The collision between liberalism and Islam continues, and it will go on. A piece in Saturday’s Torygraph quotes author Salman Rushdie’s words from his lecture given on the occasion of receiving the PEN/Pinter prize,
In his PEN/Pinter Prize Lecture, the author said all religions have their extremists but “the overwhelming weight of the problem lies in the world of Islam”.
. . . Rushdie defined “jihadi-cool” as “the deformed medievalist language of fanaticism, backed up by modern weaponry”, saying: “It’s hard not to conclude that this hate-filled religious rhetoric, pouring from the mouths of ruthless fanatics into the ears of angry young men, has become the most dangerous new weapon in the world today”.
He said: “A word I dislike greatly, ‘Islamophobia’, has been coined to discredit those who point at these excesses, by labelling them as bigots. But in the first place, if I don’t like your ideas, it must be acceptable for me to say so, just as it is acceptable for you to say that you don’t like mine. Ideas cannot be ring-fenced just because they claim to have this or that fictional sky god on their side.
“And in the second place, it’s important to remember that most of those who suffer under the yoke of the new Islamic fanaticism are other Muslims…
“It is right to feel phobia towards such matters. As several commentators have said, what is being killed in Iraq is not just human beings, but a whole culture. To feel aversion towards such a force is not bigotry. It is the only possible response to the horror of events.
“I can’t, as a citizen, avoid speaking of the horror of the world in this new age of religious mayhem, and of the language that conjures it up and justifies it, so that young men, including young Britons, led towards acts of extreme bestiality, believe themselves to be fighting a just war.”
And if you say that Reza Aslan represents one strain of Islam, so Rushdie respresents the views of someone who is an apostate, subject to assassination attempts and the infamous fatwa about Satanic Verses. Aslan can whitewash his faith till the cows come home, but there is now only one religion that issues official calls for death to those who write books they don’t like.
I wonder what Aslan would say about that fatwa: that it’s is purely cultural and not religious to sanction murder towards someone who writes about apocryphal verses in a holy book?
Rushdie had a few choice words for other religionists as well:
“It’s fair to say that more than one religion deserves scrutiny. Christian extremists in the United States today attack women’s
liberties and gay rights in language they claim comes from God. Hindu extremists in India today are launching an assault on free expression and trying, literally, to rewrite history, proposing the alteration of school textbooks to serve their narrow saffron dogmatism.
“But the overwhelming weight of the problem lies in the world of Islam, and much of it has its roots in the ideological language of blood and war emanating from the Salafist movement within Islam, globally backed by Saudi Arabia.”
For these ideologues, “modernity itself is the enemy, modernity with its language of liberty, for women as well as men, with its insistence of legitimacy in government rather than tyranny, and with its stroninclination towards secularism and away from religion.”
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Stand by for a lecture on internalised colonialism from Germain Greer.
The colonialism Pakistan ought to be worried about is the 7th Arab colonialism that is destroying the country.
Ugh typos. 7th century Arab colonialism.
Thanks for this. A Salman Rushdie is what happens when you pay attention.
He’s from a different generation. When Mullahs were marginalized in public and ridiculed in private.
Amen
And sub
“narrow saffron dogmatism”
I would have thought Rushdie should have said narrow saccharin dogmatism – artificial and inferior. Alas, it is great to hear from the great Rushdie and I hope people on every side of this issue will listen to him.
Agreed. It is good to hear from him about the current happenings. It should be especially useful for those who criticize the critics of Islamic extremism to hear moar from Rushdie, since he probably has a lot of street cred with them.
They should invite him on a chat show with Ben Affleck; let Affleck explain to him he doesn’t understand Islam.
Affleck and Kristof both
I wonder what Kristof’s and Affleck’s positions are on the Danish cartoons.
Baghdadi as well, lest someone feel that he or she is not getting the full spectrum of the Islamic “experience”.
+10
Someone mentioned this video on one of the Sam Harris posts; Rushdie & Hitch were great in schooling Mos Def.
I’d much rather see Glenn Greenwald and Nick Kristof discussing this. Rushdie is up to job of dismantling Greenwald’s much more carefully disguised red-herring apologetics.
And on other fronts, another group that of course does not represent true Islam responds to the Nobel peace prize being awarded to Malala Yousafzai:
A powerful breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban threatened teen education activist Malala Yousafzai with “sharp and shiny knives,” hours after she was declared joint winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.
Jamaatul Ahrar, which in August separated from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also known as the Pakistani Taliban – posted its response to the win on Twitter late Saturday.
