The other night, I went to an Interfaith dialogue about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and it was the most fulfilling discussion I've had in a long time.
Christians, Muslims, Jews, and others representing other faiths (and then there was me, who couldn't tell you her faith if she tried...) sat down and had a wonderful, beautiful conversation about the thing we can agree on above all - that we all desire Middle Eastern Peace, and that we feel compelled to do our part to make it happen.
Yep. We ALL agreed on it.
Even the Muslims. Which doesn't surprise me at ALL, in the least, but it might surprise some of the more ignorant among those that I have the misfortune of knowing.
Coming from a pretty exclusively Christian background, hearing stupid, ignorant comments about Muslims is basically a daily occurrence. And I HATE it. I don't think anything pisses me off more (please read one of my previous posts on the "Mosque Controversy" for some extra flavor - Freedom of religion means freedom of fucking religion. SHUT UP.)
If you are one of those people that thinks that Islam is all about "honor killings, discrimination against women and violence," please, please, PLEASE read this post right here. It will make you think. You might not like that it makes you think, but having to admit that you might be wrong builds character and it makes you learn something wonderful and freeing - in this case, that Muslims are beautiful, deeply spiritual, God-fearing, God-loving PEOPLE, just like YOU!
It was written by a sister of mine across the globe that I have never met - but my love goes out to her nonetheless, and the courage and eloquence she shows in sharing something like this is inspired.
After you read it, go make friends with a Muslim, and have an honest conversation with them about religion. I promise, you will be surprised.
Thanks a bunch! :)
Jessie, I read the last sermon. While admitting that I know little about Islam, I have read vicious passages from the Koran, and I also know that--like Christianity--it is a religion that regards doubt as evil and unquestioning faith in authority as among the highest of virtues. If Moslems like the ones in your group were typical of Islam, the world would be better off, but when I (almost) literally never turn on the NPR news without immediately hearing of some Moslem killing people in the name of Allah, I see no reason to regard Islam as other than a grave danger to world peace.
ReplyDeleteI must have been writing on your blog while you were writing on mine. After I hit the "post comment" button, I felt a little badly that I had, in effect, rained on your parade of open-hearted affection and optimism.
ReplyDeleteI have only known one Moslem. His name was Hassan, a Saudi university student who was my room mate for a few months. That was 23 years ago, and I still miss him and think of him fairly often because I have never known a sweeter human being. My long ago friendship with Hassan doesn't change my feelings about Islam, but mentioning it to you is my way of saying that I recognize your deep desire to be open to the good in people--and groups of people--that are looked down upon and even despised. I would like to do that too. I am sure that the picture I get of Moslems from the news is unfair (I mean, how often does the media report good news?), yet when the reports come hard and fast day after day, year after year, it would appear to me that there is something grievously wrong with the mindset of millions of Moslems in all parts of the world, and when I ask myself what is the one common denominator that all of these people share, all that comes to mind is religion.
Thanks for your comments, Snow. I do not doubt the violent sentiment that many Muslims hold, but there are a billion of them on this planet. That's a LOT of people, and in no way does the violence reported by the media pertain to a majority of them.
ReplyDeleteMy blog post is mostly intended for those that I know that are insistent that Islam is a violent religion and that all Muslims are radical Christian-killers that want to take over everything. It's just not the case. I guess my greater point to them is that there are ways to misinterpret the Koran and Islam, just like there are ways to misinterpret the Bible and Christianity. There are tons of Christians who are severely Islamophobic because all they've ever heard from the Koran is the passages pertaining to violence. Well guess what, the Bible has violent and cruel passages, too. There is no way to accurately judge a religion based on its holy text - times change, and something written 2,000 or 1,500 years ago just can't be as relevant today as it was back then. It's just not possible. To really understand and get the full scope of any given religion, you must get to know followers of that religion on a personal basis, and learn of their spiritual journey and why it is that their religion is so important to them.
