Some Chatter Part I: Does Islam promote violence?
I will be breaking this conversation into 3 parts, this is part I:
- Does Islam promote violence?
- ISIS/ISIL/IS (whatever they are called now)
- Hypocrisy.
Preface: I usually try to avoid letting people know my opinion, views, etc. I think it’s annoying. People always think they are right. It’s rarely black and white. So if I come across weighing more value on some facts rather than others to fit my own agenda or bias…I apologize, and let me know. I appreciate more information and I am aware it’s impossible to get all the known facts. Below I have posted a youtube video with an interesting argument whether Islam promotes violence which I will go off of to state my case that: Islam DOES NOT promote violence. We should all veer from making generalizations of religion, especially Islam, which has had a very skewed appearance in the United States probably due to our religious differences, political history, and our distance from Muslim majority countries in general.
A little of my background: two of my favorite classes in college were taught by professor Ahmad Ahmad: Islamic War Theory, and Islamic Law. They were two of the most life changing classes, in addition to another class by my other favorite professor Mark Juergensmeyer whom I had for Global Religion. Because of these professors, I realized how similar we all are, and how obtainable peace actually is. Firstly, I think very few people know how similar Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are. I’ll delve into this more in Part III: Hypocrisy, but I’ll leave you with this chart:
Mark Juergensmeyer
Mark Juergensmeyer (born 1940 in Carlinville, Illinois) is an American scholar in religious studies and sociology and a…en.wikipedia.org
Mark Juergensmeyer (born 1940 in Carlinville, Illinois) is an American scholar in religious studies and sociology and a…en.wikipedia.org
Bill Maher:
- “If vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea, or drawing a cartoon, or writing a book, or eloping with the wrong person. Not only does the muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS.”
Reza Aclan says it best:
- Female Genital Mutilation is not an Islamic problem, it’s an african problem. Eritrea, in central africa has almost 90% FGM, and it’s a Christian country. Ethiopia has 70% and it’s a Christian country.
- “This is the problem, you make these facile arguments like that women are mistreated in the muslim world, well that’s certainly true in many muslim majority countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, but do you know that muslims have elected 7 women as their heads of states in their muslim majority countries?”
- “You are talking about a religion of 1.5 billion people and certainly it becomes easy to paint them all with the same brush, like in Saudi Arabia they can’t drive so that’s representative of Islam, but it’s representative of Saudi Arabia.”
- “Saudi Arabia is one of the most, if not the most, extremist Muslim country in the world. In the month that we have been talking about ISIS and their terrible actions in Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia, our closest ally, has beheaded 19 people. Nobody seems to care about that because Saudi Arabia sort of preserves our national interests.You know, but this is the problem, is that these kinds of conversations that we’re having aren’t really being had in any kind of legitimate way. We’re not talking about women in the Muslim world. We’re using two or three examples to justify a generalization. That’s actually the definition of bigotry.”
Islam doesn’t promote violence or peace. Islam is just a religion, and like every religion in the world, it depends on what you bring to it. If you’re a violent person, your Islam, your Judaism, your Christianity, your Hinduism is going to be violent. There are Buddhist — marauding Buddhist monks in Myanmar slaughtering women and children. Does Buddhism promote violence? Of course not. People are violent or peaceful. And that depends on their politics, their social world, the way that they see their communities, the way they see themselves.
Interviewer: Reza, you don’t think that there’s anything more — there’s — the justice system in Muslim countries you don’t think is somehow more primitive or subjugates women more than in other countries?
Reza: “Indonesia, women are absolutely 100 percent equal to men. In Turkey, they have had more female representatives, more female heads of state in Turkey than we have in the United States.”
Interviewer: “Yes, but in Pakistan…
Reza: Stop saying things like “Muslim countries.”
Interviewer: In Pakistan, women are still being stoned to death.
Reza: And that’s a problem for Pakistan. You’re right. So, let’s criticize Pakistan. Stoning and mutilation and those barbaric practices should be condemned and criticized by everyone. The actions of individuals and societies and countries like Iran, like Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia must be condemned, because they don’t belong in the 21st century. But to say Muslim countries, as though Pakistan and Turkey are the same, as though Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are the same, as though somehow what is happening in the most extreme forms of these repressive countries, these autocratic countries, is representative of what’s happening in every other Muslim country, is, frankly — and I use this word seriously — stupid. So let’s stop doing that.
