…and this is a 
I generally favor the idea of teaching comparative religion…
Category: Religion
Posted on: March 29, 2008 10:41 PM, by PZ Myers
…but there is a good argument against it: many religions are sickening.
Wow, that set you guys on fire. Just to clarify: I think Wilders is a flaming nutcase; I deplore his racist angle and his desire to exclude and oppress rather than educate.
However, here is the problem: when people ask me if we should keep religion away from kids, I say no: I think comparative religion classes are an excellent idea. Think about this, though. Would such a class show beheadings? How about voluntary crucifixions in the Phillipines? Jim Jones? Suicide bombings? I think we know the answer. Even here, where there is little sympathy for religion, people are horrified at the idea of showing the worst of religion — "oh, that's not real Islam," they say, but I have to reply that yes, that's the reality of faith. Of course not everyone favors violence and it's only a minority that commit the real atrocities, but the oppression is there.
Anyway, my point was that if we did teach comparative religion, it would be weak tea that favored faith by censoring out the worst of it, or it would be a class tainted with such appalling horror that all of us liberals would be yanking our children out of it.
(But no, Wilders' film would not be appropriate as educational material either — it's too dishonest. Some of the elements in it, including some of the most shocking bits, are genuine, though.)
Comments
Just for interest's sake, here's UD's screed trying to make make evolutionists into the jihadists.
By the way, has it ever occurred to the framers that IDists would be nowhere without being offensive and dishonest? We need to be offensive, and have the tremendous fortune of being able to be honest.
Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 29, 2008 10:59 PM
And just to clarify, the link in my post above is in regard to the "Fitna" video.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 29, 2008 11:01 PM
dear pz thank you for the courage to post that!
Posted by: steve | March 29, 2008 11:10 PM
Getting one's information on Islam from Geert Wilders is a bit like getting one's information on Reconstruction from D.W. Griffiths.
Not only is he a bigot, he's a pretty stupid and doctrinaire one from everything I can see.
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 29, 2008 11:13 PM
Hey-- Nullifidian! Here's MY ad hominem attack--
Fuck you, fuck Mohammed, and fuck Allah; up your arses, with a pig's dick.
The religious fundamentalists who revel in death, and those who allow them succor and shelter in society are not fit to live in the company of civilized men and women. Crawl back into the thirteenth century and leave the rest of us alone.
(This applies equally to Christians, Jews, and whoever else would sacrifice human life and dignity on the altar of "god."
Posted by: Rav Winston | March 29, 2008 11:22 PM
People will of course point out that not all Muslims take the same approach: there are many Islams, just as there are many Christianities -- and even many forms of atheism. And so there are. A fair number of Muslims have incorporated humanistic principles into how they understand Islam, and they denounce the violence. But it becomes hard to explain how the words written in the Quran are meant to be metaphors or symbols when Mohammead himself went out with a sword.
We need moderate Muslims and Christians making arguments that this is all a misinterpretation -- God meant something else, and fallible human beings have misunderstood. And we need atheists making arguments that the biggest misinterpretation was to take sacred texts as anything other than the work of fallible human beings in the first place.
What we do not need is any culture beating the drum, over and over again, for faith as a virtue, and doubt as a vice.
Posted by: Sastra | March 29, 2008 11:24 PM
He has several...interesting quotes in his background, one of which came in a letter in De Volkskrant accompanying his push to have the Qur'an banned.
"I am fed up with Islam in the Netherlands: no more Muslim immigrants allowed. I am fed up with the worship of Allah and Muhammad in the Netherlands: no more mosques."
In case you were wondering what would happen if you changed Jew for Muslim and synagogue for mosque, someone at an anti-Wilders rally did just that and was arrested for hate speech. Some of the revised slogans, all taken from Wilders' public comments, were "No more Jews allowed to enter the Netherlands, remove many Jews, de-naturalisation of Jewish criminals, immigration of Jews must be stopped."
A hint of the quality of fact-checking for the film comes from the fact that Wilders played an audio clip of Moroccan-Dutch Mohamed Bouyeri, the killer of Theo van Gogh, over a picture of Salah Edin, a Morrocan-Dutch rapper! I guess all those Moroccans look alike, don't they?
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 29, 2008 11:26 PM
Yes, Nullifidian, Wilders is a nasty right wing arsehole. That doesn't alter the fact that Islam is a vile, ugly, evil creed that needs to be attacked.
Posted by: Jack Rawlinson | March 29, 2008 11:29 PM
Alright, then; you have a point. I apologize for my outburst. But only in that it seemed to be directed solely at Muslims.
Really, though-- What else can happen when the "extremists" are the ones allowed to speak for the community at large? How do you excuse this?
Posted by: Rav Winston | March 29, 2008 11:34 PM
Hey-- Nullifidian! Here's MY ad hominem attack--
Fuck you, fuck Mohammed, and fuck Allah; up your arses, with a pig's dick.
Boooooooring! Why don't you try something more vibrant and with a tad bit more ingenuity? Reviewing curses from the Russian may help if such a task overtaxes your primitive brain stem.
The religious fundamentalists who revel in death, and those who allow them succor and shelter in society are not fit to live in the company of civilized men and women. Crawl back into the thirteenth century and leave the rest of us alone.
(This applies equally to Christians, Jews, and whoever else would sacrifice human life and dignity on the altar of "god."
So the whole object of "civilized men and women" should be to ban people for holding to religious belief, and establish a commuinity of 'superior' Stepford atheists?
You're coming to the defence of a man who wants to ban mosques, religious texts, and deport Muslims. Is that what a civilized state would do?
If so, your ideal of a civilized state must be equivalent to Stalin's Russia. Bad luck with the Khrushchev Thaw, because dear old Nikita even made Soviet planes available to take Muslims to Makkah.
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 29, 2008 11:35 PM
I don't excuse it, Rav. In fact, a lot of us share that view. The extremists are enabled far too much by the "nice" theists.
