Let’s see Reza Aslan excuse the many Islamic states that have the death penalty for apostasy (all 20 countries that criminalize it, including the 10 where it’s a capital punishment, are Islamic), as well as criminal penalties for blasphemy (badmouthing faith) or heresy (believing the “wrong thing”). Apparently one of the countries where people can be killed for heresy is Iran, where, according to the Guardian, a young man was just hanged for heresy. The story is almost surreal:
Mohsen Amir-Aslani was arrested nine years ago for his activities which the authorities deemed were heretical. He was engaged in psychotherapy but also led sessions reading and reciting the Qur’an and providing his own interpretations of the Islamic holy book, his family said.
Amir-Aslani was hanged last week for making “innovations in the religion” and “spreading corruption on earth”, but human rights activists said he was a prisoner of conscience who was put to death because of his religious beliefs. He had interpreted Jonah’s story in the Qur’an as a symbolic tale.
The proportion of Muslims who interpret the Qur’an (or parts of it) metaphorically rather than literally is much lower than Christians who take the Bible as largely an allegory. The Qur’an is not supposed to be seen metaphorically; it is the dictated word of Allah. But to kill someone over saying that Jonah was a metaphor is beyond belief. After all, what “giant fish” can swallow a human? There were also allegations of sexual misconduct, but as far as I can see on any site, none of these have been substantiated. It looks like a straight-up case of having beliefs differing from others of your faith:
According to the source, Iran’s ministry of intelligence was behind Amir-Aslani’s arrest. “He was initially held for making innovations in Islam and providing his own interpretations of the Qur’an but later he was accused of insulting prophet Jonah and also faced accusations of having sex outside marriage,” the source said. “They alleged that he had sexual relationships with a group of the people who participated in his classes.”
Iran’s judiciary has presented little evidence in public relating to the allegations of illicit sexual activities. The judge who presided over his case, Abolghassem Salavati, is known in Iran for leading numerous unfair trials, including many that resulted in execution.
. . . Iranian authorities are sensitive towards those practising Islam in ways not conforming to the official line. In recent years, several members of Iran’s Gonabadi dervishes religious minority have been arrested and are currently serving lengthy prison terms.
Really, how could apologists like Aslan rationalize this as “non-religious”? For heresy has to do precisely with not hewing to an official religious line; you can’t pretend that it’s secular. And though I don’t know the countries that make heresy a crime, I’m willing to bet that nearly all of them are majority Muslim countries. You can’t claim, as Aslan did (unconvincingly) for female genital mutilation, that heresy is a purely cultural issue.
Amir-Aslani had a wife (I don’t know about kids)—a wife who has lost her husband because he spoke metaphorically about a nomming fish. The more I think about Aslan excusing this kind of stuff, or about those who say “it’s culture, not religion,” the angrier I get.
This is madness. Why must these judges hold brief for their supposed god?
As was alluded to in a previous post, the idea of crediting religious belief for fostering positive behaviors while denying it an equivalent role in negative outcomes is transparent and dishonest bull…nonsense.
Most Muslims can (and have historically often) played picky-choosy with their religion in just the same way Christians have. Christians (who had no tradition of mandated conversion until they became the imperial Roman state religion) and Muslims (whose fragmented political structure led to very tolerant enclaves in the islamic world, such that most of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 fled to Istanbul) can either be encouraged or discouraged in this endeavor. The common thread is that no state or group should ever have the power to enforce religious orthodoxy, no matter what the magic source text claims. I suggest this in http://secularglobalinstitute.org/2014/08/10/a-global-secular-bill-of-rights/
Turns out Freud was right after all.
Hey now, with all the Reza Aslan bashing let’s not forget Karen Armstrong. She would have us believe that executing someone for interpreting the story of Jonah metaphorically must be due to culture, not religion at all. Surely this event undermines her as much as it does Mr. Aslan! 🙂
Oops, I forgot about Apologist Armstrong.
Apologist Armstrong’s book is still garnering atheist-bashing reviews. One of the more interesting mixed ones is from the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/154f1b1e-4285-11e4-9818-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3Ev6p1STS), which points out that Armstrong relies on some dubious neuroscience. The first comment below the piece is rather outrageous.
