It suddenly occurs to me, today, that the main reason we in the West (apart from the blogosphere) are unable to speak the truth about Islam is that inherent in such criticism is the revelation that the entire Muslim community (except for the true believers) are unthinking conformists: basically dumb culturalists.
So dumb, in fact, that many grow up and swallow an ideology that many of them don't understand. From Why I Left Islam by Syed Kamran Mirza:
I never understood the meaning of any word of Qur’an or suras, which used to bother me very much ...I guess it's a critical mass thing: when so many people believe it, then few question it. And the young people grow up thinking "it must be stupid me that can't understand" and try to find a way to make sense of it.
One day, I asked my father if he understood the Qur’an which he was reading so routinely. My father replied: “I also do not understand what I am reading, but Huzur (pir) told me to read everyday which will bring immense sawaabs (profit) for me and for my family. Allah will reward for reading Qur’an daily. You don’t need to understand the meanings of Qur’an. Just by reading Qur’an you will get lots of “Sawwabs” (profits).
And implied in this revelation is that Muslims are conformists. Which goes against the liberal notion that we are all seekers of peace, love, and self-determination when not encumbered with disadvantage or oppression.
So, such a revelation is an insult to both Muslims and liberals. No wonder nobody wants to go near the topic.
Of course, there is more to it: like the heavy implications of reversing the flawed policy of hosting Muslim communities in the West, etc.
Sorry, that's as good as my Oprah 'light bulb' Moments get. Now, in the interests of saving the planet, I will go back to living in the dark ...
And for the record, I don't consider it insulting to call people 'dumb culturalists'. I think cult-ure is up there at the top of the tree of human needs (we all need to belong) and therefore is a beautiful thing. The content of some cultures, however, can definitely be described as dumb.
Light off.
2 comments:
It's a dumb and ultimately lethal ideology, and until we're able to clearly recognise that it's no more a religion than Nazism, we're stuffed.
Islam purports to be a perfect religion, with a perfect book, brought by a perfect man. If the smallest thing in it ceases to be perfect, the whole system fails. For this reason (and because of 164 "jihad"-holy war verses in the Koran)Muslims immediately fly into instant jihad syndrome. There is no "golden rule" in Islam that commands kindness to non-Muslims (such as you find in every other religion). Islam is that only faith that institutionalizes beheading, child marriage (pedophilia), holy war and murdering people who refuse to join them. For these reasons, it should more rightly be called a cult, a death cult at that. When Mohammed died almost all the Muslims tried to leave, but they were stopped from doing so by the successor to the cult's leadership who started the war against the apostates at the cost of tens of thousands of lives in Arabia alone.
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