As you may know, Muslim whitewashers like Reza Aslan point out that there are “liberal” Muslim countries—like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Turkey—where Islam is not oppressive. You can see his claims, as well as their refutation, on this post by Muhammad Syed and Sarah Haider at The Friendly Atheist, “Reza Aslan is wrong about Islam and this is why“. (This is a must-read piece.) We know what’s happening in Turkey, and Syed and Haider have some choice words about Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Here’s what they say about Malaysia, the country that’s the subject of this short post:
Malaysia has a dual-system of law which mandates sharia law for Muslims. These allow men to have multiple wives (polygyny) and discriminate against women in inheritance (as mandated by Islamic scripture).It also prohibits wives from disobeying the “lawful orders” of their husbands.
Malaysia also has a high incidence of female genital mutilation, and as I mentioned in a post not long ago, a large Muslim group in Malaysia has called for the boycotting of Starbucks because its founder is in favor of gay rights. Finally, sodomy is illegal in Malaysia and its practice can get you a jail sentence of up to 20 years.
More evidence was reported today by The Malay Mail Online and reprinted by Yahoo News: a government minister has called for atheists to be identified and hunted down. To be sure, I don’t think he means wiping them out. Here’s part of the report:
Atheists in Malaysia should be “hunted down” by authorities as there is no place for groups like this under the Federal Constitution, a minister said today.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim said the public should aid authorities in locating groups like the Kuala Lumpur chapter of Atheist Republic so that action could be taken.
“The (Federal Constitution) does not mention atheists. It goes against the Constitution and human rights.
“I suggest that we hunt them down vehemently and we ask for help to identify these groups,” he said in a press conference at Parliament today.
But killing is not his goal, or at least he doesn’t say it explicitly: he thinks these atheists have simply gone astray and need re-education:
The Arau MP added that most of these Malaysians especially Muslims turn into atheists as they lack religious education. [JAC: I think he means they lack religious “indoctrination” and have the ability to think for themselves.]
“They actually don’t want to be atheists but it happens because of the lack of religious education. They are misled with a new school of thought,” Shahidan said.
He also urged religious groups especially the muftis to help educate Muslims who have become atheists.
“We need to return them to the faith and correct their aqidah if they are Muslims. To all Mufti’s and state exco’s, take note,” Shahidan stressed.
Kassim underestimates these people; to become an atheist in an Islamic milieu is a difficult undertaking, and, to my mind, almost certainly doesn’t reflect “a lack of religious education.” It’s a hard road of self-reflection and courage. What Malaysia needs to do is lay off the atheists and let people be if they’re “apostates.”
h/t: Mike, Woody
He hasn’t met many atheists.
Yeah, odd he doesn’t consider that people become atheists because religious claims are often embarrassingly fanciful!
Or that some people were never, at any time, theists. And that the more many never-believer’s learn about religion the more they are convinced it is nuts.
Political agenda? I’m guessing the guy has some trouble with his base and wants to up his “appeal”.
rickflick is absolutely right. Beset by the multibillion dollar 1MDB scandal, the ruling party (to which obviously this guy belongs) is using religious and racial sentiments to bolster its support among the Malay Muslim majority.
In religion, being “embarrassingly fanciful” can be a feature rather than a bug. Because supernatural truths are elevated above the physical world they simply don’t have to make sense.
Worse, one knows them intuitively. They’re self-evident once you disengage your thinking from the physical world. Kassim is doing the same familiar thing Christians do: you are told about the Good News and then accept or reject it. It only needs telling.
Quite likely he hasn’t met any atheists – particularly not any who are Malaysians.
Actually, he probably has met many, but closeted.
And as if this weren’t sufficiently awful …http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/196642/anti-semitism-in-malaysia
“he thinks these atheists have simply gone astray and need re-education:”
Yeah, like that has never been done before.
Another country not to visit.
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…and there are many.
Oh, don’t let these fools dissuade you. It’s a beautiful place, the food’s great and most people are nice
Well, OK then.
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Indeed. I won’t go to any of these repressive holes either.
Bali is a popular destination for Australians but I won’t go, it is Indonesia.
Although, I think Indonesia is making an attempt at reigning in the Islamic radicals after the Christian Mayor of Jakarta got jailed for bogus blasphemy charges.