So is John Gray’s New Statesman review (http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/09/lambs-slaughter). Gray is an educated troll and drools that “Karen Armstrong is one of our most perceptive and thoughtful writers on religion.” Yet even he takes issue with some of her conclusions.
From what I recall of Armstrong she argues that the root of religion — all religions — is mysticism. A sense of union with the divine love, pure experience, spiritual enlightenment — that sort of thing. So only thoughts, rituals, and ceremonies which harken directly back to that emotional sense of the sacred are religious. Picture a head bowed in prayer, a nun breathless with adoration.
Everything else — all doctrine, all dogma, all institutions — is mere human interpretation. Individual psychology and culture adulterate the pure experience. This stance might be encapsulated in the common phrase “I’m spiritual, not religious.”
Iirc Dan Dennett once wrote “if you make yourself small enough, you can externalize anything.” I hope he wrote it, because the sentence comes back to me when I consider this sort of stuff.
Do you get angrier when Alsan says “it’s culture, not religion” or when Wade says “it’s biology, not culture”?
I get angriest when people say, “it’s physics, not chemistry, or biology, or culture, or religion.”
But it’s all physics. This is what happens to hydrogen after ⁓14 billion years …
😉
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It is with immense indignation to listen to religious Americans claim that it is great to live in a free country and yet refuse to admonish the beliefs of others because of the equal burden it puts on their own faith.
Educated, Protestant, liberal Christian Americans. Almost no other group of humans deserves more shame for voluntarily ignoring facts.
Damn. Sanctimonious assholes. Islam’s god is revealed as one of The Hulk’s “puny gods.”
There probably ARE some large fish that could swallow a human. Basking shark, maybe? Whale shark?
Maybe, I don’t know, but I do know a man couldn’t live for three days inside a fish, then happily swim back to live the rest of his life. Three days gone? Now where have I heard that before?!
Iirc a Muslim once told me that the cause of heresy was the infiltration and imposition of Western secularism. Good Muslims are corrupted by other cultures and lead to think and say things they would not have otherwise done. So Islam wasn’t to blame.
So much wrong with this argument. Notice how it skirts the main issue, for instance.
The problem remains that people want control of other people.
I would say it’s a chicken and egg problem. Religion and authority have co-evolved. They cannot easily be separated, except by something like a constitution that forbids the establishment of religion, and a culture that respects such a formulation.
What about the possibility that religion controls the believer? It harnesses minds.
A monk who abjures the world, renounces all human pleasure, jettisons rational knowledge, and sits alone in a cave for decades while contemplating God and mumbling over sacred rocks is not trying to control anyone else. He’s not hurting anybody or telling people what to do.
And yet I would still say there is a problem here.
A waste of human potential, among other things.
I don’t feel that it’s within my rights to denounce a reclusive monk’s actions as a “problem”: he may not be producing any positive benefits for the world (which is an entirely subjective opinion, as who can accurately predict that this life experience WON’T put him in a position to help humanity later on?), but neither are the millions of people who spend hours (which adds up to years) idly “worshiping” TV shows like soap operas, WWE wrestling, and “Dancing With the Stars”: where does one draw the line? It is seductively easy to slip into the role of “thought police”, even for a free-thinker.
In a society structured with one of its primary goals being the maximum freedom for ALL citizens (my vision, of course), it must first be decided what actions “qualify” as allowable: as one person put it, “Your freedom to swing your fist stops at the tip of my nose.” Can one yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater and then claim, “Free Speech”, as a defense? Can one deny someone a job, or fire someone from a job because of their religious, political, or sexual preferences (if these do not interfere with job performance)? Can one verbally or physically abuse or assault someone simply because they’re not acting in the manner the abuser THINKS they should act? Of course not- the RESULTS of such actions are what must be taken into consideration. This is not always easy: in some cases the welfare of the many must override the “right” of the individual (traffic laws, tax laws, appropriation of private property for a municipal project that will benefit thousands, etc.)
