DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
I agree with you on this point, almost entirely. However, it doesn't make undue criticism of one particular religion (as opposed to the emerging disdain for all religions) any more morally or practically palatable.
Returning to Islam and its deletrious effects on the idea of Western civilization, again, I can only direct you to my initial statement in the thread: think geopolitically. In my view, religions are tools in a nation's arsenal, tools it uses to further its political interests. Now, from that point of view, Islam ceases to be the driving factor behind its own apparent discord with the 'West', and becomes a tool used by nations for whom a more Islamic world or a West bogged down in an unwinnable conflict with an entire Abrahamic religion is geostrategically appealing. Islam as a political alternative to the current idea of the nation-state is a weak alternative indeed, given that its nebulous idea of a pan-Islamic caliphate isn't clearly expanded on in the Quran, and that its ideals of Islamic equality between peoples appear clearly to be pie-in-the-sky thinking to even devout Muslims given the racial, wealth-driven and ethnic divides that exist between, say, Arab Muslims and Pakistani/South Asian Muslims. An Ethiopian Muslim is not any less likely to be a member of the underclass in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states (or even in the supposedly ‘pure’ Islamic State) just because he too is a Muslim - it is still his wealth, talent and (to a lesser degree, but still) his race that determines his standing in those societies.
Beyond this, Islam as a whole is also very decentralized: the same factor that enabled its spread across Africa and Asia even when Arab and Persian armies had ceased their conquests (and the same factor that made it so liable to be introduced into a society via traders and merchants) is also the same factor that has prevented and will prevent a unified voice of Islam that emerges as an alternative to the ideals of Western civilization. Even ignoring the Sunni-Shia divide (which occurred in its early days), Islam has seen countless sects (Sufis, Ahmadis, Druze) and has often proved utterly unable to contain them within its overall narrative without the use of violence or force: hardly the example of a unified political religion out to challenge the idea of the West.
So, Islam as a whole isn't an existential threat (or even much of a long-term threat, given the trend of fully integrated second and third generation Muslims becoming increasingly Westernized over time). But it is being used by certain geopolitical entities (Saudi Arabia, leader of the Sunni world: Iran, leader of the Shia world, the Gulf states ,eager to preserve their own monarchies and turn Islamism elsewhere, Russia, eager to tie Western Europe and the US down in the Middle East) to very effectively bait the West and force it into a confrontation it cannot win.
In that regard, is the geopolitical tool of Islam a threat to the 'West'? Only via its usage by interested nation-states to fuel their own geopolitical ambitions. In that regard, any religion could have been used to push this angle of attack if it had been sufficiently useful to the geopolitical foes of the Western Europe/US combine.
A religion is fairly inert politically, in my view: save for its initial spread by charismatic prophets and leaders, any religion generally becomes subsumed within the larger (and far more long-lasting) strategic interests of the states in which it is most prominent. Islam is no different in this regard, and a phobia of that individual religion (which is no more barbaric than, say, Christianity when it comes down to its base components as prescribed by its holy book) as a threat larger than the other religions out there is counter-productive and unfair, for the reasons detailed earlier.
And, as an aside, I don't think Islam's problems when it comes to its compatibility with modern Western civilization (and I agree, it has a lot of problems) are unique at all. I've already detailed how I don't view Islam as a threat to the West, in as much as I view the states behind the spread of militant Islamism as a threat: however, that is only talking about concrete Western states (simplified as the 'West', because they usually act in tandem). However, I'm also thinking on a broader logical base about the ideals of Western civilization, the more fundamental tenets which define the commonality experienced by 'Western' states and broader 'modern' states in the contemporary world. These ideals: the equality of all men and women, the right to pursue happiness, government by consent, a relatively free exchange of ideas across mediums, a clearly independent judiciary, legislature and executive, legal protections to all people from unlawful harassment, affray or seizure of property, the right to a fair trial, innocent until proven guilty......these are the ideals that have shaped the modern world by the force of their attractiveness to all the members of the human race. And I think these ideals are under assault by other religions just as much as they are by Islam.
The right of gay people to live with dignity is one of the basest rights I expect a state based on the ideals of Western civilization to have. Okay, expecting them to legalize overt homosexuality or same-sex civil partnerships is unrealistic: they're difficult concepts to understand and empathize with for a multitude of reasons, and it's natural that some states take more time to achieve those reforms than others. However, at the very least, a man or woman found to be gay should be afforded the same legal protections from unlawful harassment, affray or seizure of property, at the very least.
This particular tenet of Western civilization is under massive assault in places ranging from Africa to India, spurred on by waves of fundamentalists converting hordes of uneducated people and then implementing draconian views on this matter straight from their holy book. Which fundamentalists? Evangelical Christians, funded by organizations in the American Mid-West to 'bring the natives to the light'. Which book? The Holy Bible. The results? The government-sanctioned necklacings of gay people in Uganda, anti-homosexual hate crimes and resultant police inaction on these crimes rising in African countries from Nigeria to Kenya, the passing of an Anti-Homosexuality Act in Kampala in 2014 that sentenced discovered gays to life in prison, rising anti-homosexual conservatism in the hitherto liberal areas of South India (also a target for missionaries from the United States and the UK)....
