Islam and Culture – Questions
Offline First off let me say that I’m not attempting at all to defend Islam, or claim it to be a peaceful religion. Also I’m working my way through the Quran, and have somewhat of an understanding of the religion, but still have plenty more to learn, so my lack of knowledge may show.
My question is: How much of the violence and horror we hear about coming from the Middle East is a direct result of Islam and how much comes from the culture? For example does Islam specifically say woman are prohibited from showing skin in public? And what about stoning adulterers is there a verse in the Quran that says to do it? I understand the hatred towards the infidels, which stems from the Quran, but the violence towards woman especially, is this found in Islam? Or is there a lot of misunderstanding about the Quran? Is the culture shaped by a violent Islam?
These are all just some questions I would like to hear people’s thoughts on.
Thanks,
Garrett
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I feel ya.
I've been studying Islam myself. I have a Quran and few others books on Islam.
You may want to check out "Islam in focus" by Hammudah Abdalati.
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Quran, dunno. I can tell you for sure that there is a big difference in the word of the bible and that which is actually practiced. However, this to me does not suggest that they are two seperate entities.
What I mean is, just because there isn't a passage in the Quran about stoning women does not mean that the practice does not come from the Islamic religion, because it almost certainly does. It is something that would be taught by the priests.
Let me give you an example. I was reading the Atheist Manifesto by James Onfray and his initial story was about a fellow that was touring him through Islamic lands. He was studying the Quran and wanted to submerse himself in the culture to have a better understanding of it (but I digress). The fellow that was guiding him was worried that he would end up in hell because he had commited an unforgivable sin. The sin was that he had killed an animal that he did not intend to eat. This is apparently nowhere in the Quran, which means that it was a religious rule made up by the priests to server their interests.
In xian history the scriptures were only allowed to be looked at by the priests. So I suspect there are a good number of xian traditions and rules that aren't / weren't ever in the bible to begin with.
So, I use this as my rational for claiming that there is no way to separate the Quran from Islam or the Bible from Xianity. The affect on society is the same and I consider them to both be unexcusably responsible. The book, the priests, the "religion" are all responsible.
I don't think Middle Eastern culture is seperable from Islam any more than Western European culture is seperable from Christianity. It is particularly entwined there, as Islam admits no separation of church and state either in theory or in tradition. The highest law is the Koran, both in the street and the mosque.
Given that the Koran specifically calls for the destruction of non-Muslims, and that a fundamentalist understanding of the Koran is ascendant in the Middle East, I'd say most of the violence coming from there is directly attributable to Islam. I think if you waved a magic wand and made Islam disappear tomorrow, the region would be much more peaceful.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
This is mostly the bullshit that the media has been feeding people for quiet a while now and it's simply NOT true.
Koran in itself is not different than the bible, they share most of the same stories and the messages are the same BUT as for the most parts, there are some unclear scripture in both, as such one could derive widely different ideas from them and here's where the difference comes in, the people in the middle east, specificaly iranian mullahs have been using koran and islam for centuries to gain power over people, they derive whatever they want from koran and people wouldnt question their judgment becasue this has been going on for years and they just cant imagine doing such a thing, a few who dare doing so would find themselves in jail very quickly.
the diffeernce is in the people not the books.
My question is: How much of the violence and horror we hear about coming from the Middle East is a direct result of Islam and how much comes from the culture?
Those are two sides of the same coin really. Islam is so permeating across the gulf that in many places, it is the culture. Many people simply do not realize how truly barbaric the religion is.
Islam is no worse than Christianity. It's Holy Book may even be slightly less lurid and bloody (although it does codify military sanctioned rape). Nonetheless, while I'm sure we are all freaked out over Christian fundies, that is nothing, nothing, compared to the mullahs and Ayatollahs. Bearded monkeys, no less, hateful idiots who rule with pious tyranny.
Islam in the modern world might as well be the poster boy for why we should get rid of religion. Militant Islam is not some hick Bible-belt rural fundy party, it is deranged theocratic dictatorship that has complete control over 14 nations, and I assure you, if you wish to see the violence in the Middle East, look no further than the atrocities I am to detail in a moment.
It was oil that was the catalyst for the spread of militant Islam. Wahabbi militants had seized Mecca and Medina 200 years ago with the intent to restore Islam to its puritanical form. Starting in 1979, the Arab world was largely taken over by a Sunni Fundamentalist sect called Wahhabism, a very extreme form of Islam founded in Riyadh 250 years ago. In 1979, Iran was seized by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who stunned the world with the first theocracy of modern times. When massive oil fields were struck across the peninsula, the money and resources starting pouring in, and with it, Wahhabism spread across the Middle East to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and Oman by the 1970s. The West never lifted a finger to stop it because they depended on the oil from these nations and when the Arab world decided to flex their muscles by embargoing the precious crude, we cringed.
Soon reports came filtering in about the brutal Shariah courts, where horrific torture masquerading as justice was occurring. In Iran and Saudi Arabia, there were public floggings, public decapitations, in Oman, people were having their right arm amputated for petty theft, in Jeddah a man was decapitated for owning a Bible. Iran has executed 4,000 people since 1979 for the crime of being a homosexual. In 2002, the Iranians executed a six year old child for the crime of being homosexual (how a six year old could possibly be aware of his sexuality is anyone's guess) and his body was hanged from a crane and paraded through Tehran Square.
