You are hereBlogs / defaithed's blog / Why, Qui-Gon, Why?
Why, Qui-Gon, Why?
I'm happy whenever I can add a juicy news headline to Signs of the End, an uplifting list heralding the waning of religion's power.
Sadly, the major religion most successfully bucking this trend is the one that also strives to best its fellow faiths in sheer obnoxiousness: Islam.
How and why Islam would spread among Europeans, who in recent years have made such outstanding advances in kicking Christianity to the curb, is a true mystery to me. What possible attraction does this woman-hating, obedience-demanding, free speech-suppressing, science-killing "faith" hold for the people of modern, affluent societies? Well, here's the word from one European celebrity, actor Liam Neeson, casting a favorable eye upon the teachings of The Prophet:
The [Islamic] call to prayer happens five times a day, and for the first week, it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit, and it's the most beautiful, beautiful thing. There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning, and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.
There you have it: Islam is attractive because mosques and prayer are beautiful. The latter part of which, I agree, is true. Mosques (and churches and temples) can be gorgeous. And while prayer rituals don't hold an equal appeal for me, I don't deny that they tap into powerful human emotions.
I certainly won't assume that a publication's short quote represents Neeson's full reasons for hankering after Islam. He may have deeper reasons, and that's his own business. (The same goes for hundreds of thousands of other Europeans convering to Islam; see the linked article for some sobering numbers.) I only wonder, though, whether Neeson's and many converts' considerations include the following: Is Islam true?
Yes, mosques and the prayer ritual have beauty. Yes, some aspects of the Muslim faith may be commendable, such as alms for the poor and other aspects of community (and here I'll bite my tongue over other, decidedly deplorable aspects). But does that make Islam's claims about a supernatural God, and that God's chosen Prophet, factually correct?
I wonder how many of the converts, understandably impressed by the artistry of mosques, really deep-down care whether the claims of their new faith are true. The same goes for other religions too, of course, and for lifelong adherents as well as new converts. While few of the religious will outright admit it, many people choose their beliefs for reasons such as comfort or community alone, and genuinely don't care whether the beliefs are true.
As a rationalist and atheist, that perspective has become so alien to me I sometimes lose sight of it. The words of converts and potential converts, like Neeson's quote above, provide a reminder that truth isn't necessarily the primary consideration of believers – or even one at all.
Thank You for praising our mosques and our prayer. But please don't insult islam if you don't even know what it's about. Perhaps you probably know what the media is telling you, but have you actually searched up what Islam is actually about? before you insult us by saying "What possible attraction does this woman-hating, obedience-demanding, free speech-suppressing, science-killing "faith" hold for the people of modern, affluent societies?", just try searching up what we are about, and not on the islam-hating ones but ones like whyislam.org. And for the record if you try and figure out how exactly we are "woman-hating", the scarf that they wear is by their choice not by force, women are actually respected in Islam (http://www.whyislam.org/social-values-in-islam/gender-relations-in-islam...). Islam demands submission to God, but we are still free to think and do as long as it does not cross boundaries. Islam is not "free speech-supressing" in any way or form unless you are insulting the prophet or defacing the quran, hadith(saying/actions of the prophet) or sunnah(the understanding of a hadith). Islam does not "kill" science either, on the contrary it harmonizes with it, the Quran- our holy book, has had information in it for almost 1400 years, scientific topics that scientist have not discovered until only recently- past 100 years, such as the theory of evolution and the "big bang", (http://website.lineone.net/~786kas/part1.html). If I have made any mistakes they are mine alone, and not Islam's. Thank you.
Hello, and thank you for your message. You are of course correct in noting that one needs to be careful to be factually correct when making criticisms. I'm by no means an expert on matters of Islam, and I'll take your comment as a reminder to use that caution.
I've noted elsewhere that "religion" is a vastly wide topic, covering cultural practices as well as belief and dogma. Looking at Islam as it's practiced, there are actions committed or endorsed by some believers in the name of Islam that are truly execrable: horrible punishments for apostasy, ridiculous restrictions placed on women's freedoms, and calls to violence against non-believers, as a quick starting list. These must be criticized as strongly as possible, and I'd hope you'd join in doing so.
