Reddit reviews Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue
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HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
> If you can accept that Muslims are inherently violent, uncivilized, brain deficient, unintelligent, etc then
This is an extreme misrepresentation. His position is that many of the ideas of Islam (as well as those of most mainstream religions) are potentially or likely dangerous, such that they can lead good people to do bad things. What else explains the majority of suicide bombings (within the last few decades) being committed by jihadi groups?
edit:
>... Harris' inherent anti-theism.
Also, fun fact, did you know despite being an "anti-theist" (a label he would likely disagree with), he has spent much of his life studying Eastern religions directly? He's a proponent of many Eastern meditative practices, as well as a borderline Buddhist. He's also co-authored a book with a Muslim.
Around 1:48:12 "I will pay you $1,000 for every nonsensical statement you can find of mine in the book. Go ahead, bankrupt me."
The book: http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-A-Dialogue/dp/0674088700
Omer Aziz Contact Information: http://www.omeraziz.com/contact.html
Edit: "I'll give you a year to do this."
Det finns över en miljard muslimer och många, många miljoner av dem är progressiva. Jag skulle definiera det som att de vill att Islam ska utvecklas så att den fungerar bra ihop med ett modernt, demokratiskt samhälle. [Maajid Nawaz](
https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maajid_Nawaz) tror jag är ett bra exempel på en sådan muslim.
Lyssna gärna på denna diskussion mellan honom och islamkritikern Sam Harris;
Islam & the Future of Tolerance - Maajid Nawaz & Sam Harris
De har även skrivit en bok om detta:
Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue
Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue
Also wrote a book when discussing that topic further: http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-Sam-Harris/dp/0674088700/
New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, and Sam Harris are constantly getting accused of Islamophobia, even though they do things like co-write books with practicing Muslims. The core problem is that a lot of people have difficulty separating out criticism of Islamic doctrine with racism against Muslims, and on the other side you have people like Trump who really are just racist.
But at the end of the day, Maher was a Bernie supporter who switched to Clinton when the time came, Harris supported Clinton from the start, and even Dawkins even got in a few kicks.
Salon remains full of absolute trash opining articles that do fuckall to actually inform on the issue and simply are poorly written, selectively cited hitjobs.
I'd highly recommend Islam and the Future of Tolerance which is effectively a transcript of a conversation between Sam Harris, a liberal atheist, and Maajid Nawaz a former recruiter for a radical islamist organization, discussing the make up of the Islamic world and the problems that need to be addressed by moderates and rational thinkers.
While Maher is running a comedy show and often doesn't devote the time or detail necessary to make the required political arguments / points on a litany of subjects, his fundamental perspective on Islam is not accurately described as 'Islamophobia' any more than his views on Christianity make him Christphobic. It's a lazy way to sidestep having an actual conversation about the subject and the Left really has dropped the ball as we have a responsibility to denounce radicalism while still protecting normal / moderate believers.
The entire conversation is very dependent on nuance; Muslims generally are different from Islamists, Islamists are different from Jihadists. Muslims are simply believers in Islam, Islamists are Muslims that want to create political laws and governments based on their Islamic theology. Jihadists take it one step farther and want to spread that Islamic theology via aggression.
There are then ways to break down these categories even further, but Islamists and Jihadists are both very real, political organizations that have agendas that run counter to Western Democratic ideals. Islamist countries are by definition theocracies, the concepts of pluralism and separation of church and state are fundamentally in conflict with Islamist ideology.
Legitimate studies have shown that Islamists and Jihadists only make up 15-20% of Muslims worldwide, but that minority still need to be seriously considered and addressed. Religious extremism of any sort, whether it's from Christians attacking Planned Parenthood or Jihadists attacking clubs and concerts - the religious motivations and implications cannot be ignored and the Left has done itself a great disservice by refusing to make a nuanced argument for rational thought in defense of Muslims generally while still decrying radicalism.
> Brexit (aus Sicht der Engländer) gute oder schlechte Entscheidung?
Schlechte Entscheidung.
> Österreichisches Politikergehalt zu niedrig/gerecht/zu hoch
Kommt auf die politische Entscheidungsebene an. zB Bürgermeister zu niedrig, der Job wird immer unattraktiver.