Posted by: rrt | March 29, 2008 11:36 PM
You're coming to the defence of a man who wants to ban mosques, religious texts, and deport Muslims. Is that what a civilized state would do?
A civilized state would offer psychiatric care for all the victims of religious insanity, regardless of what type it was.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | March 29, 2008 11:40 PM
Nullifidian,
Are you stating that the views (and videos of Imams) are in error? That someone faked the video clips? Are you stating that those horrific words did NOT come out of the mouths of Imams and followers of Islam? That those words are NOT written in the Koran?
As for the 'replace Muslim with any other minority name' game. If that minority is calling for death, destruction and terror. YES. I will agree that they need to be controlled for the safety of the general populace and I would NOT rule out deportation or a suspension of immigration to reach that end.
Allow the law abiding ones to stay and to become part of the established society: after all if they liked the rules and comforts of their homeland so much WHY did they decide to immigrate into mine?
Multi-culturalism can be a wonderful, wonderful thing when both sides give and take. But that isn't what's happening across the board and since the moderates are either unwilling or unable to speak out against it, the Muslim society as a whole will have to bear the burden.
Posted by: flame821 | March 29, 2008 11:48 PM
Fitna uses every imaginable propaganda technique to lump all Muslims together and invent a novel form of racism. I don't have any more use for Islam than I have for any religion--less in fact--but it simply isn't the case that all these people are thirsting for blood or seriously planning to reimpose the Caliphate.
By selective quotation from the Bible or the Talmud, one could easily make a similar hate movie about the Jews or the Christians. Indeed, it has already been done many times. Aside from the dubious morality of the methodology, it has the additional disadvantage of promoting a fundamentally erroneous notion of the relationship between scriptures and practices. Scriptures simply are not analogous to DNA. They determine very little by themselves. By all means let us fearlessly criticize and thwart the practice of Islam where it abuses human rights and endangers the world, but let's not do so in the fashion of the Triumph of the Will or Jew Suss. We don't need to.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | March 29, 2008 11:50 PM
PZ, why are you promoting a piece of right-wing anti-immigration work from the Netherlands? I thought I was going to get a substantive criticism of Islam and instead I got a short film that has a basis in quote-mining, using images from the World Trade Center and Madrid attacks as fear fodder, and quotes from radical clerics and Ahmadinejad, tactics not lost on our own Republican Party.
I am certainly not one who approves of Islam as a religion, but I would think a reasoned approach to understanding it would be the way to go. To think that you are discouraging the teaching of comparative religion on the basis of this film is, I can't think of a word other than, appalling.
I would think that you would check your sources before posting any old crap.
Posted by: Meng Bomin | March 29, 2008 11:50 PM
I support Geert Wilders being able to produce this, and have only one point of contention with it being on this site: it doesn't point out that Geert Wilders is a fascist, racist fuckwit as well, and not someone trying to make his country, much less the world, a place where rational debate directs government policy.
PZed offered, on the "Expelled" clip (as best I can recall), his desire to see religion reduced to the status of a hobby, like knitting.
I saw this as both an exaggeration (if he was sincere, and I think he was) and a bit of a pipedream. I believe we will see religion made into more and more just a set of customs and practices people apply as mechanical demonstrations of one's culture* rather than as applied superstition. Practicing moslems I know (some, not many, and all British) are effectively like ordinary, basically reasonable Christians and Jews, who I see as slowly moving away from belief in the sillier claims of their religion and toward creatively respecting and applying the deeper, and also more superficial (not eating pork, etc.), and very reasonable tenets of their religion, discarding their "faith".
* I must say I expect most other Americans here to simply not understand what I mean by this. There is no even vaguely unifying "American religion" and barely an American culture - though there was an exclusionary "American culture" that meant white protestant-ism - in this sense at all (witness the range of what exists here, from the often charming absurdities of New Agers, to the bizarre half-business cults like Scientology, to the brutally empty fascism of American Nativist Xians). Brits may be able to, as the CoE is by every first-hand account I've heard effectively un-religious to even the people who utilize, even offer, its services.
Posted by: Sue Laris | March 29, 2008 11:52 PM
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disagree with you here, PZ. Geert Wilders' nasty little screed is just as much propaganda as Expelled is. The juxtaposition of Koran verses with footage from the 9/11 terror attacks is just as manipulative (maybe more so) as intercuttng footage of Nazi death camps with interviews with scientists.
Yes, all of the terrorists were adherents of Islam, but an extremist brand which is not mainstream. You can no more damn all Muslims for the acts of a few than you can damn all Christians for the Crusades. Or for the acts of George W. Bush, for that matter. Far be it from me to defend religionists, as I am an atheist, but I think this film steps over the line to hate speech. I'm personally glad that it was banned.
Posted by: Mark B | March 29, 2008 11:54 PM
It's really easy to let your emotional chain get yanked, especially when you already agree with the yanker.
After that, I need to calm down and remember to fight with cold reason. Panicked people aren't good fighters. Unless they're berserkers.
I had a point.
Posted by: Daniel | March 29, 2008 11:55 PM
So the whole object of "civilized men and women" should be to ban people for holding to religious belief, and establish a commuinity of 'superior' Stepford atheists?
Strawmen aside, the whole object of civilization is to enable humanity to work together without killing one another. To work together for a common good or a common goal. Bombing, terrorizing, mutilating and psychologically damaging each other isn't exactly conducive to that end.
And as a woman I particularly abhor the way women and children are treated by most religions. And lets not even get started on genital mutilations and how easily a woman can lose her life in such backwards, religiously driven countries. Should I want to feel the sun on my skin: death. Should I fall in love with someone my family objects to: death. Should I wear the wrong color, the wrong style of clothing: death. In SOME areas just appearing outside my own home's doorway without a husband, father or brother at my side opens me up for brutal rape and death.
So I have to agree with Rav, and add sideways with a broom.
