However, for all that unbelievers in America face discrimination, idiocy and occasional threats, we have it better than people in some parts of the world.
I tend to reserve most of my bile for Christianity, mostly because it's the religion that keeps trying to take over America. Which happens to be where I live. I don't happen to appreciate people trying to shove their beliefs down my throat - I'm not going to compare it to rape, but there are philosophical similarities. Much in the way that a house fire would be similar to a nuclear holocaust, but still...
In fact, due to the excessive and overwrought hatred of Muslims that is typically found among members of the Right Wing, I've tended to shy away from pointing out the less-brilliant aspects of Islamic beliefs. But let me just say this.
Muslim societies, on the whole, are less advanced than those of us in what they call the "West." Their educational levels frequently aren't even on a par with Mississippi, they are roughly as set in their ways as the Catholic church, and they share many beliefs with the Westboro Baptist Chuch. And they have an unpleasant tendancy toward violence similar to members of the NRA.
Bangladesh, for example, is nominally a secular democracy, but they seem to have forgotten what "secular" actually means. When Bangladesh gained independance from Pakistan in 1971, they set up a constitution that included "Four State Principles" - Secularism, Democracy, Nationalism and Socialism (factors which were upheld in Bangladeshi court in 2010).
However, with a population that is almost 90% Muslim (89.4% in 2010), they seem to be adding two more principles: Bigotry and Intolerance.
And Violence. So maybe three principles. (I could add "Murder," but it would rapidly grow into a Monty Python sketch about the Muslim Inquisition.)
See, there's an atheist blogger in Bangladesh named Asif Mohiuddin. In January, he was attacked in an apparent murder attempt, by three men who tried (but failed) to stab him in the throat. A month later, on 15 February, another atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was hacked to death in a machete attack in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh.
For the crime of making himself a target, the surviving blogger, Asif, was arrested last Wednesday, and his blog on www.somewhereinblog.net ordered shut down by the government. He was the fourth blogger in two days to be arrested for "defaming Islam.".
The government is cracking down on athiests because Muslims are rioting. Which is, of course, the perfect response: you should always give in to violent threats. On 13 March, the Prime Minister's office formed a committee tasked with identifying "blasphemous" bloggers.
Earlier in the week, four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting Islamic religious sentiments in a country where 90 percent of people are Muslims.What is it about radical Islam that causes them to attack and kill anyone they disagree with? If girls try to go to school, they get shot. Cartoonists who draw pictures of Mohammed are attacked with axes. Being "too Western" or committing "sexual impropriety" will get a woman murdered by her family.
Following recent protests over the war crimes tribunal, the government has blocked a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.
Under the country’s cyber laws, a blogger or Internet writer can face up to ten years in jail for defaming a religion.
Now, among Christians, the percentage of fundamentalists varies: in the Bible Belt (sociographically, the "East South Central Region" - Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama), it stands at about 58%, while in New England, it climbed slightly during the Bush era to 13%. If we assume that the same percentages hold for the Islamic peoples, that's still a buttload of fundamentalists. And in any religion, it's the fundamentalists who make the worst neighbors.
Here's the thing. Islam has been round for about 1400 years. Know what Christians were doing at about the same point in their history? Crusades and Inquisitions: killing people of other religions, and locking people up for daring to speak against them. The only difference is, modern Muslims have access to more technology than Christians did in the Middle Ages.
You have to wonder if this is a cycle that all major religions go through.
There's no excuse for not being a cynic, I fear.
ReplyDeleteBut good question -- I've often wondered if Islam, if you can treat it as an entity, is at some stage analogous to 11th century 'Christendom' which I think one could treat as an entity at the time.
"What is it about radical Islam that causes them to attack and kill anyone they disagree with?"
Another very good question. Perhaps it has to do with having learned a tiny bit from history and of course Europe has learned a lot more than we have during its centuries of wars and inquisition while we have insulated ourselves from most of it -- or knowledge of it. I'm quite sure that there are enough Americans to make up a Taliban of our own if only we'd let them get away with it, if that isn't being too cynical.
I have to put in the standard disclaimer here by asserting that we can't treat all Muslims like those ignorant and perverted bastards who cut up women and blow up airplanes. I have read enough enlightened writers of Muslim background to know it's not only possible but true and I've read enough of the Koran or Quir'an, if you prefer, to be certain that there's little bad there that isn't equally as bad about Brand C or Brand J for that matter. Indeed the Koran assures the reader than one who follows the Bible has nothing to fear from God. From Islam? Well that's another thing altogether.
