Some Thoughts on Islam

Oh boy.. I don’t know who I despise more, Bill Mayer or CNN. I’m pretty biased here and I know the arguments against speaking of Islam as violent and reactionary.  Generalizations like that instantly get you labeled a bigot or a racist. 

So after thinking about it, I came up with this; I am aware that Islam has a following of 1.6 billion people and that Indonesia and India have hundreds of millions of Muslims who don’t fit the caricatures of violent extremism. That’s why Maher and these dimwitted representatives of the “mainstream media” are guilty of, at the very least, of trying to make gross generalizations. 

But let’s be honest. Islam has a problem: the places that “have trouble accommodating themselves” into the modern world are disproportionately Muslim.

In 2013 of the top 10 groups that perpetrated terrorist attacks, seven were Muslim (http://tinyurl.com/qarggyq). Of the top 10 countries where terrorist attacks took place, seven were Muslim-majority. Look at the Pew Research Centers rating of countries on the level of restrictions that governments impose on the free exercise of religion (http://tinyurl.com/o7pmwow). Of the 24 most restrictive countries on the planet, 19 are Muslim-majority. Of the 21 countries that have laws against apostasy, (http://tinyurl.com/kvzm64d ) ALL have Muslim majorities. 

One cannot ignore the fact that there is a cancer of extremism within Islam today. It is true that a small minority of Muslims celebrate violence and intolerance and harbors deeply reactionary attitudes toward women and minorities but almost NO-ONE in the Islamic world addresses or confronts them ..and the few protests that there are out there, are nothing but a collective whisper. I mean, how many mass rallies have been held against ISIS in the Arab world? 

None.

The problem with Maher’s and others analysis of Islam, is that they take a reality — extremism in Islam — and describe it in ways that suggest it is inherent in Islam. Maher said Islam is “the only religion that acts like the Mafia, that will fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book.” He’s is correct about the viciousness but incorrect to link it solely to “Islam” 

So, if someone is asserting that Islam is inherently violent then, since Islam has been around for 14 centuries, we should have seen 14 centuries of this behavior. Islam has at times been at the cutting edge of modernity, but like today, it has also been backward and regressive. Excluding the last 70 years or so, the Islamic world has been tolerant of minorities.. That’s why there were more than a million Jews living in the Arab world until the 1950s — nearly 200,000 in Iraq alone. The big word here is ‘were.’

I wouldn’t even hazard a guess on what strategy could be used to reform Islam, but telling 1.6 billion Muslims, most of whom are pious and devout, that their religion is evil and they should stop taking it seriously is probably not going to do it.

It seems to me that Christianity moved from its centuries-long embrace of violence, crusades, inquisitions, witch-burning and intolerance to its modern state by intellectuals and theologians celebrating the elements of the religion that were tolerant, liberal and modern.. and then emphasized them. All the while giving devout Christians reasons to take pride in their faith. A similar approach, reform coupled with respect might work with Islam over time.

The stakes are high in this debate. You can try to make news or you can make a difference. I hope Maher and the MSM start doing the latter.