Indonesia does seem to be aware of and value its reputation for tolerance, but it is also a big power play.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
Simply how long can the West strangle itself on misplaced toleration?
All the muslim states are regressing and are losing any respect for the non muslim majority in the world perceiving us as weakling compromisers incapable of making or implimenting coherent policies when challenged.
What the world is again facing is the”abyss of new dark age” and our leaders do not seem to care enough to prevent it.
(rant over)
+ 1
I sent RA a query about this using the contact form on his website. I await his [adjective to be filled in after reply] answer, though I doubt I’ll get one.
Atheists are hated the world over – even by other atheists, if you believe this;
“Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists.” Nature Human Behaviour 1:0151 (2017). doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0151
From the extract
“Here, we quantify moral distrust of atheists by applying well-tested measures in a large global sample (N = 3,256; 13 diverse countries). Consistent with cultural evolutionary theories of religion and morality, people in most—but not all— of these countries viewed extreme moral violations as representative of atheists. Notably, anti-atheist prejudice was even evident among atheist participants around the world.”
http://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0151
I find that so hard to believe! I hope Jerry or someone can parse their methods, results, and interpretations thereof, and point out the loopholes. (I quickly skimmed the relevant section and it seemed dubious to me.)
Most telling is the first line of the acknowledgements section: “This research was supported by a grant to W.M.G. from the John Templeton Foundation (48275).”
I noticed the John Templeton society grant too.In Canada we are too busy converting churches into pubs (per today’s Globe and Mail)to bother with such things.
Like to see Jerry or Heather dissect this one.
Me too. And what a great use for old churches!
A new take on John Huston’s line in Chinatown: “Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”
Indeed! 🙂
Is that a step towards making them lapdancing clubs or brothels?
It seems to me that this methodology shows that people, even atheists, tend to think that “atheism” is more representative of a described serial killer than is “religious belief.” That is different than thinking “serial killing” is representative of atheists, which is what would lead to distrust of atheists. I don’t know if it is true that serial killers tend to be atheists, but I admit I was not surprised to learn that the pyschopath Ted Bundy was an atheist.
Ah, that makes sense.
In the following,
“…most—but not all— of these countries viewed extreme moral violations as representative of atheists. Notably, anti-atheist prejudice was even evident among atheist participants around the world.”
…the use of “representative” in that context is quite wrong, as is “anti-atheist prejudice.” It should be “anti-psychopath.” How did Nature let them get away with such false (and seemingly purposeful) conclusions?
FYI
In case you don’t have access to the journal, here is a brief bit about their methodology;
“The experiment used a version of the representativeness heuristic 27 . In the classic version of this task, participants are given a description of a politically liberal single woman. When asked whether it is more likely that she is (A) a bank cashier or (B) a bank cashier who is active in the feminist movement, participants tend erroneously to pick option B. Although logically incorrect (there are necessarily at least as many bank cashiers as bank cashiers who are feminists), the description seems more representative of the double identity provided in option B, leading people intuitively to choose that option (termed ‘the conjunction fallacy’). By independently varying the contents of the description and the identities implied by option B, researchers can assess the degree to which people intuitively view a given description as representative of different identities”
Then a bit further they say;
“We provided a description of an immoral person who initially tortures animals and eventually kills people for thrills (see Supplementary Information), and then asked whether it was more probable that the perpetrator was (A) a teacher or (B) a teacher who either (manipulated between subjects) does not believe in God or is a religious believer.”
Here is the question they asked
“When a man was young, he began inflicting harm on animals. It started with just pulling the wings off flies, but eventually progressed to torturing stray cats and other animals in his neighborhood.
As an adult, the man found that he did not get much thrill from harming animals, so he began hurting people instead. He has killed 5 homeless people that he abducted from poor neighborhoods in his home city. Their dismembered bodies are currently buried in his basement.
Which is more probable?
1. The man is a teacher
2. The man is a teacher and [does not believe in any gods. / is a religious
believer.]”
Thanks, mikeyc. In this instance the whole paper was available to me from your first post (a refreshing exception to the norm), and the parts you post above were about where I decided to not try to suss it out myself but turf it to JAC or someone else… 😉
Hmm. Maybe they did it right, then. In that case, I don’t know what to make of it.