> Homo-Ehe Ja/Nein
Jaaaaaa
> Haben Sie schon einmal gekifft. Wie stehen Sie zur Legalisierung von Cannabis?
Nope aber bin trotzdem dafür das jeder gerne soll wenn er will. Den Beschluss der NEOS-Mitgliederversammlung dazu gibt's hier: https://partei.neos.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/neos-positionspapier-rechtlicher_umgang_mit_cannabis1.pdf
> Sollen Kassen die vollen Therapiekosten für psychische Krankheiten wie Depression, etc zahlen? (Derzeit nur Teilerstattung, bzw begrenzte Vollerstatung)
Grundsätzlich wird hier vom den Kassen verknappt. Mit Sparmassnahmen im System wäre das finanzierbar.
> Welche Partei würden Sie diese Wahl wählen, wenn es die Neos nicht gibt und warum?
Schwierige Frage, bin froh dass ich sie mir nicht stellen muss.
> G!lt reine Politiksatire oder ein Zeichen, dass unser demokratisches System Fehler hat?
Oida, really?
> Religionsunterricht veraltet oder noch Zeit gerecht?
Ethikunterricht statt Religionsunterricht: DRINGEND notwendig.
> Verbot von Vollverschleierung sexistisch oder notwendig/wichtig
Es ist nicht sexistisch sondern eine Einschränkung der persönlichen Freiheit. Ich find die Burka ehrlich gesagt auch scheiße aber durch dieses Verbot können Frauen die Burka tragen de facto das Haus nimmer verlassen. Ganz abgesehen davon, dass es kaum welche betrifft in Österreich (und ich wohn im 20. bezirk, man würde meinen ich hätte schon ein paar Burkas gesehen aber max. 15 in 10 Jahren)
Wir brauchen einen säkularen Staat der solche Themen ehrlich angehen kann und auch die Freiheit hat, Religionskritik zu üben.
Kann zu dem Thema folgende Lektüre empfehlen: https://www.amazon.de/Islam-Future-Tolerance-Sam-Harris/dp/0674088700
> Ist das derzeitige Tierschutzgesetz ausreichend?
Da gibt es noch Luft nach oben. Bei der letzten Änderung haben wir mitgestimmt da es einige Verbesserung enthalten hat.
you mean like this?
https://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-Sam-Harris/dp/0674088700
"Islam and the Future of Tolerance has been published with the explicit goal of inspiring a wider public discussion by way of example. In a world riven by misunderstanding and violence, Harris and Nawaz demonstrate how two people with very different views can find common ground."
so how does hunter's point work now?
Yeah, I've first read about it in Nawaz's last book about two years ago. But it has experienced a great boom and has been refined in the past 3 months after Sam started using it. Their book is already finished by the way. Islam and the future of tolerance
It's odd when people claim that racial prejudice in the UK drove them toward violent Islamic fundamentalism. One can understand how Bloody Sunday might have inspired an Irishman to join the IRA, while still saying he made a mistake. But how could white intolerance of South Asians (Tania is Bangladeshi) lead one of them to want to murder Shiites and enslave Yazidis?
Maajid Nawaz says something similar in his
Islam and the future of tolerance with Sam Harris. He claims there was a lot of “racism” against people like him when he was young. This caused an “identity crisis”, which led Nawaz to join a group which tried to persuade army officers in Muslim countries to stage coups. What?!?
In short, these Sunnis are talking shite.
I recommend this book as a starting point if you genuinely want to learn more.
This is precisely what Sam and Maajid Nawaz talk about in their most recent book Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue; the regressive left. I stumbled upon the regressive left several years ago (was verbally attacked) when I was in a liberal secular (atheist) group talking about religion. Islam came up and I happened to mention that 9/11 was religiously motivated. It was then that everyone jumped me, saying it was politically motivated.
I was totally confused at the time since after all, it was an atheist group and they unabashed bash the hell out of Christianity all times. I chose to read up on it and picked up a couple Ayan Hirsi Ali books. She explained this phenomenon as well; resulting in her working at a conservative think tank on how to handle Islam.