There is a huge "elephant in the room" component to the question of why islamic fundies are so willing to kill and die in the name of allah. It is the fact that christians are in charge of virtually all of the most advanced countries on the planet. There are outliers of course, but damned few.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, no christian majority developed countries have, afaia, been invaded, bombed and subjugated by any eastern theocracies.
I have no difficulty in understanding why the radical islamic fundies are murderous swine (at least in our eyes), they often have nothing to lose by being that way.
As was the case in Northern Ireland during the Civil War from the late 70's until almost 2000, religion is cited as a source of the problem* when the differences were ethnic and political. I seriously doubt that the Provos or the Ulster Defense Assn. were doing a lot of parsing of religious differrences when they were murdering each other and third parties with whom they had an axe to grind.
Likewise, the "religious" aspect of the mujahideen, Al Queda and other islamist groups serves two purposes. First the use of religion allows them to appeal to a much broader base and, secondly, their indiscriminate murders and other acts are excuses in the name of Allah. That some of them ARE fervent religionists is true, but religion is not what really drives them.
* Northern Ireland was run, for the benefit of the Crown, primarily by Scots Irish, settled there by the British in the 16th--18th centuries.
Brands J, Brand C, Brand I, and now this: Tortured and beheaded in Papua New Guinea. Not the local police nor the vicar could stop the massacre. There is something fundamentally wrong with language-enabled humanoids, and I've been saying this for years. A lemming species, need I say more!
ReplyDeleteI dunno. The language impaired ones aren't any better. The bulk of us aren't much better than chimps with weapons and we're programmed to form groups and to commit violence against other groups and if the sons of Adam excel above the sons of Bonzo it's mostly in the ability to think up good reasons to kill, maim, loot, pillage, enslave, torture, steal and ruin. So far the best reason ever is Deus Vult and if it isn't obvious that God wills it, just ask the head priest or pontifix or Imam or Pundit or shaman and he'll be sure to explain that the rain never came because your tribe wasn't holy enough to please Mars or Zeus or the like. You either didn't give enough stuff to the temple, you married outside the tribe and diluted priestly power, you didn't persecute other religions and so threatened priestly power, you attempted secular government and diluted priestly power or you attempted to regulate your own sex life and diluted priestly power. All things no God ever gave a shit about, but was vital to -- you guessed it -- priestly power. The whole Bible is an endless repetition of political polemics designed to boost or restore priestly power in the guise of welcoming or restoring "God's kingdom."
DeleteVanity of vanities, scam of scams and we'll never be rid of it.
"It is the fact that christians are in charge of virtually all of the most advanced countries on the planet."
ReplyDeleteAt least non-Muslims are. I've had any number of Muslims insist the world is run by Jews and that every American president is Jewish or is controlled by them. Reminds me of a recorded conversation between Nixon and Billy Graham I once heard, but that's for another day except to say that if the Jews really controlled what that sort of Christian has been claiming we control for all these centuries, my boat would be a lot bigger than it is, to say the least. Fact is I never even had a dog I could control.
But my feeling has long been that religion, despite all the standard apologies and all the great art and music and architecture and poetry, is the most dangerous of weapons and has been responsible for more misery than any plague or famine or natural disaster. Yes, yes, yes, some people have done nice things in order to tempt God not to be such a malignant bastard and perhaps Christianity did bring some aspects of civilization to some places (at great cost to those places) but I have to ask what part of Christian civilization is due to civilization in general. Humanity is the source of good, not god, not nature and certainly not those end-of-the-world, army-of-god, soldiers of the lord who are happy to pull out your fingernails for Jesus or Allah or Kali or any of the other frauds we're invented over the millennia.
What I mean is that no religion is better than the people who live by it or justify their actions by it even if some have become more adept at propagation without the more gruesome and perverted manifestations. For the most part we just use it to deify ourselves and our sick passions.
Think about it, if there really were an almighty and sentient force that gave a shit half as much as you and I do, we wouldn't need a damned religion, would we?
Capt. Fogg:
ReplyDeleteI think that, yes, religion is what you get when there ISN'T a god.
History is what you get when there isn't.
ReplyDelete