Posted by: flame821 | March 29, 2008 11:58 PM
Well said, Jim Harrison
Posted by: Mark B | March 30, 2008 12:02 AM
Jack Rawlinson:
Yes, Nullifidian, Wilders is a nasty right wing arsehole. That doesn't alter the fact that Islam is a vile, ugly, evil creed that needs to be attacked.
I would like to see a great deal more evidence for this claim than has been presented before I jump on the bandwagon. Islam is a religion of so many different strains that you'll actually find more agreement between Jew and Pentacostal than you will between certain of the traditions. For example, certain thinkers in the Sufi tradition have gone so far in identifying God with all that exists that they've come close to affirming pantheism, a view which doesn't sit well with the Wahhabism of bin Laden, and Wahhabism doesn't sit comfortably in the Islamic tradition itself. Mohammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was denounced in his own time and subsequently for "doctrinal mediocrity and illegitimacy" (Abdelwahab Meddeb, Islam and its Discontents and for generally being a dangerous, crazed fanatic.
Ray Winston:
Really, though-- What else can happen when the "extremists" are the ones allowed to speak for the community at large? How do you excuse this?
*snort*
You are truly the master of self-referential irony.
I could just turn the matter around by saying that I'll answer that when you shut up and let sane atheists speak up, but it deserves a better answer.
Namely, that there's nothing to excuse. The extremists are not being "allowed" to speak for the community at large; it's just the only voice that the Western media wants to hear. Muslims are put in an absurd position of decrying the actions of fellow members of their faith and when they do, their criticisms are waived away. For example, I've had conversations with people who were staunch bigots against Islam which went along the lines of demanding why none of "these people" ever criticized terrorism. But they have, and frequently, and when I linked to the statements and juridical rulings, they dismissed them because they didn't specifically address 11/09!
I guess it's not enough to be against terrorism on principle.
The problem is that hardly anybody in the West who is non-Muslim speaks Arabic, and with this comes a necessary level of ignorance. There have been internal criticisms of the religion since it began. An analogy may be to Judaism both with its emphasis on an educated, scholarly class addressing religious issues and in its notorious inability to agree on practically anything. You ask two Jewish scholars for an opinion, and you'll get three, as the joke goes.
For example, was anyone paying attention to the Eid sermon of the Grand Mufti? It goes out to hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, making it one of the most-watched and best-known public statements by a Muslim religious leader. And what did he say in that sermon for Eid al-Adha?
Well, he condemned terrorism as un-Islamic, that every Muslim should reject them and that he calls on Muslims to not allow people with evil and sick minds to create chaos and confusion in their countries. It was, in fact, the most stern anti-terrorist message ever to appear in an Eid sermon, and it is just as clear that nobody in the West was interested.
It's not a matter of "allowing" the extremists to set the dialogue; it's just that this is the way that the West prefers to see the dialogue.
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 30, 2008 12:04 AM
Sastra, I agree with most of what you said but: and even many forms of atheism
At what point when writing that did it make sense? That's an ID talking point. How many forms does not believing something unlikely take? The atheism/theism thing is binary: you do believe in a god or you don't. The many forms thing only happens on the left side of that equation: if you do believe in a god, do you believe in one or more than one? Which one(s). etc.
With lack of god belief, that's it. Unless you want to muddy the waters a bit and point out that xtians are all atheists wrt all gods but ywh, muslims are atheist wrt all except allah, etc.
How many forms of not believing in fairies are there? How about celestial teapots? Santa Claus? That Ted Haggard is actually completely heterosexual now?
Posted by: AlanWCan | March 30, 2008 12:11 AM
"You can no more damn all Muslims for the acts of a few than you can damn all Christians for the Crusades."
Why not? Don't they all believe in a sky fairy? Don't they all believe in heaven which made 9/11 possible? Are moderate muslims and moderate christians any less insane than the terrorists and creationists? Don't the terrorists and the creationists need moderate religious people to justify their idiotic beliefs? All religious people are at least indirectly responsible for religious terrorism and religious attacks against science education.
Posted by: BobC | March 30, 2008 12:14 AM
I don't agree with the film and find it pretty offensive but I applaud anyone willing to post this publicly for the benefit of free speech, given the controversy surrounding its release.
Posted by: nqdrstu | March 30, 2008 12:16 AM
Are you stating that the views (and videos of Imams) are in error? That someone faked the video clips? Are you stating that those horrific words did NOT come out of the mouths of Imams and followers of Islam? That those words are NOT written in the Koran?
No, I am not stating that, for the simple reason that I haven't the foggiest damn clue what is you're babbling about. You're going to need to provide specific references before I can start addressing anything in this tirade.
As for the 'replace Muslim with any other minority name' game. If that minority is calling for death, destruction and terror. YES. I will agree that they need to be controlled for the safety of the general populace and I would NOT rule out deportation or a suspension of immigration to reach that end.
Great. Well, then Americans had better get cracking on deporting all the Christians, because they have members who do call for "death, destruction, and terror". Robertson, Falwell, La Haye and Jenkins (through their snuff books, especially Glorious Appearing), numerous Christian terrorists who bomb abortion clinics and kill doctors, the Christian Reconstructionists, etc.
I would have to say that normal people wouldn't read a Christian Reconstructionist screed and then start agitating that we should deport all the Episcopalians, Methodists, Quakers, Lutherans, and Catholics, but the equivalent stance in regard to Muslims is being defended here.
Allow the law abiding ones to stay and to become part of the established society: after all if they liked the rules and comforts of their homeland so much WHY did they decide to immigrate into mine?
I would respond to this, but the rampant xenophobia I'm reading has completely overwhelmed my powers of snark.
Multi-culturalism can be a wonderful, wonderful thing when both sides give and take. But that isn't what's happening across the board and since the moderates are either unwilling or unable to speak out against it, the Muslim society as a whole will have to bear the burden.