The same observation can be made with the tenet of relatively free speech across mediums: Hindus in India (despite even the somewhat openly pro-Hindu BJP government discouraging such actions) have long been calling for books and films insulting their religious sentiments to be banned by law, but that activity has taken a new upward spike this past year, with burnings of cinemas and books critical of Hinduism becoming increasingly common across the country, the government itself taking legal action against even facebook posts deemed to be 'offensive' to religious sentiments, and Hindu groups discouraging 'Western' practices and norms that are critical of or contradict ostensibly 'traditional' Indian values.
I could go on: the right to equality under the law, the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocent until proven guilty - all of them have been attacked in countries that have implemented them by Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims alike. These are all assaults on the idea of Western civilization itself. Yet, Islam, an admittedly deeply-flawed religion, is put on a pedal stool and given the status of an 'eminent threat' to the ideas of Western civilization (forged as they were in the heat of a scientific enlightenment and a rejection of tradition and religion-inspired departation of progress) while these other attacks on the same ideals go unnoticed because they happen in continents and countries that aren't geopolitical concerns of the West at the present moment: Western civilization is all-encompassing, yet we seem to focus on one religion while forgiving others even as they tear down the tenets of said civilization in countries just beyond the floodlight-lit horizon.
Look, either way, blaming just Islam is wrong. It isn't a bigger threat than other religions, it just has backers whose primary geopolitical goals are in opposition to those of the West, and another religion put in the same place would be used the same way. Similarly, it isn't the only religion which is currently at odds with the idea of 'Western civilization': nearly every modern religion is in some form or another (and often many forms at once).
Religion is bunkum, and I'll stick to what I said earlier - oppose them all, or oppose none. It isn't logical to pick on Islam, which is ultimately what Islamophobia is, no? (not suggesting in any way that you do, of course).
And I agree with you, in the end - one day, I hope everyone just laughs at these stories of holy ghosts, holy men, holy spirits and holy rocks, while impartially and unemotionally assimilating the good that religions do have. But I don't think it will happen: the vast majority of us will never go on to become world-changing inventors, scientists, leaders or thinkers, and so we won't be able to assure ourselves that we mattered or made a difference when facing the grim inevitability of death - religion fills that gap, and gives us comfort and succour with its insistence on the presence of a higher being that has a plan that includes all of us, in some form or another.
That comfort is an invaluable thing to have, so I don't see religions going away any time soon. And honestly, that's sort of how I'd like them there - defanged, an object of public disdain and politically powerless.... but still present to provide comfort and solace to those that need them.
Returning to Islam and its deletrious effects on the idea of Western civilization, again, I can only direct you to my initial statement in the thread: think geopolitically. In my view, religions are tools in a nation's arsenal, tools it uses to further its political interests. Now, from that point of view, Islam ceases to be the driving factor behind its own apparent discord with the 'West', and becomes a tool used by nations for whom a more Islamic world or a West bogged down in an unwinnable conflict with an entire Abrahamic religion is geostrategically appealing. Islam as a political alternative to the current idea of the nation-state is a weak alternative indeed, given that its nebulous idea of a pan-Islamic caliphate isn't clearly expanded on in the Quran, and that its ideals of Islamic equality between peoples appear clearly to be pie-in-the-sky thinking to even devout Muslims given the racial, wealth-driven and ethnic divides that exist between, say, Arab Muslims and Pakistani/South Asian Muslims. An Ethiopian Muslim is not any less likely to be a member of the underclass in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states (or even in the supposedly ‘pure’ Islamic State) just because he too is a Muslim - it is still his wealth, talent and (to a lesser degree, but still) his race that determines his standing in those societies.
Beyond this, Islam as a whole is also very decentralized: the same factor that enabled its spread across Africa and Asia even when Arab and Persian armies had ceased their conquests (and the same factor that made it so liable to be introduced into a society via traders and merchants) is also the same factor that has prevented and will prevent a unified voice of Islam that emerges as an alternative to the ideals of Western civilization. Even ignoring the Sunni-Shia divide (which occurred in its early days), Islam has seen countless sects (Sufis, Ahmadis, Druze) and has often proved utterly unable to contain them within its overall narrative without the use of violence or force: hardly the example of a unified political religion out to challenge the idea of the West.
So, Islam as a whole isn't an existential threat (or even much of a long-term threat, given the trend of fully integrated second and third generation Muslims becoming increasingly Westernized over time). But it is being used by certain geopolitical entities (Saudi Arabia, leader of the Sunni world: Iran, leader of the Shia world, the Gulf states ,eager to preserve their own monarchies and turn Islamism elsewhere, Russia, eager to tie Western Europe and the US down in the Middle East) to very effectively bait the West and force it into a confrontation it cannot win.
In that regard, is the geopolitical tool of Islam a threat to the 'West'? Only via its usage by interested nation-states to fuel their own geopolitical ambitions. In that regard, any religion could have been used to push this angle of attack if it had been sufficiently useful to the geopolitical foes of the Western Europe/US combine.
