Sam Harris: ‘Islam is antithetical to civil society’
Monday, May 5th, 2008Via nullifidian, Sam Harris has opined on Islam and violence.
The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute. It’s not that critics of religion like myself speculate that such a connection might exist: the point is that Islamists themselves acknowledge and demonstrate this connection at every opportunity and to deny it is to retreat within a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology. Many western scholars, like the much admired Karen Armstrong, appear to live in just such a place. All of their talk about how benign Islam “really” is, and about how the problem of fundamentalism exists in all religions, only obfuscates what may be the most pressing issue of our time: Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world’s Muslims, is antithetical to civil society. A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims.
Color me not surprised. When I hear about the havoc militant Muslims are wreaking on freedom of speech and religion in Europe, I’m actually a little bit grateful for all the fundie Christian rednecks we have in this country. I believe that the reason American Muslims don’t try any of this crap may be that we don’t cotton to none of that “Jihad” stuff ’round these parts. A bit less cynically, maybe the “land of the free” has been lucky enough to mostly attract those Muslims who actually value freedom. Whatever the reason, I’m very happy that Manal and the rest of her foaming-at-the-mouth psychotic friends don’t live here.
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May 6th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I do have to live in the same country as Manal et al., and I would argue that their statements give me more cause to be upset about the state of the British educational system than about the Muslim population.
I disagree with the perception that religious Muslims are more likely to be extremists than active members of other religions. Part of the problem when comparing British Muslims with British Christians is that British Muslims are more likely to actually practice Islam than British people who identify as Christian are to either practice or genuinely believe in Christianity.
Interestingly, the United States can be seen to have trends similar to those of Turkey with regard to tendency toward ridiculous acceptance of extremist religious ideology. Both countries have a large number of practising religious people despite not having the sort of official entanglement between religion and state seen in Britain.
I think that a tendency toward religiosity in Britain is, though relatively small, probably exacerbated by the existence of government-funded faith schools. These schools encourage people to think purely in terms of their religious grouping and, in at least some cases, to hold an American-style hostility toward evolution. The frequently cited case study on the impact of faith schools on community cohesion is, of course, Northern Ireland.