Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ The Reformers

December 23, 2015 • 6:30 am

The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “Reform”, came with the artist’s note:

This is the last one before Xmas, and it goes out to Muslim reformers: Maajid Nawaz, Irshad Manji, Usama Hassan, Ed Hussain et al. They’ve got a lot of work to do. Encouraging fundamentalists to practise a more moderate version of their religion is a bit like telling a drug addict to “smoke less crack” – but it’s a step in the right direction.

2015-12-23

Yep, because Nawaz and other reformers, some of whom are (as the artists notes) actual believing Muslims, are subject to all kinds of threats and name-calling. Read Nawaz’s piece in the Daily Beast how people like Nathan Lean (NOT a Muslim) and Murtaza Hussein have called him things like “porch monkey,” “Muslim validator.” These people are immensely brave, and must have very thick skins.

24 thoughts on “Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ The Reformers”

  1. Here’s a gross and racist video (15 minutes) by the more US Muslim reformers, the Clarion Project presented by everyone’s favourite grandma Raheel Raza. Using the Pew numbers that Jerry and Sam Harris often cite and tape of the birth of Affleckism, the piece pulls few punches and is not for the faint-hearted.

    This is how the adult Muslims act.

    It’s about 2 weeks old and has had 2 million views, so that’s encouraging.

    I’ve lost track whether Jerry has linked to it, I don’t think so, and I can’t find it in ‘Search’, so I hope this is new and revelatory.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPvnFDDQHk

    1. Thanks Dermot. Having a Muslim lay out the disturbing facts about widespread Muslim beliefs in such a calm, rational and neutral way, in an accessible 15 minute video, is extremely valuable.

  2. I went over to the Friendly Atheist and lots of white folks were making excuses for Islam.

    Apparently the hijab, burka, FGM etc are “un slamic”, having existed prior to Islam, ergo, we cannot blame Islam for their perpetuation.

    1. Cindy, Heather Hastie and Sarah Haider have done the rebuttals on the Reza Aslan-inspired ‘Islam-not-responsible-for-FGM-etc’ obscurantism.

      Heather, here:

      http://www.heatherhastie.com/reza-aslan-lying-for-islam-on-fgm/

      And Sarah, here:

      http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/05/reza-aslan-is-wrong-about-islam-and-this-is-why/

      …and Sarah’s post is on the Friendly Atheist’s site itself.

      And if they dismiss your ideas because identity politics preclude you from discussing any identity but your own, here’s liberal Muslim Asra Nomani from yesterday talking about the hijab and simply declaring the standard liberal line on freedom of dress-code.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKgdTrM85hA

      2. Thanks.

        There were loads of excuses. I was facepalming pretty much all day.

        Some highights:

        1) many other religions require women to cover their heads – Orthodox Jew, Amish, Mennonite etc, so really, why single out Islam?

        2) men have to wear hats too, so the burka/hijab is really no different. Men are just as oppressed

        3) women wear them out of piety throughout most of the world because they are just that religious

        4) a commenter outright denied that women are punished for refusing to cover themselves in many Islamic nations.

        5) when pointed out that rape is considered justifiable and righteous if the woman is guilty of not covering up completely, a commenter said that the same thing happens in the western world re short skirts. So again, why are you picking on Islam? Are you racist?

        6) another commenter stated that Quiverfull is comparable to SA version of Islam, and that beheading a woman for refusing to wear a Burka is just like how Josh Duggar’s sisters were shamed and silenced after he molested them. EXACTLY THE SAME. Oh, and if Quiverfull could behave like SA they totally would!

        Every time I think that SJWs couldn’t possibly get any sillier they surprise me.

        1. Agree with everything, Cindy, except the facepalm: I’m a slack-jaw man, myself.

          Btw. why was the Amish woman excommunicated? Too Mennonite. x

      3. Thanks Dermot.

        I wrote about World Hijab Day too: http://www.heatherhastie.com/world-hijab-day-1-february-2015/

        A couple of days ago another NZer Ken Dunae who comments here (and on my site) also wrote about it, covering a lot of stuff I didn’t: https://blogidarity.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/the-hijab-solidarity-farce/

        I’ve seen a couple YouTube vids of SJW Muslim women insisting they wear the hijab as a protest. Their reasoning doesn’t quite ring true with me. I may be being unfair, but to me they give the impression they’re too scared to take it off so they’re pretending they’re keeping it on because people want them to take it off.

