The Five Pillars of Criticizing Islam

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There are Islamic extremists who are offended by the act of breathing and would find my sanction of criticism against Islam to be heresy. But this isn't about them. I think dialogue is good for the Muslim community. However, I have drawn up a simple code of conduct for my quasi-adversaries, because all the "criticize Islam" threads devolve into hate speech and fairy tales very quickly.

PILLAR #1: KNOW YOUR STUFF-----Anyone who sets out to criticize Islam without knowing what it is is setting themselves up to be a gooberhead. These forums are often frequented by people who know their history but not their comparative religion, people who can recount, in vivid detail, atrocities committed by Islamic militants in the 1730s, but probably couldn't name the five pillars in English, let alone Arabic (Shahada, Salat, Zakat, Saum, Hajj, people). The "criticisms of Islam" put forth by these commenters often reflect a serious ignorance. Take, for example, the common internet rumor that the Qur'an says that a woman is half of a man. How awful! How sexist! How....completely false. Somewhere, at some undefined point in the recent past, a troll was skimming the Qur'an. He found this:

"God commands you regarding your children: to the male child what equals the share of two females. If they are females, and they are more than two, they shall inherit two-thirds of what the father leaves. If it be one female, she inherits half. To the the two parents of the deceased belongs a sixth each of what he leaves, if he has children."-----Sura 4 Aya 10

After having half-read and half-comprehended this passage, the alarmed troll came to the defense of women everywhere by getting the word out about this disturbing verse from the Unholy Qur'an.

The verse, of course, is about inheritance. The estate is to be divided into fractions, and the daughters get half of what the sons get. That's lawyer stuff, not a statement about the relative humanity of women. It is a sexist verse by today's standards because the girls get less, but it's nothing like what it's been made out to be. It may be even more harmless than it appears, seeing as girls inherited nothing in pre-Islamic Arabia and Islam calls on men to pay a dowry.

The bottom line: if you don't know the rules, you can't play the game.

And anyone who responds to this with "everything I needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11!" will be severely and justly flamed. Which brings us to rule #2.

PILLAR #2: DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS FOLLOWERS

"I don't like your Christians, but I like your Christ."
----Gandhi

Like all religions, Islam has its mysteries and is often open to a wide range of interpretations. Of course, crazy people came along and channeled their crazy into their interpretation of the Qur'an, which, being a book, had no way to defend itself. Sometimes the scripture was mangled so badly that it started meaning the opposite of what it was supposed to in the eyes of the extremists. There are people in the world who are practicing something that they call "Islam", despite the fact that Muhammad, that sensitive fellow, would just die if he knew about all the hideous things that they were doing. Osama Bin Laden does not speak for Islam any more than Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps speaks for Christianity.

PILLAR #3: TREAT THE PROPHET WITH A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF RESPECT

"Muhammad was a liar, a murderer, an idolater, a rapist, a child molester, a man-whore, a communist, an anti-Semite, a dictator, a Nazi, and a thief. Oh, and he ate babies. For breakfast. Peace be upon him."
----Average internet commentator

If saying it to a stranger would get you into a bar fight, don't say it about Muhammad. That's just common courtesy.

PILLAR #4: SEPARATE RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS FROM CULTURAL OR POLITICAL TEACHINGS-----Have you noticed that Somalian, Malaysian, Lebanese, and Canadian Muslims all look really, really different from one another? That's because of culture. Sometimes, culture blends with religion to create weird things, and it's hard to separate the two. Take female genital mutilation. This horrible practice has been going on in parts of Africa for thousands of years, and when Arab traders brought Islam to Africa, many Africans (read: men) wanted to incorporate this practice into their new faith instead of just ditching it. And that's called cultural-religious blending. Do basic Islamic teachings condone female circumcision? No. It's an African phenomenon, not a Muslim one.

Obeying Pillar #4 requires a lot of critical thinking. You guys are smart enough, right?

