Over at her website Heather’s Homilies, Kiwi reader Heather Hastie continues her critique of Reza Aslan’s Muslim apologetics with a second part: “It’s not the facts, it’s how you present them: The Reza Aslan tactic.”
As before, go read it (and comment) on her site, where Muslim apologist Neal “It’s Not Religion” Godfrey has given some ineffectual pushback in the comments. Heather takes up a recent op-ed by Aslan in the New York Times (that kerfuffle on Bill Maher’s show has given him a lot of attention, which he’s milking for all he’s worth), and an appearance by Aslan on Chris Hayes’s show on MSNBC.
Aslan rightly points out that “extremist” Islamic views, though significant among Muslims everywhere in the world, aren’t dominant everywhere in the world. True, as the statistics below show. Howevever, he tends to emphasize the less extremist countries, and has to be continually reminded of the overall picture, which, as a 2013 Pew Report on Muslim beliefs show, is dire. In addition, Aslan blames bad actions such as female genital mutilation (FGM) not on Islam, but on “culture”: African culture, ignoring the fact that many branches of Islam codify FGM as a duty, and have spread it throughout Asia (more on that later).
Here are the Pew statistics AGAIN:
Beliefs on the immorality of six behaviors. Note the high percentages for drinking alcohol, abortion, and euthanasia, behaviors that, I think, are not immoral at all (though of course excessive drinking can be injurious to one’s self and family):
Here is the level of support among Muslims for imposition of sharia law in Islamic countries. Further data from the poll shows that in at many places, many Muslims want sharia law also applied to non-Muslims (see below):
Below are the data among Muslim supporters of sharia law who say that it should apply only to Muslims. Although it’s higher than 50% (by a hair) in some places, what this means is that between 30 and 49% of supporters (excepting those who have no opinion) think that sharia should also apply to non-Muslims:
Among Muslims who favor sharia as official law—and that is between 56% and 99% of Muslims in places where Islam is the “official religion”—here are the data on those who think that apostasy should be punished by death. Remember, even a “low” figure of 15% is between one is six and one in seven people:
Finally, the same results, but in this case it’s stoning as the penalty for adultery. Even among southeastern European Muslims who favor sharia (around 15% to 20%), from a fifth to more than a quarter favor this barbaric punishment.
In Malaysia, a country that Aslan touts as benign, it’s 60% of sharia-believing Muslims, and the latter includes 86% of all Muslims surveyed. In other words, more than half of Malaysian Muslims, at a minimum, favor stoning as punishment adultery (to get the minimum, we multiply those favoring sharia by those favoring such punishments among sharia believers. Roughly same percentage—more than 50% of Malaysian Muslims—favor the death penalty for apostasy. Not exactly a benign country, at least regarding Muslim beliefs!
BUT, and here’s where Aslan really turns weaselly, he thinks we should not worry about beliefs, but only actions. Here’s the exchange between Aslan and Hayes as reported by Heather:
Aslan: Frankly, look, I’m gonna be honest with you, if you are some kind of ultra-orthodox Muslim who believes every word of the Qur’an is literal and that gays are going to hell, and that anyone who converts should be killed, I don’t have a problem with you, as long as it’s just your beliefs. I don’t care what you believe. It’s actions we should be focusing on.
Hayes: Mmm.
“Mmmm” is right! What Aslan is neglecting is that when Islam does get the upper hand, beliefs become actions. Further, how can what you believe not condition (or reflect) other feelings that have consequences, like how you regard women or non-Muslims or sex in general? And, of course, when these actions are carried out, Aslan tends to impute them to culture or politics, not the tenets of Islam. Finally, Aslan “doesn’t have a problem” with anyone who thinks that leaving Islam is a capital crime? Not a wee bit of a problem? Doesn’t that condition how Muslims feel about non-Muslims?
A moment later, Aslan walks this back a bit:
Aslan: We need to condemn actions, not beliefs. You can criticize beliefs if you want.
“If you want”!!!! As if it’s largely a matter of indifference what those beliefs are. It’s as if Aslan were saying to Southerners, “I don’t care if you think blacks are inferior so long as you don’t lynch them.”