Yet another ignoramus who thinks the fault lies with the 'moderate Muslims' rather than his or her own ignorance and the highly debateable standard for what makes a 'moderate Muslim'.
There's an excellent article on that appeared a couple years back called "The Con of Moderate Islam".
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 30, 2008 12:16 AM
Hey, the Iman waving a sword around threatening to cut heads off Jews, I think I saw him buying a Barbara Streisand CD at the mall.
Posted by: Doug | March 30, 2008 12:23 AM
Here's left wing blogger TBogg's take on the movie.
Posted by: Mark B | March 30, 2008 12:25 AM
Why not? Don't they all believe in a sky fairy?
No, they believe in God.
Don't they all believe in heaven which made 9/11 possible?
No. In fact, most Muslims believe, based on the Qur'an, that taking any innocent life is wrong and weighs as heavily as if they had taken the life of the whole world (5:32).
Are moderate muslims and moderate christians any less insane than the terrorists and creationists?
No, simply because being a terrorist or a creationist is not a sufficient diagnostic criterion for mental disease.
Don't the terrorists and the creationists need moderate religious people to justify their idiotic beliefs?
No, they don't, in fact moderate religion is a hurdle in that case.
This has been another installment of Short Answers to Stupid Questions. Join us next week as we take on "Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher".
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 30, 2008 12:27 AM
I wish American WOULD get cracking on the rabid, hate-mongering, murder inciting hoohaas that participate in the Christian faith. If you think I'm xenophobic, you are mistaken. And please do NOT be so arrogant to assume you know who I am and the background I am coming from.
And guess what, I am just as entitle to MY opinion as YOU are to yours. AS for specific reference, since you apparently have NO IDEA what I'm referring to, watch the effing clip that was linked.
And while you're at it, tell me why you think criminals should NOT be deported? I believe MOST countries allow for this option.
And YES, I absolutely blame moderates (of all the Abrahamic religions) for not speaking out forcefully against the extremist in their midsts. History has shown over and over that when good people don't stand up against bad people or bad ideas things go from bad to worse for the human race.
Posted by: flame821 | March 30, 2008 12:27 AM
Just disgusting. I'm going to have nightmares again from seeing that beheading. It's all so apalling to me, but seeing beheadings is just such a shock to the system. I can't believe this is the world I live in! I can't believe there are so many people in the world who believe this (and related) shit! I'm going to TRY to sleep now.
Posted by: LisaJ | March 30, 2008 12:35 AM
I'm not what you'd call a fan of the terroristic extremist branches of Islam, or of the non-terroristic extremist branches, or even of the non-terroristic non-extremist branches. But I gotta say that film strikes me as broad-brush, emotionally manipulative, xenophobic fearmongering. So I'm a little surprised PZ linked to it with apparent approval.
Yes, terrorism is bad. Yes, modern-day Islam's got some all-too-prominent ugly strains in it which, like nastiness-inclined subgroups of pretty much any text-based religion, can find ample "justification" for their actions in their holy book. And, yes, religion is, in general, a groaning load of hand-waving mystical horseshit teetering precariously atop a rickety foundation of outdated fables. But this kind of "zOMG SCARY EVIL MUSLIMS!!!1ONE!" nonsense, not to mention the related juvinility of "Neener neener, we can publish lame caricatures of Muslims in the papers and they can't make us stop," isn't exactly an intelligent cultural critique.
I like reading Pharyngula because generally when Prof. Myers criticizes religion he makes sharp, insightful, focused arguments which are often pretty damn funny. Sometimes I even learn something new by thinking about what he's said. And I don't think either this "Fitna" movie or the Jyllands-Posten cartoons everybody's so gleefully publishing again really measure up to such a standard. "Fitna" in particular spent so much time lovingly savoring the horrifying results of terrorism and then crudely belaboring the Koranic connections that it actually succeeded in making shocking violence tedious. It was like watching a really crappy horror film. I eventually started fast-forwarding just so it would be over sooner, and I kind of felt like even watching it that way was killing brain cells.
On top of being deadly boring, the whole thing also seemed to me rather an insult to the victims of terrorism, the way it used their images for that kind of manipulative hatemongering. Terrorists parade their dead as if those deaths justify xenophobia, but those of us who support secular democracy are supposed to do better than that. Instead of looking for excuses to hate, we ought to be seeing in the horrors of religious violence reasons to renew our commitment the creation of local and international conditions conducive to the practice and spread of our secular democratic ideals. I'm sure Prof. Myers sees things this way, but the movie makes me doubt that Geert Wilders does. Or if he does, he sure doesn't have any idea how to go about expressing it.
So I don't see any reason to cheer this thing. I think it's just another example of inflammatory nonsense that retards rather than enhances progress on the whole clash of civilizations/religious terrorism/oil/western imperialism/etc. issue. Obviously Wilders has the right to speak his mind freely, but it's discouraging to me to see people applauding what he has to say.
Posted by: Anne Nonymous | March 30, 2008 12:39 AM
PZ, you should know better -- this movie is clearly one-sided propaganda, meant to serve the agenda of the creator, who is a politician actively trying to ban the Quran from being sold in the Netherlands! This is insane. I am on board with pointing out that virtually all religions have sickening (not to mention irrational) aspects, but this is silly extremist right wing bullshit propaganda. It's a lame scare tactic (replaying the airplanes crashing into the twins from 911 followed by some extremist Islamist yelling stupidities? Give me a break.)
Posted by: Disappointed Evol. Neuroscientist | March 30, 2008 12:40 AM
And as a woman I particularly abhor the way women and children are treated by most religions. And lets not even get started on genital mutilations
Oh, lets. For example, let's point out that genital mutilations are, in fact, wrong according to Islamic canon law.
Let us further point out that genital mutilations are a cultural commonality, not a religious commonality, and are practiced largely in North Africa, not in the Middle East or in the Asian Muslim states (Indonesia currently has the largest absolute number of Muslims of any one country).