PILLAR #5: KNOW YOUR SOURCE MATERIAL-----In reference to Islam even more than other topics, the internet is not a reputable source. Do not Google Islam. Do not ask Jeeves about Islam. Do not glean information from the Wikipedia entry for "Islam". There are people on the internet who dedicate THEIR ENTIRE LIVES to trying to bring Islam down, using as many misinterpretations, straw men, and baldfaced lies as necessary. There are some hate sites out there that aren't plastered in swastikas, that pass themselves off as reputable sources. There are even fake Qur'ans circulating on the internet, with verses invented or removed. I wouldn't trust the internet AT ALL.

When it comes to Islam, yer just gonna have to go to the library and check out some damn books. Ain't no way around it.

It's not possible to understand the Koran without knowing Arabian. This is pretty bad considering it purports to be an universal religion.

"Know my stuff". Better start learning how to read Arabian then.

But that's like saying it's not possible to understand the Bible without knowing Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and King James' English.

Up until the Reformation, you could only understand the Bible only if you also knew Latin. Islam kind of skipped the whole Reformation thingy, and now they say that even if something like an English translation can be made, to truly understand it you have to read it in Arabian.

Who are "they"?

Christianity, on the other hand, now has a thriving tradition of misinterpreting the bible based on artifacts of translation.

Some people called the "muslims".

"Translations
Muslims not speaking Arabic will normally stick to an Arabic version of the Koran. Most of them will learn how to read Arabic text, and learn some Arabic words, and then read the Koran according to the way described above. In general, Muslims will agree that the Koran can never be correctly translated, and that the Arabic original is the only version that is correct.Translations of the Koran are in many cases a fruit of the needs of Western scholars to have a uniform text which is common in between them. Also, the Koranic translations are motived by curiosity and interest of many non-Muslims.
The first translation of the Koran into another language was to Latin in 1143, and this was performed by a monk, who sought understanding of the Crusaders' enemy.
From the 18th century and up until now, the Koran has been translated into most Western languages, and with a steadily increasing quality. Today most Muslims endorse this effort, with the hope that some misunderstandings on Islam can be refuted, and also with the hope of conversions by people of the West. "

Source: http://looklex.com/e.o/koran.htm

Wait? You think that hate speech and fairy tales aren't a good thing????? MADWOMAN!! !!

In any case, I did actually think of you earlier this week, if not today.(my memory is bad enough that even "today" cannot be distinguished from "recently", how absurd!)

In any case, I probably should read the Koran.(not that I ever desire to seriously criticize Islam, but more knowledge = better)

It's like those lawmakers in Washington declaring that you have to be a lawyer to understand the law, and that translating the law into common language would make the law imprecise and open to interpretation.

Yeah ... right ... they just want to make sure that only they are considered authorities on the topic, and that the rest of us will just have to believe whatever they tell us it means ... or whatever they want it to mean...



I guess the rest of us who have trouble learning languages will just have to rely on observing the actions of those self-appointed experts to determine what their religion is really all about.

What about Pillar No. 6?

Religion is an expression of the state of the society. The Islamic states lost the competition with the west centuries ago. The Islam serves for those backward societies in the same way as Christianity did till the Renaissance and later. The ideology to support an outdated social system.

Fight against Islam (or any other other religion) is therefore less a fight against religion, but against the system which let the religion flourish. Herny VIII (or his daughter Elizabeth I) did not really fought the Church of Rome, they fought against the feudal system support by the Catholic church which limited their power. When Voltaire named the church as the "infamous" (Écrasez l'Infâme), he said "church", but he mend "aristocracy" and "king".

It does not matter which religion to fight: All religions are the same and harmful for a modern society.

We seem to be stuck in technicality land. I'll make another list, then. Because I'm that thoughtful.

Questions and concerns about Islam that have some value (are based on hard facts and/or emotions other than fear):

1. Allah is similar to Yahweh and Jehovah (Jewish and Christian conceptions of God, respectively) in that He is all-powerful, all-knowing, AND all-merciful. If Allah knows about evil, has every power to stop evil, and loves and empathizes with everybody, why is there evil?