Were the monk to go on to profess that everyone “should” be doing what he’s doing (I’ve wondered what would happen should everyone decide to become a Buddhist monk: who would give the alms?) he would also be well within his rights, but, were he do decree that anyone who DOESN’T do as he says should be punished (which is also within his “rights”), and goes on to succeed in attracting a large-enough, influential-enough group to enforce and actually carry out this punishment, well, then, you have a “problem”.
Sure it is within your rights. Mine to. I’ll denounce the monk again. A waste of human resource. That’s my opinion, and I can back it up with good reasoning, and there is good evidence to support my reasoning. But, yes of course, there is a large measure of subjectivety to my opinion.
How does “that is a waste of human resources” suggest that I am saying I think the monk should be prevented by law or force, or in some way “against his will,” from doing his monk thing? Does it even suggest that if I personally encountered the monk that I would dress him down for pursuing his monkly endeavors? Sure doesn’t seem like it to me, but hey, where humans are concerned I can certainly appreciate cynicism. So, let me clarify. Nope, I was not suggesting anything like that.
And “monk” is just a stand in term. To get specific, I am not at all concerned about actual monks living lives as Sastra described in her example. There are too few compared to other groups. What concerns me is the waste of human potential in our society, the US, because of the prevalent general attitudes regarding everything from economics to politics. For example, we should be able, and willing, to find a way to provide as high a level of education as a person is capable of, for all people, encourage people to do so, and do it without burdening them with huge amounts of debt. But nope, too much ideology preventing people from looking at the evidence. And the evidence is pretty clear that when you invest in the people that make up the society, the investment pays off big and the society prospers. A prime example from the modern era, the GI Bill.
Perhaps you misunderstood me: in my last paragraph, I was not referring to YOU as the person saying the monk should be “punished”; I was talking about the monk wishing punishment on those who aren’t doing what HE’S doing. I was addressing Sastra’s post, by the way, not the opinion you posted in your reply.
Your second reply as to the imaginary monk, which you now label as a “symbol” of all those who are not acting the way you would have them act, concerns me: you seem fairly young, with some resentments against our educational system. I can tell you that, in my 62 years of life, I’ve found out that complaining is not only easy, but non-productive: if you really want something to change, you have to go out there and CHANGE it. Are you voting in the upcoming election? Have you attended any local school board meetings? Are you involved in any community service work?
As for the “waste of human potential”, are we to have “life-panels” (the opposite of death-panels) that TELL each citizen that they MUST reach their optimum potential, and decree what they should do to achieve that? Life’s a lot more complicated than that.
No Jeffery, I am not young. I’m not sure if there is a language barrier getting in the way, your reading comprehension is low, or I am not communicating well. In any case you are mistaken about nearly every single thing you think I have said or implied. That coupled with your condescension and your penchant for attributing to me bizarre motivations indicates to me that further conversation is pointless.
Please tell me what cultural or social control purpose is achieved by insisting people read the tale of Jonah and the whale literally.
There are certainly areas where ‘religious motivation’ may overlap with ‘cultural motivation’ or ‘political motivation.’ But it is hard to see this instance as one of them. He wasn’t speaking out against the state or its leaders, he wasn’t dancing on a Saturday, or doing anything else remotely related to anti-“culture” or anti-“power.”
Looking at this in the context of a corporate information security policy, if you don’t enforce all parts of the policy equally, it becomes difficult to enforce any part of the policy.
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Yes, but if you go that way, then everything is everything. The only way to cogently argue that religion is not at fault and it’s culture and politics instead, is to draw some sort of distinction.
Now I know Armstrong has also argued that historical peoples did not draw a distinction. I also disagree with that, but more importantly for our discussion here, her ‘not distinguished’ argument is inconsistent with her ‘religion not at fault’ argument.
Sorry, I don’t see that as a rebuttal: I was addressing the question of purpose.
“Oh, the tale of Jonah is not to be read literally.
“So do I have to tale the bit about not eating pork literally?
“And praying five times a day?”
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The rebuttal is:
1. If you assume the state has an interest in preventing you from having a difference of opinion with them in any subject, then every subject becomes “politics” rather than “religion” (or “cooking,” or “art”).
