a hot topic.

[olegramps]

21. I took out time to read the Koran and was not pleased by parts of it.

It certainly has a far more harsh tone than the New Testament Gospels. It calls for forced conversion of pagans and death to those who resist conversion. It promises of eternal bliss for Jihad martyrs has no comparable teaching in the Gospels. I am well acquainted with the religious wars and Christians persecutions, however, they could not be justified by the teaching of Jesus. I am not a fan of any religious doctrine, but have to conclude that Koran supports violence.

[SoCalDem]

31. I just hope that during her 2 year "reprieve", they manage to escape Sudan

and can somehow relocate to a more tolerant place