Secular Muslims Good, Religious Muslims Bad?
There are people out there that fear Islam. They believe, wrongly, that Islam is a religion of hate, intolerance, and armed religious revolution. Anti-Muslim ideology has become the new, bigoted, rallying cry for xenophobic pro-western smacktards whose knowledge and understanding of a subject is limited to, “he’s a rag head.”
Look, there are plenty of reasons to criticize Obama. There are plenty of reasons to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are plenty of reasons to want to hunt down and kill terrorists. “Because he’s a Muslim” is not one of them.
These people aren’t evil because they’re Muslims. They’re evil and, coincidently, also Muslim.
I say this because I was pondering the Georgia situation. Turkey, a strictly secular but overwhelmingly Muslim country, hasn’t been the target of hate speech in mainstream America since World War I (Hint: we were against them). I started thinking about the most hated Muslim countries and ticked my way down (in a very unscientific, unresearched kind of way) a sort of list of the countries that people really, really hate and came to the conclusion that the more secular a Muslim country is, the less hated it is by the general public, regardless of how Muslim its people actually are.
Iran’s people are more progressive than other middle eastern countries, but it’s government is run by the Ayatollahs. The Saudis are one of America’s best allies in the region and a strong trading partner, but they’re run by a royal family that follows strict Sharia Law and they’re hated by Americans. When was the last time you heard someone ranting about Morocco or Jordan? They both have kings. They’re both overwhelmingly (90%+) Muslim. They’re monarchies. But both grant freedom of religion to their citizens.
The other half of the thought process going into all of this flows from the natural contrarain in me. If that logic can be applied to one thing, what’s to stop it from working on another? In other words, I am lead to ask a question of those who hate and fear Muslims:
If a government is “better” because it relies less on their religion, why wouldn’t it be better if it relied less on your religion? You’ve obviously reached a conclusion that their religion is bad. It’s bad because they base their law on a book and a prophet of God. It’s bad because their god commands them that they shall have be no other gods before Him. It’s bad because they think they’re going to heaven for what they’re doing. It’s bad because a few of them have read an obscure reference in that same holy book that tells them they should not tolerate sin. It tells them to lash out and destroy that which is evil in the eyes of God.
There’s an eerie reflection in that mirror.
Tagged with: Islam, Middle East, Morality, Morals and Values, Muslim, Religion
Alternate ending:
If a government is “better” because it relies less on their conclusions about God, why wouldn’t it be better if it relied less on your conclusions about God? You’ve obviously reached a conclusion that their theory is bad. It’s bad because they base their conclusions on an unprovable theory. It’s bad because their theory commands them that they shall have be no other theories besides theirs. It’s bad because they think they’re going to magically enlighten everyone with their brilliant logic. It’s bad because a few of them have read an obscure reference in some New York Times Best Seller that tells them they should not tolerate other religions. It tells them to lash out and destroy that which is evil in the eyes of the politically correct.
This really wasn’t what I planned on writing today.