In today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “peer”, Mo asserts that many Muslims have memorized the Qur’an word for word. The belief that the book is literally true is ubiquitous among Muslims; one poll by Pew showed this:
Only Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa were asked whether they view the Quran as the word of God or a book written by men; across most of the African nations polled, nine-in-ten or more Muslims say that the Quran is the word of God, including more than seven-in-ten who believe it should be taken literally, word for word.
But how many Muslims have memorized the entire word of God? Mo implies many, but Jesus calls to his attention that there’s confirmation bias.
The strip came with a short note saying, “It’s called Hifaz,” which is the name for the practice of memorizing the whole Qur’an And indeed, there are sites that will, for a fee, help you memorize the entire book.
This is why so many Muslims are creationists. Another strange aspect of the alliance between Islam and the far-left.
The far-left? In what way? Or did you mean far right? I must be missing something.
Perhaps what Jeff meant was the “alliance between Islam and the far-left” (as seen in support for Palestine, etc.) is made that much stranger due to the creationism found in the Qur’an?
Correct.
You are not aware of how far left politics in the West overlap with the viewpoints of Islamists in many areas? Are you not aware of people like Zohran Mamdani, Hasan Piker, and institutions like the NYT and the BBC? Have you not seen how elite academia is so biased in favor of Islam, against the interests of Israel? Who do think all of the students are protesting for?
The point is that today we have folks on the left like Nicholas Kristof writing things about Jews that are not too far off the propaganda that Islamist organizations like Hamas use to brainwash rank and file Palestinians. Yet, if you asked him, I am sure that the likes of Kristof would never want to ban the teaching of evolution. But the acceptance of evolution is very low in Muslim majority countries.
https://www.newsweek.com/evolution-schools-turkey-recep-tayyip-erdogan-628476
So, as with the treatment of women and acceptance of gays, belief in evolution is yet another issue that the far-left and Islamists are like oil and water.
And yet, the far left is very sympathetic to the political agenda of Islam, and a Muslim who is running for office in the West is far more likely to be associated with the liberal/left party than the conservative/right party.
I sometimes imagine a good liberal from the West, who has been dutifully trained to think that Israel is an “oppressor colonizer apartheid state”, being asked to make a chart about their beliefs on religious freedom, treatment of women, treatment of gays, and now the teaching of evolution. All of their beliefs on these issues would align with the values of modern Israel much more than that of any Muslim majority country. But…Israel is the bad guy!
But how does the fact that many Muslims are creationists constitute another aspect of the alliance between Islam and the left? Isn’t this something that links Islam with the right?
See Larry’s point above.
Whenever I’ve pointed out the misogyny, homophobia, ignorance, intolerance etc. in the Islamic world to a leftist, their reflexive response tends to be “but that’s their religion/culture so who are we to criticize?” Cultural relativism and oikophobia are all too prevalent on today’s regressive left, and Islam fits in perfectly – especially given the left’s traditional love of violence and Islam’s aggressive stance against the infidel West.
Ah – interesting.
A related concept is scrupulosity.
It tracks very close to plain-old studying. Studying is good – so… I guess scrupulosity is more like voluntary thought reform:
https://grokipedia.com/page/Scrupulosity
… which came first, Hifaz, scrupulosity or the studying, I’m not sure..🤔
This was especially funny!
There are, of course, several Christians who have memorized the entire Bible, and it is not uncommon among certain types of Christians to memorize parts of it.
Instead of “peer” I think this one should have been entitled “vegans”.