Beliefs always have consequences, even if only to further divide humanity. Yes, we should be concerned that in many places Muslims favor stoning people for adultery, or killing them for apostasy, even if they don’t do it. That is a repudiation of Enlightenment values that will only serve to keep such believers mired in a medieval mentality, and at odds with much of the world.
~
Or, even more to the point, it’s as though he were saying: “I don’t care if you think that blacks should be lynched so long as you don’t actually lynch them”.
This distinction is essential no matter how unpalatable. To confuse action and belief moves into thoughtcrime, subverting our whole legal core.
The distinction becomes unimportant if you say you think that blacks should be lynched, then vote for politicians who say that they should be lynched as part of their platform – politicians who subsequently take office, pass legislation that legalizes lynchings of blacks, and then they lynch them.
Even in a country without democratic institutions, when you ar part of the crowd that admires and cheers leaders who say blacks should be lynched, the fact that you didn’t actually perform te lynching doesn’t absolve you of at least partial responsibility when it happens.
Chris Hayes.
His failure to challenge Aslan was very disappointing.
Failure to challenge? Hell… his outright support!
I imagine most readers on this site have read this; but I’ll point you to it anyway. Sam Harris’s most recent blog post nicely shows the confusion and hypocrisy of Aslan:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defamation
What bothered me about that whole kerfuffle was Greenwald retweeting that out of context quote. As a journalist, Greewald should know better.
And so should Aslan. And so should any honest person with integrity. That they did not says a lot about their character.
I haven’t seen Aslan respond to Sam’s challenge at the end. I doubt he will. He’s not big on mea culpa.
I used to really like that guy, too. Now whenever I read him, I cannot erase the fact that he’s just another opportunistic, mendacious, POS. (Chris Hedges also fits that bill.)
I know, me too. He was great with the whole Snowden affair and then he turns around and does this. I agree with him on Snowden but every time I do, I remember what a jerk he has been over the Harris stuff.
“Beliefs always have consequences”
This is correct. Beliefs drive behavior; they always will. (Also see the “ABC model” of stress management / behavior.)
So blame it on islam and its racist and islamophobia, but then what does it make it when he blames it on “African culture”?
So if you tell Asian that you “believe every word of the Qur’an is literal and that gays are going to hell, and that anyone who converts should be killed,”
…he has no problem with you.
But if like Sam Harris you voice a belief like: The Koran is a mind-field of bad ideas” or that: Islam inculcates a worrying level of backwards thinking on social issues into many Muslims…
…then THOSE are fighting words! Now Asian has a problem with you!
It’s all redolent of the same type of incoherence Asian displayed in his debate with Sam. Learned, maybe, but utterly mushy-minded in his reasoning and arguments.
Right on. (I think your spell-checker is stabbing you in the back though! 🙂 )
As if religion is not an aspect of culture.
The argument that it’s “culture” and not religion could be applied across the board. The problem is never politics, it’s culture. The problem is never economics, it’s culture. The problem is never racism, it’s culture. The problem is never military aggression, it’s culture. So stop criticizing the motivating reason people actually rally behind and look instead for the psychological roots of human behavior … and blame that.
As Dennett put it “If you make yourself small enough, you can externalize anything.”
Religion influences culture. Sometimes — as in Islam — it becomes the culture.
I think apologists like Aslan wants to place religion in the same category as ‘science’ — a pursuit of knowledge. Just as we do not blame “science” for the atom bomb so we cannot blame Islam for the nasty stuff it says to do in the Quran. But no, that doesn’t work. Analogy fail.
I wonder if this trend is due to the Geertzian-esque anthropologists claiming *everything* for culture in their fields (even the *content* of science).
As Dennett put it “If you make yourself small enough, you can externalize anything.”
If found that insight from Dennett to be a very powerful bit of toolkit when evaluating
thinking on a wide array of subjects. I like that you applied it here.
Yes. Since this Islam problem is actually a religion problem, which is more generally a disrespect for science problem (all religion should have been chucked once we got a clue about how the world actually works), it comes down to science literacy – illiteracy. I am perplexed as to how science can be so self-evidently effective yet so universally unappreciated, even despised.
