Download 06 Dec 2008

MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
[email protected]
NWA Times 6 December 2008
What's Wrong With Islam?
Religion is the prime mover behind much of American politics, and the cause
of lots of the mayhem around the world. It needs more discussion and less
political correctness.
Jared Diamond, in his epic study "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or
Succeed," shows that the deaths of past societies stemmed from their inability to
change their cultural beliefs even when those beliefs were obviously leading them
to oblivion. Today, fundamentalist religion, primarily Christian, Jewish, and
Islamic, are leading us down that same doomsday path. Recently there's been a
spate of serious discussion of this problem by authors such as Richard Dawkins,
Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchins, and religious critiques have shown up in
films such as Bill Maher's satirical "Religulous." We need to keep this discussion
going.
Most religions are full of irrational nonsense, but Islamic nonsense is
especially deadly. Once again, we were treated ten days ago to the spectacle of a
Muslim suicide attack that killed 178 in Mumbai--India's New York City. The
attack was apparently carried out by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba ("the
army of the righteous") militant Muslim group, and was probably related to the
Indian-Pakistani struggle over Kashmir. The group's main objective is to
Islamicise South Asia. We all need to inquire into the motivations of these people
who regard it as their duty to murder civilians in the name of proselytizing for their
supposed God. We need to ask, for example, why nearly every recent terrorist
attack comes from Muslims, far fewer come from Christians and Jews, and fewer
still come from other religious sects.
What is it that causes a young man of respectable means (contrary to
common belief, most suicide bombers are not poor) to pack his clothing with
explosives and shards of metal and decimate himself along with scores of innocent
bystanders, and his mother to be promptly congratulated by hundreds of her
townspeople? It's a scene that's become part of the background noise of our
time: Ho-hum, another suicide bombing in some distant land. But as we learned
on September 11, the land is not always so distant.
You needn't seek far to find the cause of the young man's suicide. Listen to
the Prophet Muhammed, from the "hadith" (the literature of Muhammed's
words): "A single endeavor of fighting in Allah's Cause in the forenoon or in the
afternoon is better than the world and whatever is in it." "Paradise is in the shadow
of swords." Or listen to the Koran: "God's curse be upon the infidels." "God is
the enemy of the unbelievers." "We shall let them live awhile, and then shall drag
them to the scourge of the Fire. Evil shall be their fate." "Slay them wherever you
find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is
worse than carnage." And so forth.
Islamic "holy" books are not the only place you'll find this kind of
bloodthirsty babble; there's plenty of it in Christianity and Judaism, for example in
the story of Abraham and Isaac. But the Koran is filled from end to end with this
stuff. On almost every page, this book exhorts its readers to despise non-believers,
and prepares the ground for religious conflict. Fundamentalist (those who believe
in the literal truth of their traditional books) Muslims, being exposed to this violent
text every day, are not likely to remain peaceful for long. Sam Harris, in his book
"The End of Faith," puts it this way: "Islam, more than any other religion human
beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death."
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press organized a survey
titled "What the World Thinks in 2002" in which over 38,000 people around the
world were questioned. One question, posed only to Muslims, asked whether
suicide bombings against civilian targets are justified to defend Islam, or if on the
other hand they are never justified. Most of you would, I hope, answer "they are
never justified." But not so for Muslims in Lebanon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Jordan,
Bangladesh, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Indonesia, Uganda, and Pakistan, where
majorities or strong minorities of between 82 and 38 percent answered that such
bombings are sometimes justified. Even in supposedly moderate Turkey, 20
percent vowed that the intentional mass murder of random civilians was justified
"to defend Islam." And this poll didn't even include the more devout Muslim
nations: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, and the Palestinian
territories.
Most despised of all by devout Muslims is the heretic. On this score, there
seem to be few moderate--in other words non-fundamentalist--Muslims anywhere
on the planet. Where, for instance, were the moderate Muslims when the
Ayatollah Khomeini condemned author Salman Rushdie to death for his
supposedly irreverent portrayal of Muhammed? Why didn't millions of Muslims
publicly denounce this decree? Instead, the book sparked violence around the
world, bookstores were bombed, Muslim communities in Western nations held
book burnings, several people associated with the book were attacked, seriously
injured, and even killed, and many more died in riots in Third World countries.
The answer can be found in the Koran. Muslims were simply following the
literal word of their sacred script.
This fundamentalist insanity is exactly what Jared Diamond is talking about
in his conclusion that cultures cause their own downfall by their inability to change
those beliefs that are obviously leading them to oblivion.