It's interesting that you should mention "common denominators." I have yet to find one thing that every single Christian can agree on. They can't even all agree about the nature of Christ and the Godhead - if they can't all come to a consensus about who their God is, then how in hell can there be any common denominator?
If Christians don't have any general agreements, then do Muslims? Is there any one thing that every Muslim can agree to? If so, do they all come to the same conclusion about how that one universal Muslim truth is represented? Somehow, I doubt it.
What I find incredible is that "love thy neighbor" is a common denominator of ALL religions! Every holy text (or unholy text, such as that of Satanism) and doctrine contains some command to treat others the way you'd want to be treated. THE common denominator of ALL religion, and it's almost universally ignored.
Awesome.
PS, there are also Christians who do horrible things in the name of Christ. The typical Christian excuse is that "they are not representative of the majority of Christianity," and yet they are not willing to consider that maybe Muslims might say the same about honor killings.
ReplyDeleteAnd if there's anything I hate, it's a double standard.
I have no doubt but what most Moslems never kill anyone, but I would say the same about Nazis, Inquisition era Christians, or any other large group that is infamous for its treachery. Likewise, I grew up in the South during the '60s, which was an era of Klan violence, and most people were not Klansmen. Yet, they remained silent while the Klan did its thing just as WWII era Germans and Inquisition era Christians remained silent. Most of the silent majority sympathized with the abusers, while others did not, but they all remained silent nonetheless, and I suspect that this is true of the majority of non-violent Moslems today. They might not shoot, blow-up, stab, or behead people themselves, but they nonetheless think that the victims got what they had coming. I think this to be likely based upon dozens of interviews of Moslems that I've watched and because of what I saw during my childhood. I watched as my fellow citizens cheered (literally, cheered) when the Kennedys, MLK, Emmitt Till, and Medgar Evers, and a whole lot of other people were murdered, yet they themselves would have never pulled the trigger. They were no less evil than those who did, but they were more gutless. You would have to go a long way to convince me that Islam isn't a threat to world peace at this very moment when masses of people are murdering others daily in the name of Allah.
ReplyDeleteAs for pointing out that the Bible is just as bad as the Koran, I don't doubt that at all, but then I have absolutely no respect for the Bible either. It too has inspired hundreds upon hundreds of years of death and cruelty, and the fact that Christians are less vicious now than in the past doesn't erase my fears that they might not return to their old ways given the right political environment.
When I mentioned infamous groups of murderers, I overlooked the government of the United States of America. Like the others, most Americans never kill anyone, they just support those who do.
ReplyDeleteSo you're arguing that everyone who supports religion supports senseless killing? I can see where one might think that, if one means both conscious and ignorant support...but I can't get on board with it.
ReplyDeleteFundamentalism is dangerous - fundamentalist Christians are everything that is wrong with America. But take those who strike a balance between faith and sensibility - like my dad, for example. He is the smartest, wisest, most sensible person that I know. He values his faith, but he doesn't let it rule his life and his common sense. It is one of many components that make him up as a person. He would never, ever, ever support the dangerous fundamentalism that many Christians do - even if he might some be "enabling" them somehow, like by giving money to the church or something similar. But supporting his church is something that he values too, mostly because it is one of his social communities and he wants to make tangible recognition of that. He is a Christian that cannot and will not tolerate fundamentalism.
I think Muslims are the same way. I think there are fundamentalist Muslims, and they are the ones killing people/supporting those that kill people/taking the Koran way, way, way too literally. Then there are Muslims that value their faith as a guideline for life but don't take it to extremes.
Making religion the enemy isn't the answer, because the real enemy is fundamentalism.
Jessie I am so honoured that u would link my post.
ReplyDeleteAnd I love your open mindedness and desire to understand religions without letting preset perceptions colour your mind. Truly it is minds like yours that will change inter faith dialogue and make the world a better place.
