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Wednesday, March 29, 2006
What's wrong with Islam?
I think Isaac Schrodinger is right on target when he notes of Muslims' treatment of dogs: Abuse of animals is a symptom of something far worse. Mature peoples are capable of distinguishing old superstition from the larger messages of hope and honor their faiths offer. The Jews may still eschew pork and shellfish, but they do not stone prostitutes. The Christians have put down the Crusades to an embarrassing fit of madness and the Inquisition to far worse. If Muslims, then, cannot lay to the side their religion's embarrassing attitude toward one of God's finer creatures, it's pretty clear why those that they allow to speak in their name are the most embarrassing of 12th and 13th century relics.
Islam is a faith that could have about as much to offer as any other faith, provided its leaders and their followers were seeking a way to find the lessons it offers for the 21st century. Instead, however, they're trying to take us to the last century where their understanding of it made sense.
One gets the sense that if Iran gets nukes and bombs the Middle East back to the stone age, it will be marked as progress for the more fertile soil it provides for their faith as the mullahs understand it, in much the way that the Taliban won notice for blasting the Bamiyan Buddhas, thus taking their brave stance against the notion that the history of a thousand years stood might stand between them and their pursuit of barren meaninglessness.
When Muslims treat their dogs well, it will be a sign they've improved.
Hell, if they treated the women as people, even that would be a start. (See the Freakonomics blog.)
Both stories found at PJM.
posted by gbarto at 5:31 PM
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