“Characters like Malala should know that we are not deterred by propaganda of (non-believers). We have prepared sharp and shiny knives for the enemy of Islam,” tweeted spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan.
I expect that from the Taliban. The smear and hatred campaign led by educated, middle class Pakistanis is more disturbing. These are the people who would silently cheer if the Taliban did manage to kill Malala (and also the people who wish Bin Laden was still alive).
With simple eloquence and clarity Salman Rushdie has described a rational attitude about the plague of murderous brutality and indifference that characterizes islamic “thought” today. Thank you Professor Ceiling Cat for featuring this and for your clear and concise comments on the same subject which have strongly influenced my opinions.
Why is it that something that is completely obvious to Rushdie is impenetrable for Aslan’s and Affleck?
Aslan is intent on whitewashing Isalm for reasons we only speculate on. Ben is simply clueless; he really needs to start reading and thinking before he opens his mouth.
Ah, but as someone said elsewhere here, Mr. Affleck is a Harvard graduate.
(George W. Bush is a Harvard MBA grad, and a Yale grad.)
I know. I thought of that as I was writing the post. The Yale was clearly legacy; not sure about the Harvard MBA…I will bite my tongue about MBAs…
Ben Affleck’s higher education is limited to one semester at the University of Vermont. Though he grew up in Cambridge, the closest he ever got to Harvard was getting off at the wrong stop on the Red Line.
I guess I was wrong. I thought he at Matt Damon were roommates at Harvard…not that I really follow this stuff.
No, Damon at Affleck attended high school together in Cambridge, MA – Cambridge Rindge & Latin (same school as the younger Boston Marathon bomber).
Typo: “stroninclination” I assume is “strong inclination”?
Thank you Salman R. once again for having the courage to clearly and rationally lay out what’s happening.
Ben A. sadly represents a big group of people who are like him not educated, ill informed on this matter and take a PC stance. He and others should ask themselves — is this what I would do and say when holocaust was going on?
Some 15min ago, CBS Sunday Morning had Aslan on, in monologue, talking the same diversionary line.
On the attempt to rewrite Indian history in school textbooks, see the NYT editorial titled ‘False Teachings for India’s Students’: http://nyti.ms/1uCAYa2
My favorite part was: “”Mr. Batra also believes that aircraft, automobiles and nuclear weapons existed in ancient India.”
What SR is saying is nearly perfect. To make the argument complete he needs to address the point that apologists will make, that it’s only the terrorists not the religion that are at fault.
Poll results that show that many of Islam’s harmful beliefs are shared by most muslims, like those cited by Sam Harris on the Maher show, need to be included to back up the argument that the problem is the religion.
It would be fair, then, to conclude by saying (as he effectively does with his “fictional sky god” comment) that, really, religion in general has a tendency to screw up the world and this is just a fine example of it.
Posted as part of a Yahoo! comment the other day:
“Islamaphobia” is of the same category as the term, “snitch”: both are used by those doing something wrong to stifle any dissent against their views and eliminate any interference with their actions by painting the person who does so as something “bad”. Any intelligent person who has read the Koran and who understands Islam’s insistence upon literal adherence to its teachings OUGHT to be afraid of Islam!
“Islamaphobia” was invented by those too immature and insecure to bear any intelligent criticism of their religion; having no defense for their actions other than, “That’s what Allah told us to do in the Koran”, they seek the total silencing of their detractors and questioners. Have you ever heard the term, “Christophobia”? Of course not; Christianity (although I have no love for it, either) has “matured” to the point where any criticism does not (generally) elicit a violent response (studies have shown that the more affluent a society is, the less the grip of religion on the people- Islam thrives in an atmosphere of ignorance, poverty, intolerance, and uncertainty).
You can bet your bottom dollar that were Bill Maher to be in a Muslim country and say what he said, his life expectancy would be short, indeed- not having the power to kill all their detractors here (although, as time goes on, it WILL happen), Islamic apologists resort to any strategy they can, including trying to play this “religious version of the race card” to impede or remove resistance to their agenda: global domination and the total elimination of the separation of church and state.
I wonder if Kristof and Affleck and their ilk agree that “Islamofascism” exists.
If so, they surely do not support “Islamofascism,” and therefore would not have a problem with the term “Islamofascistphobia.”
But a good chunk of those who claim “Islamophobia” are non-muslims who either genuinely think this religious criticism is bigotry, or pretend to do so to avoid attracting unwanted attention.