2. This is not useful in determining what ideological force is at fault, because it does not address the question of why the state is requiring the citizen to worship in a specific way (or cook in a specific way, or paint in a specific way).
3. IOW your analysis ignores the origin question. Yes, once the state has decided to enforce a policy regarding worship, they are goin to want to stop people from breaking their rules as a general (non-religious) practice. But you’re ignoring the question of why has the state decided to enforce a policy regarding worship? What ideological or sociological force is behind the rule that Jonah must be taken literally? Does it serve a secular purpose, like preventing traffic accidents?
The monk is not hurting anyone, so I have no interest in him one way or another. I am not interested in monitoring or judging people’s inner life unless they are a problem to me or to my society.
The problem with religion is that it co-evolved with government. In many, if not most cultures, it is inextricable.
the Amish, in my view, are pretty weird, but they have almost no political power, and I have no interest in de-converting them.
I am interested in those sects whose members carry weapons and use them on non-members. That would include apostates.
I also think religion is a problem with reference to children. I am pretty close to agreeing with Dawkins, that inculcating nonsense in children is abuse.
So I am not denying that religion is a problem. I’m merely trying to tease out a distinction between believers who want to control others and those who don’t.
I think it’s a difference in temperament, possibly inborn, certainly nurtured by some cultures and nations.
Now if you want me to say what I think is absolutely and unconditionally wrong with religion, I would say it lacks reality based feedback. Once a violent meme percolates, there’s nothing within the creed to prevent it from metastasizing.
Petrushka wrote:
“I am pretty close to agreeing with Dawkins, that inculcating nonsense in children is abuse.”
Then I would not exclude the Amish, who are among the worst offenders in this respect, simply because they have no political power.
Anyone who promotes critical thinking is, whether they know it or not, actively “de-converting” those around them who cling to irrational, fallacious, or flawed belief systems- the ONLY solution to the main problems of the world (in my opinion, ignorance, followed by the resultant greed and fear) is the uncensored, unfettered flow of ideas.
One “rule of thumb” I use (among many) in ascertaining the validity of a belief system is how open it is to examination and criticism. The crazier it is (Scientology, Islam, North Korean “Kim-worship”, etc.), the more secretive, isolatory, and fond of censorship it is.
I disagree. First, it is clearly extricable since many societies have in fact extricated religion from government. Nor is this merely a western phenomenon, since asian cultures have long tolerated taoism and buddhism side by side, and moreover the west has a long bloody history of punishing religious heresy. Even amongst predominantly Islamic nations, the religion-government connection is sometimes intimate (Saudi) and sometimes weak (Turkey and Egypt).
Secondly, even in the societies where the connection is intimate, we have examples of reformers/protesters who are trying to extricate it. They are a part of their own culture, are they not? That is what this whole tread is about: an Iranian who did not think his culture required a literal reading of the Jonah story. I think it is a no true scotsman argument (and highly insulting) to try and claim that the Iranian and Saudi reformers who are risking their lives to speak out in favor of change are not part of Iranian and Saudi culture. They clearly are – and their opinions show that parts of their own culture thinks religion and government are not inextricable. There is no unified Islamic cultural claim that religion and government must be mixed; different muslims hold different views on whether they should mix, how much they should mix, and how to go about the mixing.
Worth restating Steven Weinberg’s quote (Atheism Tapes, with Jonathan Miller):
“I have a friend — or had a friend, now dead — Abdus Salam, a very devout Muslim, who was trying to bring science into the universities in the Gulf states and he told me that he had a terrible time because, although they were very receptive to technology, they felt that science would be a corrosive to religious belief, and they were worried about it… and damn it, I think they were right. It [Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it’s a good thing too.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Weinberg
“The more I think about Aslan excusing this kind of stuff, or about those who say “it’s culture, not religion,” the angrier I get.”
Somebody has got to confront that insipid jerk.
India, Ireland, and Israel all have anti-blasphemy laws.
Blasphemy is not the same thing as heresy. The psychotherapist was not a blasphemer.
Fair point. I was thinking of your first paragraph, and then read far too quickly when you said later in the post that you were willing to bet most countries with heresy laws were majority Muslim, conflating blasphemy/heresy and missing the “nearly.”