        Personally, I don’t want them to take it off, I just want them to have a genuine choice whether or not to wear it.

    2. The Friendly Atheist attracts a lot of non-believers who are so obsessed with Christianity that any discussion of Islam is viewed as a dangerous distraction. I understand that Christianity is more of a personal danger for civil liberties and reason in the West, but I expect intelligent people to be able to think beyond their personal circumstances, especially with the treatment of women and LGBT people in Islam.
      Also because their dislike of Christianity is so vehement as to qualify as bigotry at times, I feel there is a great deal of projection of that mindset onto critics of Islam.

  4. We often hear about Islam’s need for a “Reformation.” (Hell, I’ve repeated that canard myself.) And such a reformation can be crucial to breaking a hierarchical authority’s stranglehold over religion — as the Protestant Reformation did with the Vatican’s.

    But it took the Enlightenment, not the Reformation, to tame Christianity. The leading Reformation figures, like Martin Luther and John Calvin, became the ayatollahs of their day (right down to their fatwas and their virulent anti-Semitism). And the less said about Henry VIII (whom Hitchens called the progenitor of “Tudor family values”), the better.

    The Thirty Years’ War was the spawn of the Protestant Reformation. The Inquisitions continued apace after it, as did religious persecution generally, finding its way to our shores as sectarian strife (Jefferson’s “wall of separation” letter was written to quell the Baptists’ fears of the Congregationalists) and the Salem witch trials.

    What Islam (which has no Vatican-like authority) needs more than a “Reformation” is to open itself to Enlightenment ideals — egalitarianism (especially as to women), freedom of speech and of conscience, democratic secular governance — and to embrace modernity itself.

    1. Ken – it has been pointed out that Islam is already experiencing its ‘Reformation’: its instigators are called ISIL/Daesh.

      What Islam really needs, as you say, is an Enlightenment. I’m not holding my breath.

    2. Among religions using the name “Reform”, it is certainly Reform Judaism, and not Reformed Protestantism that embraced Enlightenment values.

      The only exceptions were the groups of the “Radical Reformation” like the Mennonites which overtly practiced a prototype of Gandhian non-violence, and the Polish Brethren, a very early example of advocacy of complete Church-State separation!!

      Overall, Calvin was the worst, burning heretics like Michael Servetus at the stake, but Martin Luther’s advocacy of an authoritarian state and his efforts to ban all Jews from multiple German states aren’t anything to by happy about. Luther condemned to hell folks who helped Jews out.

  5. Re:
    Encouraging fundamentalists to practise a more moderate version of their religion is a bit like telling a drug addict to “smoke less crack”

    A really meaningful and useful Reformation would be like telling them to kick crack get onto methadone. (But a perennial problem I have with a lot of liberal Christianity, is precisely much of it is a lot like methadone.)

    1. Technically speaking, JLH, methadone is used for treatment of opiate addiction, most often heroin — and mostly now just in government-run clinics, since the private doctors and clinics have moved on to Suboxone.

      (I took a court appointment a couple years ago to handle the penalty phase in a capital-murder case, representing a defendant whose life had imploded around “hare-on,” as he called it. Had to get out in the field with my investigator searching for mitigation evidence to present in support of sparing the client’s life.)

      I don’t think there’s a comparable drug to ‘done for the treatment of crack addiction, but then crack doesn’t cause the same intense physiological addiction opiates do.

  6. I heard this quote that is alleged to have come from the mouth of an apologist for Islam. “If you’re reading the Koran literally, you’re interpreting it wrong.”

    1. ‘Empire baby’ is Abby Martin’s coining, I think, from twitter. She was obviously very pleased with it. Haider didn’t know what she was talking about.

      A bit rich, seeing as ‘Martin’ is the most common French surname: last time I looked, France used to have a pretty big empire.

      ‘Empire baby’ is an identity pol’s sneer par excellence.

      1. “Empire Baby” would be a good name for a punk band; “Muslim Validator,” for a thrash-metal band.

    2. I could work out that they were intended as insults, but I couldn’t figure out how the fsck they were actually insulting. It’s a monkey. In a porch. And so? It’s a person going “this one is a Muslim ; this one isn’t … ” (reminds me of the joke about the QC in an County Kerry match factory : “this one works ; this one works …”).
      Empire baby? Certainly, millions were born in the British Empire. Other millions in the Austro-Hungarian one. Others in the Persian … and so?
      People are getting far too abstruse with their insults. If you need to explain it, then there’s not a lot of point to it.

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