Granted I agree that the image portrayed by the media of muslims is that of ignorant, club wielding cavemen who beat their wives n behead people for the slightest sin under God's name. But truly ignorance is the worst punishment for anyone. All i ask is that before u judge islam, please make sure that u see it in its entirety and not just based on what u see in the contemporary times. For example, did u know that Arab states despite the intellectual decadence that they have fallen into nowadays were the ones that helped harbour the Jews during the Holocaust? Did you know that orthodox Jews and muslims lived side by side and in peace before the ceration of a Jewish State in many Arab countries? Im not blaming everything on the US government and the Jewish powers but to a certain extent you have to think about their motives also in condemning Islam, an otherwise peaceful religion? Why now suddenly? Why not during the 1970s? Before capitalism's enemy was communism but now that communism has been tamed and domesticated to their ruses, they turn to the next target, Islam.
And first all of I would like you to take a look at open minded muslims in countries like Malaysia who are against the September 11 attacks. For us we do not see these people as muslim and representing Islam because we know that this is not what REAL ISLAM teaches us to do. True i admit there are verses in the Quran that talk about punishment and Hellfire but dont all religions talk about the consequences n penalties of certain conduct?
The problem is with fundamentalists that take it out of context and for the opportunists who try to warp it into something monstrous to meet their own gains. Such people are indeed cruel and are worse than people who commit genocide because everytime they spread a wrong message based on baseless, personalized ignorance, they kill young minds that have the capacity of changing the world and making it a more peaceful place. So all i ask is that please do not write off Islam as a violent, barbaric religion because it would be an insult to your intelligence and intellectual capacity as human beings to take whatever the media and ignorant muslims spoon feed to you.
There's a saying you cannot pour more knowledge into a cup that is already full. So all i ask is that you neutralize ur minds before reading about Islam. If you want to know further, if your " cups" are not already full please read this link:
http://www.muhammad.net/with-the-prophet-topmenu-63/235-mankinds-debt-to-the-prophet.html
Jessie, I wouldn't go that far, although I do believe that to support a church is to support anti-rationalism, and anti-rationalism puts one beyond being swaying by verifiable facts wherever they contradict one's religious beliefs. I have tried so hard to reach religious people on my blog on a logical and evidentiary basis, yet they really and truly don't care that their thought processes are factually unsupportable. This enables them to support a great many nutty things.
ReplyDelete"He values his faith, but he doesn't let it rule his life and his common sense."
How does he reconcile, on one hand, faith in the unverifiable--if not the nonsensical--and, on the other, logic and reason?
"Making religion the enemy isn't the answer, because the real enemy is fundamentalism."
I do believe that to support an irrational world-view (however liberal it is) takes away any ground from which one might argue against another irrational world-view. After all, what do you say, my version of blind faith is superior to your version of blind faith?
Faith isn't about rationality, it's about...faith. I've never known quite how to explain that, because my "faith" doesn't work the same way that of others does. To some, the Big Bang is irrational, to others, God is irrational. There is no budging either of them or telling them their view of rationality is wrong. Rationality is relative.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was an engineer, and is now a patent attorney. He depends greatly on his logic and reason in everyday life, but like I said, faith is not foremost. I think, for him, the traditional aspect of Lutheranism, seeing as how it runs very strongly in our family, and the social community provided by his church mean more to him than anything else. I don't think he thinks he knows everything about God, and I don't think he's in any hurry to find out. He just hasn't put God and spirituality in a realm of total impossibility. Meanwhile, maintaining our historical and traditional family values is important to him. He was raised going to church, and it works for him in keeping him morally sound and centered in those values. And, despite what you might think of outcomes of irrational faith, he has good values. I have good values because of how he taught them to me - through church. I choose not to go because I am uncomfortable making a profession of faith that I don't have. And round and round we go.
"After all, what do you say, my version of blind faith is superior to your version of blind faith?"