This is the exact kind of story that began turning me against religion as a teen. Could you imagine the horror of being murdered for something so trivial? Hard to believe this shit happens and is quite common.
Of course, in OUR culture, we don’t execute people for non-literal readings of the “Prophet” Jonah:
“Q–You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven’t you, Mr. Bryan?
A–Yes, sir, I have tried to.
Q–Then you have made a general study of it?
A–Yes, I have; I have studied the Bible for about fifty years, or sometime more than that, but, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was but a boy.
Q–You claim that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?
A–I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there: some of the Bible is given illustratively. For instance: “Ye are the salt of the earth.” I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God’s people.
Q–But when you read that Jonah swallowed the whale–or that the whale swallowed Jonah– excuse me please–how do you literally interpret that?
A–When I read that a big fish swallowed Jonah–it does not say whale….That is my recollection of it. A big fish, and I believe it, and I believe in a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both what He pleases.
Q–Now, you say, the big fish swallowed Jonah, and he there remained how long–three days– and then he spewed him upon the land. You believe that the big fish was made to swallow Jonah?
A–I am not prepared to say that; the Bible merely says it was done.
Q–You don’t know whether it was the ordinary run of fish, or made for that purpose?
A–You may guess; you evolutionists guess…..
Q–You are not prepared to say whether that fish was made especially to swallow a man or not?
A–The Bible doesn’t say, so I am not prepared to say.
Q–But do you believe He made them–that He made such a fish and that it was big enough to swallow Jonah?
A–Yes, sir. Let me add: One miracle is just as easy to believe as another
Q–Just as hard?
A–It is hard to believe for you, but easy for me. A miracle is a thing performed beyond what man can perform. When you get within the realm of miracles; and it is just as easy to believe the miracle of Jonah as any other miracle in the Bible.
Q–Perfectly easy to believe that Jonah swallowed the whale?
A–If the Bible said so; the Bible doesn’t make as extreme statements as evolutionists do…. ”
— cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial
And this is why belief in miracles is epistemic and metaphysical poison – once you accept any, *one has no reason* to believe or disbelieve any reports or experiences about any events whatsoever, except completely ad hocly.
The judge who presided over his case, Abolghassem Salavati, is known in Iran for leading numerous unfair trials, including many that resulted in execution.
Is there a version of this case that would have been a “fair” trial?
How appalling and very sad. Poor man.
OMFSM
(Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster, bless his name)
More Iranian execution for blasphemy. Someone please Photoshop a picture of Aslan sitting on the lap of a Mohammed statue and let it go viral in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Aslan, if you are reading this, please don’t mistake this for a death threat because the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world are a kind and benevolent people as you know.
Not sure if that’s going to work, but certainly someone aught to challenge him to draw a picture of Mohammed and publish it. If they are as kind and benevolent as Aslan says, there should be no repercussions.
This is really nauseating.
We must remember that our good buddies the Saudis, who are active members of the U.S. “coalition” against ISIS, have an elite police squad whose only function is to ferret out “witches”. Several people have already been beheaded this year for that “offense”.
Every person chooses which part of their religions or religious books they want to believe in.. a Christian in America will more often cite the bible to support homophobia when a Swede would claim that Christianity is well past homophobia because the Swedes are generally far more accepting of homosexuality. Hence Swedish culture allows Swedish Christianity to criticize what many American Christians defend. If you criticize Christianity in a whole, on the other hand, you will find the Americans and Swedes uniting in their defence of “Christianity” even though they generally disagree with each other.. to claim that it is all religion and no culture is like saying it’s the car that causes the accidents and not the driver.
Except for the death part,(at the present time) I have no doubts that ultra-conservatives would give out lengthy prison sentences here for what most Christians would believe to be heresy against their imaginary deity! ! Atheists are more discriminated against in this country, more than any other prejudice… including skin color, being overweight, gender, or political preferences. To question the Bible is horrifying to their programmed little minds! If religion prevails, I wouldn’t doubt for one second that the return of the Spanish Inquisition ,(only in America), would return and INCLUDE death as a punishment!