A religion is fairly inert politically, in my view: save for its initial spread by charismatic prophets and leaders, any religion generally becomes subsumed within the larger (and far more long-lasting) strategic interests of the states in which it is most prominent. Islam is no different in this regard, and a phobia of that individual religion (which is no more barbaric than, say, Christianity when it comes down to its base components as prescribed by its holy book) as a threat larger than the other religions out there is counter-productive and unfair, for the reasons detailed earlier.
And, as an aside, I don't think Islam's problems when it comes to its compatibility with modern Western civilization (and I agree, it has a lot of problems) are unique at all. I've already detailed how I don't view Islam as a threat to the West, in as much as I view the states behind the spread of militant Islamism as a threat: however, that is only talking about concrete Western states (simplified as the 'West', because they usually act in tandem). However, I'm also thinking on a broader logical base about the ideals of Western civilization, the more fundamental tenets which define the commonality experienced by 'Western' states and broader 'modern' states in the contemporary world. These ideals: the equality of all men and women, the right to pursue happiness, government by consent, a relatively free exchange of ideas across mediums, a clearly independent judiciary, legislature and executive, legal protections to all people from unlawful harassment, affray or seizure of property, the right to a fair trial, innocent until proven guilty......these are the ideals that have shaped the modern world by the force of their attractiveness to all the members of the human race. And I think these ideals are under assault by other religions just as much as they are by Islam.
The right of gay people to live with dignity is one of the basest rights I expect a state based on the ideals of Western civilization to have. Okay, expecting them to legalize overt homosexuality or same-sex civil partnerships is unrealistic: they're difficult concepts to understand and empathize with for a multitude of reasons, and it's natural that some states take more time to achieve those reforms than others. However, at the very least, a man or woman found to be gay should be afforded the same legal protections from unlawful harassment, affray or seizure of property, at the very least.
This particular tenet of Western civilization is under massive assault in places ranging from Africa to India, spurred on by waves of fundamentalists converting hordes of uneducated people and then implementing draconian views on this matter straight from their holy book. Which fundamentalists? Evangelical Christians, funded by organizations in the American Mid-West to 'bring the natives to the light'. Which book? The Holy Bible. The results? The government-sanctioned necklacings of gay people in Uganda, anti-homosexual hate crimes and resultant police inaction on these crimes rising in African countries from Nigeria to Kenya, the passing of an Anti-Homosexuality Act in Kampala in 2014 that sentenced discovered gays to life in prison, rising anti-homosexual conservatism in the hitherto liberal areas of South India (also a target for missionaries from the United States and the UK)....
The same observation can be made with the tenet of relatively free speech across mediums: Hindus in India (despite even the somewhat openly pro-Hindu BJP government discouraging such actions) have long been calling for books and films insulting their religious sentiments to be banned by law, but that activity has taken a new upward spike this past year, with burnings of cinemas and books critical of Hinduism becoming increasingly common across the country, the government itself taking legal action against even facebook posts deemed to be 'offensive' to religious sentiments, and Hindu groups discouraging 'Western' practices and norms that are critical of or contradict ostensibly 'traditional' Indian values.
I could go on: the right to equality under the law, the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocent until proven guilty - all of them have been attacked in countries that have implemented them by Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims alike. These are all assaults on the idea of Western civilization itself. Yet, Islam, an admittedly deeply-flawed religion, is put on a pedal stool and given the status of an 'eminent threat' to the ideas of Western civilization (forged as they were in the heat of a scientific enlightenment and a rejection of tradition and religion-inspired departation of progress) while these other attacks on the same ideals go unnoticed because they happen in continents and countries that aren't geopolitical concerns of the West at the present moment: Western civilization is all-encompassing, yet we seem to focus on one religion while forgiving others even as they tear down the tenets of said civilization in countries just beyond the floodlight-lit horizon.
Look, either way, blaming just Islam is wrong. It isn't a bigger threat than other religions, it just has backers whose primary geopolitical goals are in opposition to those of the West, and another religion put in the same place would be used the same way. Similarly, it isn't the only religion which is currently at odds with the idea of 'Western civilization': nearly every modern religion is in some form or another (and often many forms at once).
Religion is bunkum, and I'll stick to what I said earlier - oppose them all, or oppose none. It isn't logical to pick on Islam, which is ultimately what Islamophobia is, no? (not suggesting in any way that you do, of course).
And I agree with you, in the end - one day, I hope everyone just laughs at these stories of holy ghosts, holy men, holy spirits and holy rocks, while impartially and unemotionally assimilating the good that religions do have. But I don't think it will happen: the vast majority of us will never go on to become world-changing inventors, scientists, leaders or thinkers, and so we won't be able to assure ourselves that we mattered or made a difference when facing the grim inevitability of death - religion fills that gap, and gives us comfort and succour with its insistence on the presence of a higher being that has a plan that includes all of us, in some form or another.
That comfort is an invaluable thing to have, so I don't see religions going away any time soon. And honestly, that's sort of how I'd like them there - defanged, an object of public disdain and politically powerless.... but still present to provide comfort and solace to those that need them.
)...of course, that's as I sit here. Whether I could actually pull it off, faced with the moment, is another question entirely. And a relevant one.