Let us further point out that this tradition of genital mutilation also occurs in the animist and Christian communities, and that there are even Coptic priests who will refuse to baptize a girl unless she's had a cliterodectomy.
and how easily a woman can lose her life in such backwards, religiously driven countries. Should I want to feel the sun on my skin: death.
Except in the Comoros, Bahrain, Tunisia, even Iran (what do you think they do on the "Persian Riviera" on the Caspian Sea?), and so on.
Should I fall in love with someone my family objects to: death.
?!?!?!
Should I wear the wrong color,
?!?!?!?!
the wrong style of clothing: death.
?!?!?!?!?!?!
In SOME areas just appearing outside my own home's doorway without a husband, father or brother at my side opens me up for brutal rape and death.
?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
That's hard luck on those unmarried women with no brothers and a dead father, then. Of course, since the claim is absurd on its face, I don't think there's anyone in that situation that we need to worry about.
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 30, 2008 12:40 AM
Ok, I'm guessing some "left" leaning Dutchies have problems containing their hatred for Wilders here.
I don't think i'll vote for him, i actually vote for a party thats considered left of centre usually, but, that doesn't mean halting immigration of islamic immigrants and working out integration issues before we think of accepting more is stupid, racist or evil. I never understood why some on the left would want to continue bringing more people in when the quality of the so called better future we are offering from the depths of our humanitarian hearts is deteriorating so rapidly.
It's clear we have huge problems with the immigrants that are here already. Current politics continue to marginalize secular oriented muslims and seem intent on talking to muslims through their imams and religious institions. If stopping immigration based on religion or nationality turns out to be unconstitutional then just stop accepting everyone or raise the bar for everyone. Fine by me, we can think about opening up in a decade, maybe two again. It is pants-on-head idiotic to keep trying to clean up the mess we are in while the tap is still running.
But thats me.
Posted by: Dutch Delight | March 30, 2008 12:41 AM
Okay, seriously, why is the condemnation of Islam labeled as racist? I am highly suspect of, even prejudice against, the Islamic faith but it is a faith, a religion, not a race. Perhaps there are people out there legitimately against the immigration of peoples of Arabic or Persian descent---and, yes, they could be labeled racist---but I feel the vast majority of the objection is aimed at the Islam itself and, honestly, bollocks to their ethnicity.
Posted by: Jeffery Wang | March 30, 2008 12:47 AM
@13- exactly right.
@ Nulifidian #20- I believe you have set out a false dichotomy- that religious moderates are speaking out and ignored by western society and media as the opposing view to much of the western world is prejudiced against Islam. It is not just media, or western culture that dismisses the 'moderates' the moderates are still delusional and ARE in fact a very small voice. Two possible reasons include: The societies in which they live lacks the rule of law such that speaking out against extremists can get you killed. Moderates are required to criticize their own religion when taking on extremists.
My rationale for not suscribing to your viewpoint that moderate religious views are ignored by western culture and media is my own experience when dealing with 'moderates.' In the upper midwest of the U.S. the moderate christians are the wackos- actively preaching anti- science, anti-intelluctualism, anti- reason and the extremeists are those who would kill others in defense of those views- both groups are abhorrent and detrimental to society. the only difference is the speed of the collapse.
I think a comparative religions course should be part of a secular education. Use Pascal Boyer's book: "Religion Explained" as the text. Since moderates fail to speak out (hold rallies against, activly campaign against) extremists- a public 'innoculation' against the pitfall of religion would have long term benefits.
Posted by: mothra | March 30, 2008 12:49 AM
#26, God, sky fairy, what's the difference? Whatever religious people call their magic man, they need psychiatric help.
Posted by: BobC | March 30, 2008 12:49 AM
I wish American WOULD get cracking on the rabid, hate-mongering, murder inciting hoohaas that participate in the Christian faith.
If you look 37 degrees to your left and about 97 degrees off the horizon, I think you might see my point zooming by at Mach 2 over your head.
I wasn't talking about cracking down on the far-right fundamentalists, but cracking down on the liberal to moderate religionists who share a common faith with the far-right fundamentalists.
If you think I'm xenophobic, you are mistaken.
Then stop making such xenophobic comments.
And please do NOT be so arrogant to assume you know who I am and the background I am coming from.
No, I should have only the proper amount of arrogance due a person, namely the degree of arrogance to condemn all the practitioners of a 1.2 billion person-strong faith because of its fundamentalist elements.
And guess what, I am just as entitle to MY opinion as YOU are to yours. AS for specific reference, since you apparently have NO IDEA what I'm referring to, watch the effing clip that was linked.
So you want me to respond to the images that appear in an inaccurate (witness the confusion over Mohammad Bouyeri), biased, propaganda film. Tell you what, before I do, why don't you respond to my statements that this is the only face that's made visible by the West?
And while you're at it, tell me why you think criminals should NOT be deported? I believe MOST countries allow for this option.
I don't believe that "MOST countries" allow for their deportment procedures to be biased according to religious faith.
Now, if you want to understand my views on criminology, I would say that prisons, immigration detention centers, etc. are where the power of the state is manifested most nakedly and therefore ought to be opposed on both general and specific terms. For further information, please see:
http://www.anarchistblackcross.org/content/index.html
And YES, I absolutely blame moderates (of all the Abrahamic religions) for not speaking out forcefully against the extremist in their midsts. History has shown over and over that when good people don't stand up against bad people or bad ideas things go from bad to worse for the human race.
Except that they have been, and you haven't been listening. So whose fault is it, really?
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 30, 2008 12:52 AM
"Oh, lets. For example, let's point out that genital mutilations are, in fact, wrong according to Islamic canon law.
Let us further point out that genital mutilations are a cultural commonality, not a religious commonality, and are practiced largely in North Africa, not in the Middle East or in the Asian Muslim states (Indonesia currently has the largest absolute number of Muslims of any one country)."