In Saudi Arabia, it is not uncommon to receive 5,000 lashes for food theft. In 2000, a horrific incident occurred in the Saudi holy city of Mecca, where a girl’s school was on fire. The ultra-religious police of the city considered the girls to be improperly clothed, so they linked arms and wouldn’t let them out of the building. Most were burned alive.
Under the guide of the murderous Islamic justice sytem, called Shar'ia, proselytizing, religious debate, atheism, Judaism, apostasy, blasphemy, premarital sex, adultery and homosexuality are still punishable under the criminal code. Far worse, all of the above mentioned offences carry the death penalty.
Afghanistan, it seems, is falling back under Taliban control. The Taliban are famous for the burqa, the suffocating garb that the clerics forced women to wear, covering everything, including the eyes. The Taliban are famous for their "half-time entertainment" at football matches, where they would bring criminals to holes behind the goalposts and people would cheer as an executioner hurled large slabs of granite at their heads. Homosexuals were exectued by means of pushing a large stone wall on top of them, women adulterers were burned alive at the stake, a practice borrowed from 14th century Catholic monks, Ya gotta love religion.
And then Iran, it seems, is trying to develop nuclear weaponry under the guide of the diminutive, anti-Semitic madman Mahmoud Ahmedinijad. What would happen if an Islamic country acquired long range nuclear weaponry? Would we enter a second cold war?
I doubt it. The only reason there was a cold war between the Americans and Soviets was because both appreciated the Mutually Assured Destruction scenario that prevented the standoff from turning hot. The Soviets may have been tyrants, but at least they had an understanding of self-preservation. However, when faced with a religious cult that gets glazed-eyed at the mention of the Garden of Heaven and seventy virgins (interesting how the most sexually repressed people on the planet conceive heaven as essentially a brothel) there would be no such standoff. They would celebrate their own annihilation. The Iranians believe in the absurd nonsense of Shia Islam called the "return of the twelfth Imam" who will return, and like in the fundy rapture mythology, destroy the world. For this reason they want a nuclear device as insurance. Does this not worry you at all?
Yet In no aspect of the Islamic countries is the unquestioning devotion to the Qur’an more clear than in education. The education in the Middle East is appalling. In Saudi Arabia, schoolchildren chant “the time will come for war between the Muslims and Jews, and the Muslims will kill all the Jews” and read from particularly violent interpretations of the Qur’an by Wahabbi scholars. You can get beautifully printed Qur’ans in Mecca (I have one). Many pages have little footnotes from Wahabbi “scholars” explaining why this particular passage warrants you to kill people. Once the height of culture and literacy, the attitude of the Muslim world to education can be summed up in a singe statistic: More books are translated into Spanish in a single year than have been into Arabic over the last two millennia.
And what about stoning adulterers is there a verse in the Quran that says to do it? I understand the hatred towards the infidels, which stems from the Quran, but the violence towards woman especially, is this found in Islam? Or is there a lot of misunderstanding about the Quran? Is the culture shaped by a violent Islam?
It's a very violent version of Islam which now commands 40% of its adherents. The Qur'an was written in 620-630 AD, as such it has lots of commandments that are cruel and barbaric. These commands are also found in the Bible, but because there are infuriation secular laws in Western nations, christian fundamentalists cannot get away with, say, stoning their children to death or executing homosexuals, although I am quite sure that if they really could, they would bring back crucifixion. However, in the Middle East, this does not exist. The law is Islam, many countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, etc) have adopted the Quran as their sole jurisprudence guide.
Particularly important to note is Ma malakat aymanukum, which means "what your right hand possesses" and refers to prostitutes allowed to be kept by military personell. They are property and chattel, POWs forced into sex. Isolated rape atrocities by military personell is understandable, but Islam actually codifies it in a Holy Text. It is not unique, however. The Old Testament does as well.
My conclusion, I suppose, is that this is what happens when religion is allowed free reign. Robert Green Ingersoll said that if a man followed the Old Testament literally he would be a criminal, and if he followed the new, he would be insane. This...is proof of that.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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The difference is that you can find justification for a seperation of church and state in the Bible ("render unto Caesar"
and no such justification in the Koran. The Koran admits NO authority above Allah, in anything, under any circumstances.
On the whole I agree, however. All of these primitive religious documents are equally dangerous in the hands of people who want to turn them into instruments of control.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Deludedgod: on Iran, what do you think of the reports that the population is mostly secular, educated and by some estimates 80% unhappy with their hardline religious government? This assessment seems consistent with my own experience of having known Iranian exchange students (who were Moslems, but drank freely, didn't observe dietary restrictions or wear headgear) who said their country was a secular majority dominated by a fundamentalist minority.
There are even some who think that the reason the fundy government there has lasted this long is because, as much as they dislike their government, they're more afraid of the U.S.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert
Deludedgod: on Iran, what do you think of the reports that the population is mostly secular, educated and by some estimates 80% unhappy with their hardline religious government?
Not suprised. I can understand how and why the Arabs have fallen prey to militant Islam, but I would never have thought the same of Persia. I was very disappointed when the mullahs gleaned control in 1979, but I do hope that is cracking, because like I said, this is Persia, not Arabia. They are not inexorably bound to Islam. I do hope to go to Tehran one day, although as a Jew that might be highly dangerous at the moment. Nonetheless, one could surely not deny that the governing body of The Islamic Repubic of Iran is completely insane, and we must not under any circumstances allow them access to the centrifugal, HEU, EMP detonated explosives, or ballastics technology necessary to build a long range nuclear device.
But as I know many Iranians here (the expatriate community in Hong Kong where I live is represented by 88 nationalities) I would say that they would say the same.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism