Jon writes:
The west was historically run by powers within the Christian church; it was, essentially, a theocracy. It was, in fact, mostly Christians who fought to move away from such a system. It was Christians who drafted the Bill of Rights and the freedoms of religion that it granted. It was Christians who fought to end slavery. The modern ideals embraced by humanists and secularists are largely the product of moderate Christianity.
Yes, "moderate" Christianity won out, by and large, but not before many bloody, protracted wars, and fundamentalist and authoritarian Christians still have blood on their hands both in Western countries and throughout the world.
Jon writes:
And maybe, just maybe, Islam is going through such a revolution now. Perhaps an organized moderate Islam will appear at the top of the pile and in the majority when the dust, smoke, and blown-up bodies settle. However, even if this is the case, we live in the 21st century and no one is okay with religious ideologies battling one another on a stage where ammo consists of actual bullets and bombs instead of intellectual arguments (like we see in the debates within other religions, for example).
Like the "intellectual arguments" between the Burmese Buddhists and religious minorities in that nation? Like the "intellectual arguments" between Hindus and Muslims over Kashmir and other areas in the subcontinent? Like the "intellectual arguments" between
Christian militias and Muslims in the Central African Republic?. Like the "intellectual arguments" about condoms and birth control which have killed millions due to AIDS and other related tragedies. Besides, Western, Christian hands are not at all clean when it comes to any of these situations.
Jon writes:
If the world we have now is the world required for the emergence of a moderate Islam, then I think it is fair to ask ourselves whether it's worth it. Is Islam so important to the world that we must preserve it at any cost under the guise of religious freedom and diversity? Would it be wrong to say that perhaps we don't want to bother with a moderate Islam or any Islam at all given the religion's clear inability to work out its differences in ways that don't get mass numbers of people killed (notice, Muslims are mostly just killing one another)?
Would ridding the world of Islam save more lives than are spared? Would the world be better off if Islam was eradicated? Of course, ridding the world of Islam means ridding the world of Muslims. How would you go about that and still feel that you had the moral high ground?
I abhor most religious thinking and I agree that Islam, at its core (along with most other religions), is not at all conducive to human rights and progress, but this part of your argument is equally repellent to me. If we cannot bother to acknowledge and work with a moderate Islam (which is what moderate Muslims practice, IMO), then the alternative is just as barbaric as that which we are ostensibly against.
"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -
The Iron Heel by Jack London
"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea
™ Version 4.2
(1)