False. According to the hadiths of Sahih Al-Bukhari, the prophet Mohammed himself was circumcised. Since Muslims view their prophet as uswa e-hasana (the perfect man), whose example they are each obligated to follow, it is easy to see why many of them would condone or even promote genital mutilation.
Even though female circumcision has no basis in the Qur'an or most hadiths, Islamic tradition tends to be inordinately obsessed with the chastity of Muslim women, thus allowing the promulgation of misogynistic practices such as the forced veiling of women and clitoridectomy.
Posted by: Sam K. | March 30, 2008 1:00 AM
Posted by: Anne Nonymous | March 30, 2008 1:00 AM
"moderate religion" These two words don't belong in the same sentence. What's moderate about believing in an invisible man who hides in the clouds?
Posted by: BobC | March 30, 2008 1:02 AM
BTW, Nullfidian, why do you grow so belligerent whenever anybody criticizes the "religion of peace"? I don't recall you displaying any indignation whatsoever whenever PZ Myers made derisive comments about Christianity.
Posted by: Sam K. | March 30, 2008 1:03 AM
It is not just media, or western culture that dismisses the 'moderates' the moderates are still delusional and ARE in fact a very small voice.
Really? I don't even have enough knowledge to make that sort of judgment on a 1.2 billion strong faith. Of the living languages, I only speak French, German, Arabic, English, and a smattering of Russian. I don't speak Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto, Persian, Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin, Uyghur, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, etc. etc. So on what basis are have you established that the moderates are "in fact a very small voice"?
I believe you have set out a false dichotomy- that religious moderates are speaking out and ignored by western society and media as the opposing view to much of the western world is prejudiced against Islam.
I'd suggest that you learn what the word "false dichotomy" means. That religious moderates are speaking out and ignored by Western society and media is hardly in opposition to the view that much of the Western world is prejudiced against Islam.
In fact, I would argue that this prejudice exists and informs an astonishing degree of ignorance about the region, since the whole Western world seems wrapped up in its Orientalism. As someone who spent some of his undergraduate years pursuing Arab history (mainly through the history of science angle, after I gave up on a Classics career, then deciding that if I were interested in science I should do science), I can affirm that most of the texts in English, especially prior to the publication of Said's seminal book, Orientalism, are utterly worthless.
There is such an astonishing blind spot even today, although the current scholars in ME Studies are doing much to rectify this, and it shows itself not only in scholarly texts but in the way Islam is mishandled even when Americans are trying to reach out. For example, in Afghanistan, one of the "hearts and minds" things that they did was to drop footballs/soccer balls for the Afghan kids to play with. They also thought it would be a nice gesture of reaching out if they put the flags of the Muslim countries on this footballs. So they did, including the Saudi flag with its statement printed on the flag, "la ilaha ill-Allah Muhammadun Rasul Allah" ("there is no God but God, and Mohammad is his Prophet").
Naturally, this was used by the Taliban to stoke up resentment in the Afghan Muslim community, along the lines of "See! See! This is what they think of the religion of the Prophet!"
That's a kind of idiocy that I see on an almost daily basis, because I actually follow the Arab-language papers. So when something like this crap from Wilders comes out, I cannot help but see it as symptomatic of the same damn shit.
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 30, 2008 1:10 AM
Don't they all believe in heaven which made 9/11 possible?
No. In fact, most Muslims believe, based on the Qur'an, that taking any innocent life is wrong and weighs as heavily as if they had taken the life of the whole world (5:32).
#26, I think you misunderstood me. I asked do religious people believe in heaven. The answer is yes. They do believe in heaven. Without this belief there would have been no 9/11. My point was, everyone who believes in heaven helps the terrorists think they are normal, which makes all religious people part of the problem.
Posted by: BobC | March 30, 2008 1:12 AM
Because the majority of the white, western world is Christian and the majority of the non-white mideast world is Muslim. It's like when some white cowboy says that rap music sucks. Their opinion is based by their lack of understanding of urban black culture. If you do understand urban black culture you'd be less likely to dismiss the entire genre, even if it didn't suit your personnel taste.
I don't think that is what people are doing in this case but I do think it is a thin line that gets crossed a lot. Your average right wing redneck doesn't like "them god damn towel heads" and it is akin to racism in that case.
Posted by: lolife | March 30, 2008 1:13 AM
I came to this late. I had to work tonight. Google video won't show me the movie. Doesn't matter anyway. Muslim immigration to Europe should be halted without delay. Europe has largely shed off its previous invasive middle-Eastern superstition, Christianity. It does not need to take on another.
Harass them within the law until they quit coming. If you need cheap labor, Mexico's a good source. It works for us.
As for those who suggest that European anti--Islamism is just a rehash of anti-Seitism, please note there was never a Jewish threat to Europe akin to what Islam presents today.
Posted by: bacopa | March 30, 2008 1:16 AM
A wonderful topic! Kudos, PZed!
It is always a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to realize that there are rabidly stupid shits, when some issues are raised, even among those I normally have the most agreement with.
People here who are excusing, much less lauding, this piece of shit, uselessly inflammatory video dreck are people whose more reasonable opinions I can now evaluate with a clearer eye, knowing their reasoning is, at least on some issues and to some degree, tribal and situational.
Nullifidian is far closer to expressing rational views here than even one of his/her critics, but all but one of them hasn't got the cool judgement to read those posts as they are written.
** To help put this fire out with some gasoline, the anti-muslim shits who made this would find allies among the worst America has to offer, and likely will be lauded by British tabloids and the Telegraph as well. Those are your allies on this, so why doesn't it make any decent atheist uncomfortable enough to leave the room?
Posted by: Sue Laris | March 30, 2008 1:23 AM
Quoth Nullifidian:
And why not? The Quran is more outrageous than other things which are banned as hate speech in the Netherlands. It calls for genocide of the Jews, so why should it be treated any differently than a neo-Nazi tract saying the same thing?Haven't WE, of all people, had fucking enough of special pleading for religious dogma?