But, perhaps you'd also agree that the above can be described as the acts of people (certainly not only Islamic people!), and not necessarily reflective of the actual teachings of the Quran. We have to keep in mind that the evils some people commit in the name of religion do not represent the actions of all believers (Islamic beliefs and cultures cover a huge range), and do not necessarily match the commandments of scripture.
Since this is all a far huger topic than comments can do justice to, let me look at just one area for the moment: treatment of women. To be fair to Islam, let me ignore local cultural practices committed in the name of Islam (like various injustices against women in Saudi Arabia), and look only at actual words from scripture.
Does the Quran not contain the following words?
2:282: And let two men from among you bear witness to all such documents [contracts of loans without interest]. But if two men be not available, there should be one man and two women to bear witness so that if one of the women forgets (anything), the other may remind her.
4:11: The share of the male [in inheritance] shall be twice that of a female.
4:24: And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.
4:34: Men are managers of the affairs of women because Allah has made the one superior to the other.
Let's keep things in context. The above are (unfortunately) not the most awful sufferings humanity has inflicted upon women; religious (and even non-religious) patriarchy have come up with worse. Also, I do understand claims that the arrival of Islamic teachings improved the status of women in some regards.
But the above are allegedly the words of God himself – and from a moral perspective, they're terrible. There's no questioning that they place women in a lower status, subservient to men. Does that constitute "women-hating"? We could quibble over the wording, but if it's not hatred of women, it sure is acceptance of terrible injustice toward them – in which case, what's the difference? Even when such teachings aren't used as a basis for further abuse of women (as people in many lands have done with Quranic, Biblical, and other scriptures), there is no moral justification for any stricture, religious or otherwise, that places half the population above the other half.
Now, I have no reason to think that the above commandments were created by a supernatural being, rather than by mortal men in a primitive patriarchal society. If they were created by a God, then modern secular morality is superior to that God's morality. No question about that.
In short, I'm not the least impressed by the attitude of even true Islam – the Quran itself – toward women. Nor by other aspects of the faith. You say that "Islam is not 'free speech-suppressing' in any way or form unless you are insulting the prophet or defacing the Quran"? That's free speech-suppressing. Islam "harmonizes with" science? Whether or not it includes teachings that harmonize with some findings of science (I'm familiar with, and unimpressed by, the arguments for that) is not the issue, because "science" doesn't equate to its findings (like the fact of the Big Bang); rather, science is the method by which we arrive at those findings. Islam and other religions use faith, revelation, and authority as their methods for arriving at "truth", and those methods couldn't conflict more with the methods of science.
All that aside, note again that it's not my intent to put down Islam alone here; pretty much everything I say above applies to many other religions. The same as my original post: its intent is not to ask why a celebrity would choose this religion over that religion, but rather to comment on a perplexing aspect of religious belief in general: that so many believers don't seem terribly concerned with whether the claims of their chosen faith are factually true or not!
In any case, thanks for the comment, and for the pointer to whyislam.org. I don't mind directing readers to that site as a source for information about Islam from an apologetics viewpoint. (For the non-apologetics viewpoint, there's the rest of the Internet. : )
hey, unrelated but thought you'd like the handy danndy addition I've made to your demotivator. http://i.imgur.com/2u6zV.png
Man, that's a perplexing statement by Obama. Here's the full text:
What to make of that? No one is saying that people shouldn't bring their personal morality into debates; how could a person not do so? Secularists are rather making reasonable demands that government not make decisions based solely on religion-based motivations, or favor one religion's morality over another's (or the morality of no religion at all). Let all viewpoints come into the debate, but favor none on the basis of its religious origin per se. (Yes, that means some other criteria will have to be used for weighing viewpoints, like a consideration of the demonstrable benefits and harm of competing viewpoints. That's what secularists want!)
About.com looks at the above Obama quote too, and notes that in the same speech, he makes a pro-secular point:
Hmm, words to appease the religious right, and words to appease the secularists, all in one speech, with no firm stance taken? How to explain the contradiction? Perhaps the simplest explanation takes only two words: political pandering.
Post new comment