Islamic Complicity with Evil

Follow-up to my earlier piece on Islam in which I tried to look at the relevant factors in assessing how to view Islam. In that piece I looked at the so called ground-zero Mosque. I concluded that Islam is the most primitive of the major world religions but that probably not all of the 1.27 billion Muslims are evil and ready to act like sociopaths.
One other factor that nudges me to the side of the Muslims is that the whole debate about islamaphobia is reminiscent of previous which hunts driven by bigotry, ethnic prejudice and xenophobia. Whenever a group eagerly looks for reasons to condemn another group of people I wonder what it was like when an accent tribe of cave dwellers found a new tribe impinging on their territory. I would guess they demeaned that group with a vengeance and by villainizing the invading tribe that threatened to take over some of their hunting ground and take their game. They probably worked themselves into lather with all the reasons the other tribe was barbaric, primitive, stupid and ignorant of the spirits. Of course war was the inevitable result—the side of goodness and purity required it.

Since then a couple of other thoughts have come to the surface. In trying to look at the religion as a whole it appears that much about Islam reinforces my basic ideas about religion, especially about an authoritarian religion. It is dogmatic, seeks easy answers at the cost of truth and the benefit of individuals. It advances dogma which can easily be misinterpreted and misused. And when it is misused there are few voices from within the Islamic community to speak up and disagree.

The new element that strikes me is that when the 9/11 bombers acted in the name of Islam there was no real voice that rose from the Islamic community saying that the extremists were perverting Islam. There were a few voices and some in key positions who said the extremists were wrong. But many of them said little or nothing. And as terrorism has continued there have been few voices raised to declare that the extremists are wrong. The loudest voice is that of the extremists. The moderates are very soft spoken or silent. The apparent reason for the silence is that those who disagree may have a fatwa or death threat made against them or they may even be killed. If the moderates are not quiet because of the danger of speaking up then it may be because they do not disagree all that strongly. It is hard to interpret silence.

In the US when an American Christian minister was going to burn some Korans, the threat of it violated the moderate position and posed a threat to American soldiers at war in Muslim countries. There was a groundswell of outrage that got him to back off. Christians are very diverse but the outcry was clear and unified and the minister backed down. With Islamists there is no such clear voice being raised. The moderate Muslims who do speak out do not appear to resonate with the Muslim community.


What does all of this mean? My conclusion is that the Muslim religion is primitive. It allows faith and custom to accept violence and avoid empathy with their mothers, wives and daughters relegating them to lives of isolation and depression.