I think a key analysis is when they restrict to individuals of 0 belief in god (page 3 of the pdf). For these, after adjustments, they get a 95% HPDI of (0.23,0.95) for atheist targets and 95% HPDI (0.12,0.88) for religious targets. So the atheist target has higher point estimate than religious, but the posterior intervals completely overlap. Just considering the intervals this would seem to be no evidence. But they go on to say that the posterior probability of the atheist target exceeding the religious is 0.999, but that does not make sense given the intervals. ?
One possibility is that even atheists absorb cultural messages. Assuming these results are legit, this study might be analogous to those studies which showed that little black girls often chose white dolls over black ones, and gave them positive characteristics while the black ones were given negative ones.
I never did understand how Tversky and Kahneman differentiated the description and the representation. In the Linda example, why not describe Linda as active feminist and ask if she is a bank teller or a politically liberal bank teller.
Why not describe a person as an atheist and ask if he is a teacher or a serial killer teacher. I don’t think you’d get the same answers.
I am one of the few people who didn’t think much of Thinking Fast and Slow.
Consistent with cultural evolutionary theories of religion & morality? I have no idea what that is or what it means.
Here are some of the references they give to support this claim.
Atkinson, Q. D. & Bourrat, P. Beliefs about God, the afterlife and morality support the role of supernatural policing in human cooperation. Evol. Hum. Behav. 32, 41–49 (2011).
Purzycki, B. G. et al. Moralistic gods, supern atural punishment and the expansion of human sociality. Nature 530, 327–330 (2016).
Graham, J. & Haidt, J. Beyond beliefs: religions bind individuals into moral communities. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 14, 140–150 (2010).
Sosis, R. & Alcorta, C. Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: the evolution of religious behavior. Evol. Anthropol. 12, 264–274 (2003).
Norenzayan, A. et al. The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behav. Brain Sci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X14001356 (2016).
there are a few more…..
From the one link you give, I see that the primary author of the article in your first post here is also an author of that last reference. I wonder how many of these refs come from just a small set of the same researchers?
Several of the authors are on multiple papers. This does not by itself seem unusual or a reason for criticism; it is not uncommon in many branches of science.
Yes, of course.
Just reading the abstract on that last one sounds like a word puzzle of goo. Nice for BS.
Try and get Bill Maher to cover this. His publicity would be a big help. You may be able to get the story to him through Sam Harris.
… where you will be sodomized for the next 20 years.
Uh oh, I live in Malaysia and am hard core atheist…
But in all honesty, I don’t really worry about this from a personal perspective but in general it’s painful to see this country and Indonesia going the wrong way.
You wouldn’t believe the hypocrisy that goes together with political statements like this. I just moved to Malaysia and have been living there for 7 months, so I’m still trying to wrap my head around these things, but a few things have already become clear to me:
Hypocrisy about (mainly) religious laws is what makes this country run. It’s the oil that greases the gears. If they would really uphold their religious laws this country would grind to a halt. Obviously there are muslim leaders who call for more stringent laws and upholding of the current ones, and like I said, the country is sliding into the wrong direction, but for now this is still the current state of affairs.
Glad to hear it!
But it’s hard not to worry, having watched the recent demise of previously secular countries in the middle east (Iran, Turkey, Iraq) and the results of the Arab Spring.
@Diane G. I’m not worried at a personal level. I don’t think that during my stay here for the coming few years, I run risks personally
I’m very, very much worried about the country as a whole (and about Indonesia)
The slipping and sliding sounds like politics as usual. The US has some of the same slimy to and fro, back and forth, give and take.
After I posted this comment I later thought: wait a minute, most of Jerry’s readers are probably from the US, so they are totally used to these amounts of hypocrisy.
So, yeah you’re right.
But in the USA, it is back and forth, while in the Islamic world in recent decades, it is only back.
There’s one country I can think of where an atheist could never be elected president in the current climate: can you guess which one I am thinking of?
Atheists want to live in freedom and safety, not to be elected presidents. In a similar line, the problem faced by women in the same country is not that no woman has yet been elected president and few are CEOs, but that maternity leave is grotesquely short. In some Muslim-majority countries, women have been presidents or PMs without any improvement of the overall plight of women.
One way to see how liberal the country is is to see if the minister is chastised by any of his colleagues.
I don’t hold my breath.