Religion is always part of culture. It can be a big part or it can be a small part. But however important it is in a society, it is always as much a cultural element as is music, art, stories about grandma, science, or any other learned thing passed about between people.
Religion is a smaller circle in a Venn diagram, surrounded by a larger circle called “Culture”. To the extent that it influences other parts aspects of culture it is a larger or smaller circle. But it is never outside the enclosing “Culture” circle.
Insane beliefs are the foundation of insane actions.
-nuff said.
Many Muslims daily remind us of this.
You can ask someone what their favorite movie is, or their favorite musician, or what their dream house would look like, but no question tells you more about a person than if you learn what their beliefs are in the transcendent.
Participation (actions) in existence depends strongly on fundamental beliefs about reality. If those beliefs are logically arbitrary, any action is not only possible but justified by the same capricious convictions.
I think commenter Folie Deuce (over on Heather’s page) had another good point to make: Aslan is holding muslims to a lower standard than he would hold others. He’s grading on a curve. This is actually insulting to muslims – it’s a subtle form of bigotry against muslims. Yes, we white western christians can be held to a standard of “the rate of approval for ‘death for apostasy’ laws should be 0%”, but in viewing the muslim world, “only” 15% approval for death-for-apostacy laws is very good.
Um, no. If 0% is the only acceptable number for civilized humans, then 15% is very bad, and Egypt’s 86% is absolutely horrifying.
It was me that made that particular point, but Folie Deuce has made many excellent points in their comments that are well worth reading.
If the Neal Godfrey referred to is the same one who writes the blog Vridar, then it’s Neil, not Neal.
When we talk about sharia, it is important to remind ourselves that it not only is full of repulsive prohibitions and punishments, from a modern perspective, but also that it is largely (?) immutable. Imposing sharia isn’t the same, say, as adopting the Napoleonic Code, because it is understood that democratic processes can change the code. Sharia only changes, and probably not for the better, when some mufti or college of muftis are “inspired” to issue a new fatwa.
While the statistics on what the rank and file Muslim believes is important, I think it would be more critical to know those same stats for the leaders (intellectual, economic, political, religious, etc.) in those regions.
All four branches of Sunni jurisprudence as well as official Shi’a doctrine say death is the appropriate punishment for apostasy.
Beliefs inform actions. As long as religious leaders within Islam are teaching ‘death for apostasy’ as the official line, Muslims will consider it acceptable.
No-one who thinks apostasy is NOT a sin ever kills anyone for leaving a religion. Again, beliefs inform actions, which is why Aslan is wrong.
So it boils down to Islamophobia means being afraid of people who would probably kill or imprison you if they got the upper hand?
I grew up at a time and in an area where the KKK burned crosses and an occasional black-owned business.
So the fact that only a small percentage of southerners were active members of the KKK means that Blacks were phobic and inspired by hate?
I don’t know that we need to, but it’s okay to say that some people are being immoral (i.e., we condemn them) for having certain beliefs.
But that aside, let’s focus on some actions:
Expressing moral condemnation of a person for having same-sex sex, for no longer believing that Islam is true, etc., are actions.
Similarly, promoting the belief that people who have gay sex, apostates from Islam or some other religion, etc. – deserve to be stoned to death (or otherwise killed), and/or that they deserve to be tortured forever in Hell, etc., are also actions.
All of those actions are at least usually immoral (there are potential exceptions, like if someone carry out one of them at gunpoint, etc., but at least usually those are immoral actions), and it’s okay to point that out (which is a way of condemning them).
sub
So, if we shouldn’t criticize beliefs, why the big kerfuffle over what Sam Harris and Bill Maher say? They’re not actually doing anything.
Oh wait, that’s right, their words may incite Islamophobia (another belief!) And may possibly lead to discrimination against Muslims. What’s that you say? Belief that murdering people for thought crimes like apostasy shouldn’t be criticized? Oh right, nothing bad can come of that. It’s a belief, not an action…
Faith and culture: apparently two more non-overlapping magisteria.