I am a relativist - I don't have faith in any one thing, but I have faith that there is SOME thing. Whether it's one being or another realm or whatever, I don't know, and I don't care, because if IT cared, it would have made itself plain to me. I just know it's there. It's not blind, it's based on the things I've sensed and experienced.
I don't believe that I am qualified, obliged, or allowed to tell someone else that what they believe is wrong, no matter how "irrational" it might seem to me, because their experiences belong to them, and I am just going to make myself look like a prick in trying to alter that. But, when it affects and harms other people directly, then it isn't faith anymore, it's being an asshole and it is potentially very harmful (and overtly VERY annoying).
If one depends on one's faith as a moral guide and looks to it for comfort in times of trial, I think that's great. To each his own - everyone deals with life differently. Just don't get any of it on me when I didn't ask for it. That is exactly what evangelical fundamentalism seeks to do - go back to the core principles and drag everyone else with you. YOU can go back to whatever core principles you want. I am going to go sit over here. Don't drag me after you.
The big bang theory tries to fit the known facts of the universe into a hypothesis that might: (a) reasonably explain them. and (b) doesn't refute itself with inherent contradictions. A belief in god accomplishes the first very well, but fails utterly in accomplishing the second.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say that rationality is relative, I might ask, relative to what? Do you mean to imply that rational thought is simply a matter of opinion with all opinions being equally valid, or do you mean that some people might believe something strongly and yet be entirely wrong?
"He just hasn't put God and spirituality in a realm of total impossibility."
A thing doesn't have to appear impossible to lack credence. Yes, of course, a supernatural entity COULD exist, but then so could a great many other things that there's no evidence for.
"It's not blind, it's based on the things I've sensed and experienced"
I have no argument with that. Let's say that, at this very moment, the ceiling above my head disappears and a voice speaks to me from heaven. I would then have to decide if that voice was real or if it was an hallucination. If I decided on the former, I might very well reconstruct my whole world view around what it said, yet I couldn't--rationally--use my experience to prove anything to anyone else. If you've had experiences that prove to you that "SOME" thing is there, then I can hardly argue with that.
"I don't believe that I am qualified, obliged, or allowed to tell someone else that what they believe is wrong, no matter how "irrational" it might seem to me....But, when it affects and harms other people directly, then it isn't faith anymore, it's being an asshole..."
Whoa, Nelly! How do you combine part A and part B? First, you say that you can't declare another person's belief irrational, and then you say that you can if their belief fails an arbitrary criterion that you've imposed. This is why evidence and logic matter so much. Once you throw out rationality as a basis for declaring a belief false, then you have no basis left but your private opinion, and your private opinion (faith, if you will) is no more valid than anyone else's. You base yours on being kind; others base theirs on killing those who stand in the way of their vision of utopia. How do you prove them wrong?
Please pardon errors as I write hurriedly.
I'm sorry Snow, I didn't see that you'd responded until now.
ReplyDeleteI don't think reason, for my dad, has as much to do with his value of faith as having a moral center does. One might not agree that religion begets positive morality but for many, it gives them a standard, something to reference in times of questioning, even if "it" doesn't answer. Reason is important, but faith isn't logical. You can't make an argument based on faith.
No, no...Ok. I don't want to prove anyone wrong. But let's make some ground rules here:
1) People have different experiences that lead them to different conclusions about the world.
2) Two people might experience the same thing and derive a totally different "lesson" from it.
3) Faith is never identical.
4) Faith is SUPPOSED to be personal.
5) Faith is never irrational until it reaches outside the realm of self and is imposed on others.
[Normal] People with faith in God can't prove their faith logically and feel no need to do so, because it is personal and obvious to them. When that respect for others that don't share your belief disappears and you start making other people conform to the things you have learned, it ceases to be faith and becomes an invalid logical argument.
Something might be obvious to you, because of your experiences, but in pushing it on others, faith is no justification.