So you're saying that the seething hostility of Muslims and mosque teachings toward the hard-won tolerance and freedoms of the Netherlands shouldn't be acknowledged as a threat? Even after murders and multiple death threats?
There are plenty of places on earth where women are chattels and Jews are non-persons. Why should the Netherlands become another one?
And rightfully so, because there is no moral equivalence. As Hugh Fitzgerald said so eloquently:
Read the rest there.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | March 30, 2008 1:23 AM
Even though female circumcision has no basis in the Qur'an or most hadiths, Islamic tradition tends to be inordinately obsessed with the chastity of Muslim women, thus allowing the promulgation of misogynistic practices such as the forced veiling of women and clitoridectomy.
Your conflation of male circumcision with genital mutilation was absurd and insulting, especially in context. Cliterodectomies often result in lifelong pain and severely impacts the ability of the woman to have a satisfying sexual life. Circumcisions, on the other hand, do not typically have such a result. Some sensitivity is lost, but it doesn't impact one's ability to have a full sexual life.
Or in brief, stop thinking with your prick.
Now, as to cliterodectomy, it is wrong according to canon law, and babbling on about an "inordinate obssess[ion] with chastity" is not going to change the fact, nor does it change the fact that cliterodectomies are regionally and culturally bound traditions arising from North and Central Africa and do not come from Islam. For that matter, male circumcision is not required by Islam either in the way that it's a requirement of Judiaism. It represents no covenant and there's no command in the Qur'an itself.
BTW, Nullfidian, why do you grow so belligerent whenever anybody criticizes the "religion of peace"? I don't recall you displaying any indignation whatsoever whenever PZ Myers made derisive comments about Christianity.
And I don't recall you at all (and you're stupid enough that I would have remembered you). So what?
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 30, 2008 1:23 AM
I took a comparative religions class in high school. We had weekly speakers throughout the trimester on the different major religions, and we had a couple of folks from the U of M's atheist group come speak. Of course, we had the obligatory rude Christian kids in a huddle on one side of the room, throwing stupid questions at them and acting like the mere existence of people who don't believe in their god is a personal insult. I couldn't believe it; I mean, why take a comparative religions class if you aren't willing to learn about the viewpoints of others?
Posted by: Feast on the Lake | March 30, 2008 1:25 AM
LisaJ:
Thank you for warning me, Lisa! I wouldn't have been able to sleep for a week.
Posted by: Susan | March 30, 2008 1:28 AM
This equivocation between the Abrahamic religions needs to stop. It also needs to stop at the right place: the texts.
The people who are currently taking these words as justification for doing horrendous things come, to a great degree, from the Muslim religions. Remember, we're talking about the very recent past and the present, not the crusades or the genocides in the Bible.
Even if the translations in the film are completely false, even if the director is completely biased (wasn't his friend killed by a death squad for making a movie that was offensive to Muslims?), the fact remains that the horrible, stomach churning atrocities in the film were actively praised as having been done in the name of Islam.
Agree or disagree with the conclusions of the film (It's obviously propaganda and I can never agree with banning speech or books) but actions speak louder than words. It's just not possible to unfairly portray a beheading.
Posted by: pcarini | March 30, 2008 1:29 AM
{sigh} A last post to Engineer-Poet and his ilk.
I surrender this thread to you bigots, and I'll stay away from this laundry list of self-aggrandizing hate speech.
I hope you all become real boys (or girls) one day, but may we never meet in real life until then, little woodenheads!
Posted by: Sue Laris | March 30, 2008 1:30 AM
Last I checked, the Quran said that genocide of anyone was a very bad bad thing, and history showed us how there were plenty of Jewish communities thriving in numerous Muslim cities for hundreds of years.
Hell, there's still a Jewish community in Iran, and the Ayatollah has yet to utter any fatwahs to have the Iranian faithful exterminate the Iranian Jews.
Posted by: Stanton | March 30, 2008 1:32 AM
Geez, PZ, Geert Wilders is a shitbag and makes most of your targets look like, well, I don't know what but I'm not sure why you would post his short without some kind of disclaimer. I'm all for free speech, but I expect to have to see that on Liveleak, not here...
Nullifidian, a different kind of shitbag than Geert, (apparently arguing for the sake of arguing or simply trolling) was doing ok with #4 and maybe even with #7.
Defending religion because not every adherent is completely batshit crazy is kind of like, well, getting one's information on Reconstruction from D.W. Griffiths - only worse.
Yes, we live in a racist, xenophobic country and wingnuts attack Islam (and any non-Christians) for their own agendas. That makes the religion ok?
While most Muslims, like most "fill in the blank," don't believe in taking innocent lives, the Saudis that flew the jets into the buildings DID believe in heaven, and THEIR beliefs did make 9/11 possible, as well as the feuding Null alluded to in his posts. Which of course the Saudi government, our tax dollars and oil habit continue to promote in Saudi Arabia and Mosques throughout the world.
Why doesn't Null explain why he thinks any religions are true/useful/necessary/good?
Posted by: MB | March 30, 2008 1:52 AM
And why not? The Quran is more outrageous than other things which are banned as hate speech in the Netherlands. It calls for genocide of the Jews, so why should it be treated any differently than a neo-Nazi tract saying the same thing?
How to phrase this succinctly and accurately?
Bullshit!
I guess that was easier than I thought.
There is no such verse, and anyone who claims there is is not just mislead, but saying something to absurd on its face that they can be regarded as a liar as well.
Haven't WE, of all people, had fucking enough of special pleading for religious dogma?
Well, I don't know about you, but I've had fucking enough of ignorant twits lambasting something that they know absolutely sod-all about. Apparently, that's to be condemned when creationists do it, but not when the 'Brights' attack religion.
So you're saying that the seething hostility of Muslims and mosque teachings toward the hard-won tolerance and freedoms of the Netherlands shouldn't be acknowledged as a threat? Even after murders and multiple death threats?