2. Toward the end of his life, Muhammad started breaking some of his own rules, especially in regards to polygamy. Was this plain hypocrisy, or were there genuine philosophical reasons for it? Is it a black eye for Islam as a whole?

3. If Islam is a universal religion, why the Arabic thing?

4. If we're halfway informed, we know that Muslims believe in the nobility and prophethood of Jesus. Muhammad repeatedly said that he was trying to live by Jesus' example. But Jesus occupies a somewhat awkward place in the lineage of prophets: Abraham, Moses, David, and Muhammad were strong patriarchal figures, while Jesus was a spooky desert mystic. How can Muslims reconcile the "Muslim Jesus" with the rest of the revered prophets? Should they?

5. Under classical Islamic law (WHICH IS DIFFERENT THAN SHARIA LAW), a man may have up to four wives, provided that the first wife agrees to it, none of the wives are treated like concubines, and none of the wives are neglected. This is a nice idea, but it may not be realistic. How many men do you know who could treat multiple wives fairly?

6. Islam is in a bad place geopolitically. The message is being corrupted by anti-Israeli propaganda, and poverty in Islamic nations is breeding extremism. This is a bad time to be tuning in to Islamic beliefs. Maybe we should just drop this and try again in 100 years.

Okay, peeps, we need to TRY to look at this from a spiritual point of view. Does it get depressing to look around the universe and see politics alone?

To be able to dispute a person's POV, one must first understand it. Some of you are not making an effort to comprehend the thought patterns and arguments of the Believer or the Spiritual Seeker. I used to speak The Language of the Atheists, and it is truly different from the Language of the Agnostics or the Language of the Believers. Sometimes I think we may need separate planets.

The same problem as the Christians and Jews have: It was Epicurus how pointed first to this paradox. His argument was strong against the club of Greek gods, but is even stronger against an omnipotent god.

For a logic thinker the issues could be closed.



Societies pick-up and form the religion to their needs. The complex structure of the Catholic Heaven with it's saints, choruses of angles, apostles, etc. fitted only to well to complex hierarchies of mediaeval Europe in which each king and each town had his preferred saint(s).

For simple society as the Arabic one, the simple monotheistic idea may fitted the best.

Reality does not care about my feelings.



Nice idea: One planet one which war-after-war will be fought regarding the real nature of Christ or the exact interpretation of any dubious old book or the ownership of a hill, or which group may pray in which corner of a particular church or if Mohamed's stepsun died or not or ... and at the other planet reasonable people try to solve real problems.

How can you escape to another world? It is like asking how culture would be different if the earth's gravitational field were weaker.(assuming planetary stability) Hard to understand deeply grounded counter-factuals.

Interestingly, former Christian apologist John Loftus argues that reaching Christians requires an ability to understand their stance and attack it, something that most atheists fail at doing according to him. Yes, the world seems very different to atheists, and people of religion.

Not really closed. A major issue is that the problem of evil is that I think the logical problem of evil is considered to have failed to necessarily be successful. A major issue is that necessary evil is still logically possible, and it is hard to disprove. The problem becomes inductive, but that does not close the book on an issue because induction is just based upon current facts.


Ok? The issue is that MissPickwickian is pointing to multiple modes to experience external reality. She has not brought in the issue of validity, but it is hard to claim that the reality that a believer sees is the exact same as a non-believer in terms of what is perceived and everything.

No such thing as a real problem. Reasonable is also somewhat socially constructed. Real problems and reasonable people are almost undeniably socially constructed. Now, this isn't even going into issues of epistemology and ontology, as I have not argued either of those as socially constructed. The issue is that value is considered somewhere on the high end of subjective things, and problems are issues involving that which is valued. As well, reasonable is incredibly context sensitive, as for the most part what dictates reasonable ends up being cultural norms. I mean, what we expect the average or ideal person to do is what we call reasonable.