Here’s what happens when you call someone a “snitch” (“dobber” in Australian colloquial speech)
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/23316547654/Julian
You’re being unfair here, Jeffery — to the term “snitch,” which has a noble legacy dating back at least to the Second Red Scare, the era of HUAC and McCarthyism. It is a term for the collaborator, the turncoat who informs against his or her former comrades, for engaging in the same activity the snitch previously engaged in, in an effort to curry favor with the politically dominant group that is in a position to mete out punishment for the disfavored conduct.
Islamophobia, on the other hand, is bandied about indiscriminately, against anyone who dares criticize Islam.
That may be, but I’ve heard it at the middle school level. The (borderline, putative) bully takes offense at another student calling him out for being a bully, in return calling him/her a “snitch,” as if the bully occupies some exalted position allowing him to say and do as he sees fit without consequence.
But the overwhelming weight of the problem lies in the world of Islam, and much of it has its roots in the ideological language of blood and war emanating from the Salafist movement within Islam, globally backed by Saudi Arabia
I don’t know about the history, but he’s right that countries with large muslim majorities have some notable problems worth criticizing. For instance, they:
– tend to be among the few countries that heavily criminalize homosexuality (including death penalties), and were prominently represented among the nations that signed a 2008 UN statement opposing LGBT rights.
– tend to be among the countries with the worst press freedom, rivalled only by Asian countries like India, China, and other southern and western Asian countries. Although Internet censorship is a bit more mixed, they are also among the nations likely to practise censorship.
– tend to be among the few countries that still practice capital punishment (a few have a moratorium on the practice in western Africa, though).
– tend to be among those countries that most strongly claim the importance of religion in their lives (i.e. have high religiosity). They also tend to be among those countries with state religions.
– tend to be among the UN members who consider blasphemy laws a high priority and have consistently voted in favour of their implementation.
Only places like China and India share one ot two traits with them, and only places in Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia rival them in a few of these categories consistently. For instance, China still practises the death penalty and has abysmal press freedom and censorship records but is otherwise opposite (legalizing homosexuality, being non-religious, etc.), while Sub-Saharan Africa and most of the southern Asian countries are highly religious, still have the death penalty (again, some have a moratorium), poor press and censorship records, and criminalization of homosexuality and lack of LGBT rights support.
Of course, not all problems are Islamic or religious in origin, and not all Islamic or religious countries have these problems across the board. However, it does strongly suggest that the removal of a highly conservative Islamism in these countries would go some way to improving their records in such areas as LGBT rights, press freedom, and capital punishment.
You’ve correctly identified some of the problems currently (albeit non-exclusively) plaguing Islam. A non-exhaustive list of the root religious reasons for these problems includes the following:
~ the conviction of many Muslims that the Qur’an provides, in all respects, the perfect word of Allah.
~ the conviction of some Muslims that Islam should serve not just as a religion, but as the organizing principle for civil society — giving rise to political Islam, to imposition of sharia law, and to the melding of religion and government. (Although it is true, as Reza Aslan and others contend, that some Muslim-majority nations have achieved success in promoting human rights, that success is directly proportional to the extent to which those countries have been able to separate the rolls of religion and secular government — Turkey, under Atatürk, providing the prime example.)
~ the failure of Islam to undergo a large-scale, modern Reformation and of the Islamic world to undergo a large-scale, modern Enlightenment.
It also does not help that the Qur’an provides textual support for offering fleshpot blandishments to would-be martyrs — especially where the offerees include young men poisoned by a toxic brew of shame and frustration.
Still, the situation in even troubled Islamic societies is not much different than it would be in the U.S. if the Christian Identity/Dominionist/Reconstructionism movements were to gain a critical-mass of followers and were to receive the endorsement and financial support of government.
Rushdie can write! I would love to be half as skilled.
Simon Rushdie said, “It is right to feel phobia towards such matters.”
and we all did, one way or the other.
Sorry, Salman Rushdie
The irony is that Aslan’s book Zealot is heretical in that Aslan believes that Jesus was crucified (whereas Islam says that it was Judas not Jesus who was crucified). Heresies related to Jesus or other Muslim prophets not named Mohamed are generally ignored because they are not interpreted as being directed at Muslims. However, Iran recently executed a man for heresies relating to the prophet Jonah – the man had the audacity to say that stories about a man living inside a giant fish for several days should be read metaphorically and not literally.
Reblogged this on Because I have a view and commented:
There is a debate, approaching a stand-off, between liberals who see it as non-PC to criticise Islam because, Liberals should stand up for religious freedom,” and liberals who say, “liberalism stands for freedom from religion too and faiths shouldn’t have a ‘get out of criticism free’ card.” This post from “Why Evolution is True.”
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