Considering that there is no such "seething hostility" towards the hard-won freedoms of the Netherlands on the large part of Dutch Muslims, I would say no.
And rightfully so, because there is no moral equivalence. As Hugh Fitzgerald said so eloquently:
A Jihad Watch reader asked me: "If the Israel/Palestinian conflict were exactly the same as it is, only the roles of the two warring parties were exactly reversed, would you then switch allegiances to the Palestinian side?"
Let's see.
If there were 22 Jewish states, and only one tiny Arab state, and if in those 22 Jewish states every other group was denied anything like equality (see the various groups of Christians all over the Muslim Arab world, or for that matter see the various groups of non-Arab Muslims -- such as Kurds, Berbers, and black Africans in Darfur), and if those 22 Jewish states also possessed fantastic oil reserves and the one tiny Arab state possessed nothing but the intelligence of its populace, and if those 22 Jewish states were the size of the 22 members of the Arab League, with 14,000,000 square miles of territory, and the one tiny Arab state had less than 1/1,000th of that, or about 10,0000 square miles, and if those 22 Jewish states were possessed of an ideology that required them to move heaven and earth in order to eradicate that one tiny Arab state....
Read the rest there.
There's no need, because this man obviously understands as little of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as he does of Islam.
It certainly isn't the case that Israel is the poor little country beset on all sides by Arab bullies. In fact, quite the reverse.
In 1948, the state of Israel was created, and the dispossession of Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, began. In seaside locales like Jaffa, many drowned as the Jews pushed the Arabs into the sea (which makes the cynical inversion of the identities as an argument for Israel very telling). In Deir Yassin, the Irgun, Tsel, and Hagana terrorist organizations massacred over two hundred people. Many of these people would then go on to starred political careers. It would be as if bin Laden not only was given safe passage through Afghanistan, but became the president.
This process of ethnic cleansing occured throughout the year. In the Christian villages of Iqrit and Biri'm, the inhabitants were ordered out due to "security concerns" and told that they could return soon. Sixty years later, and their decendants are still waiting in exile, many in refugee camps clinging on to marginal survival. Later, Iqrit and Biri'm would be the code name for the Palestinian operation that led to the capture of the Israeli Olympic team.
Israel further stretched its muscles in the Six Day War and then attempted to install a literally fascist dictator and admirer of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, Bachir Gemayel, on Lebanon in the first Israeli-Lebanese War. This was the when the towers of Beirut were leveled, which bin Laden claims gave him the idea behind the September 11 attacks.
Today in Occupied Palestine, the IDF has been known for indiscriminately bombing refugee sites, torturing its 'detainees', bombing inhabited areas with anti-personnel devices like flechette shells, and leveling whole city blocks to allegedly get at 'terrorists' who live in only one building out of the two blocks leveled (I personally witnessed this one).
In addition, members of the Palestinian diaspora can be expected to be stopped at Tel Aviv and forbidden from traveling back home if they refuse to sign away their internationally-recognized right-of-return. Palestinians have their land stolen or divided by a apartheid wall which is manned by members of the Israeli forces who have a habit of going on break for hours at a time, ignoring the critical needs of Palestinians to farm their land on the other side of the wall, or to take sick and injured people to the hospital, etc. etc.
Currently, an entire region is being slowly starved to death for voting the 'wrong' way in an election and then having the temerity to actually retain power when the Israel-backed and utterly appalling Abbas tried to organize a putsch. Electricity is cut off for hours at a time, making being on a respirator or on dialysis a risky proposition. The Karni crossing, the only one capable of handling the amount of goods to sustain Gaza economically, is closed for the foreseeable future.
Palestinians are also required to drive from and to designated Palestinian areas, so that there are Palestinian-Israeli Freedom Rides in protest. They are also forced to do so with a designated Palestinian license plate, and it is illegal for a Palestinian to drive a car with an Israeli license plate. Even though hundreds of thousands live in Israeli controlled areas, they are not allowed to vote in Israeli elections nor are they allowed to have Israeli citizenship.
In South Africa, this was called apartheid. In Israel, it's the Middle East's Only Democracy.
Posted by: Nullifidian | March 30, 2008 1:56 AM
Nullifidian,
I believe I already mentioned that circumcision has no basis in the Qur'an. Thank you for annihilating that strawman. I did, however, explicitly mention that the Hadiths of the prophet and his sahaba (companions) are accepted by most Muslims as guidelines for proper Islamic behavior.
There are also no verses in the Qur'an or hadiths that condemn clitoridectomy. The closest verse I can find that amounts to an open condemnation is this:
'Um Atiyyat al-Ansariyyah said: A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet (pbuh) said to her: Do not cut too severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband'."
There you go. The prophet refuses to condemn clitoridectomy, either!
This happens to be my first time commenting on any of PZ Myers' posts, and I truly appreciate your politeness and self-restraint. Next time, Nullifidian, why don't you judge Muslims by the holy texts they venerate, not by hilarious excuses you read in your local Socialist rag.
BTW, I almost choked on my dinner when you mentioned Edward Said. Now I am nearly certain that you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. You've never actually read the Qur'an or any of Sahih Al-Bukhari's hadiths, have you?
Posted by: Sam K. | March 30, 2008 1:59 AM
I thought genocide wasn't a word until WWII - you should be able to quote the Quran on that if it's true...
But don't the Bible and Quran both have plenty of excuses for violence, war, the subjugation of women, slavery - you name it!
Didn't waterboarding come from the Spanish Inquisition (what a thrill!)...
Posted by: MB | March 30, 2008 2:00 AM
p.s. English is not my first language. I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors I may have made.
Posted by: Sam K. | March 30, 2008 2:03 AM
I don't really understand. Pamela Oshry over at Atlas Shrugs is an ideological twin of Geert Wilders, and she's been posting stuff like this about Muslims for years, but PZ never links to her. Why not?
Posted by: pastormaker | March 30, 2008 2:03 AM