The YT video Islamophobia does an excellent job in explaining this. Well worth watching, twice. Sam chastises both Hillary and Obama for not saying the words "radical Islam" in one of his recent podcasts; there are so many I've listened to recently I'm not sure which one it was.
> Where does one even go with that?
...I don't know. This singular topic is what forced me to stop labelling myself as a liberal. Just like when dealing with super Christians or 2nd Amendmenters or hard line right wingers, there's no reasoning with the regressive left. None. They are entrenched, they will not budge. You can't engage with them, you can't reason with them because your very existence is anathema to that which they believe to be just and true. How DARE you say anything about those poor brown people suffering under the Western imperialist boot.
Where to go? I'd suggest just getting educated on the subject as much as possible. listen to every single podcast of Sam's of this year. Read Hirsi Ali's books (Infidel and Heretic, you can skip Nomad). And read Sam & Maajid's book on Islam, it's real small.
And after reading, listen to Sam's 3.5 hour mind numbing interview of Omer Aziz who is the worst kind of Islamic apologist; an educated, regressive, liberal, secular, Muslim apologist.
It's a Dialogue.
http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-A-Dialogue/dp/0674088700
Although Muhammed was a blood thirsty war monger, he did unify dozens of tribes for several centuries, allowing some for some premier Arab scientists to flourish (Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Biruni, Al-Razi, etc.).
But that's where the use of the religion should end, to unify those barbaric tribes, it has no place under modern standards of human rights and living conditions.
I, of course, have no idea how to de-radicalize the religion completely, although I'd recommend looking at Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue by Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz
Personally, I'd start by allowing in only refugees who are willing to integrate into Western life, those who are willing to not necessarily leave all their traditions, but be able to co-exist into the West without issue, it might be the best way to start.
In Islam and the future of tolerance Majiid gets Sam to moderate his views in a similar fashion. The challenge is indeed with fundamentalism and the difficulty is that it’s hard to use to text, or certain interpretation of it, to make progress, as there isn’t much peaceful verse, or they are Meccan Surahs abrogated by Medinan Surahs. It seems the best that we got is for people to forget about the text entirely.
He may not lean left, but if Sam Harris is an Islamophobe, why would he be friends with Maajid Nawaz, who is a devout muslim as well as co-wrote a book discussing Islam as a religion?
If you have the time and inclination, please read or listen to Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue by Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz | October 2015 for some counterarguments to what you are saying from a former extremist.
For instance:
> I don't see any evidence of Muslims trying to change laws in western countries to make the nations legal code closer to Sharia law. Maybe some believe this and advocate it, but they're certainly a minority and I haven't seen any succesful attempt by people holding these views.
Polls of British Muslims immediately after 7/7 train bombings:
> Suicide bombers and terrorist attackers are mentally ill
This is one of the biggest misconceptions out there.
Please note that I'm not trying to enter into an internet debate with you, merely providing you with a different point of view.
I'm not a scholar of Islam (but have read much on the topic) and it is certainly an ideological battle to a large degree. Similar to the moderate Christians pushing back against the extreme conservatism of evangelicals. Change has to come from within. http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-A-Dialogue/dp/0674088700
Everyone here should read this book and get some perspective.
Here are two very good reads on the subject, both about a year old.
Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue
This is a book where Maajid Nawaz (the Muslim reformer/counter-extremist I mentioned) has a conversation with Sam Harris. Harris asks questions and Nawaz provides context and potential solutions to problems.
They approach the subject with the goal of understanding and communication. That's what I love about it. They get demonized because they're talking about reform. The anti-reformists call them both Islamophobic, just for having the conversation.
NOTE: The audio book of this is very good because it was once a conversation. So it feels a bit like a podcast.
Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now
Ayan Hirsi Ali is an ex-muslim Atheist that approaches reformation from a different perspective. Maajid is from the UK and grew up western. Ali was born and raised in Somalia. She has an incredible life story.
She was circumcised at the age of five. She was in an arranged marriage to one of her family members. Eventually she became a member of the Dutch parliament. In 2004, she worked with Theo Van Gogh on a documentary before he was assassinated by an Islamist. The killer left a note pinned with a knife stabbed in to Van Gogh's chest naming her his next target.
I found this book to be more critical of Islam, but also optimistic. She's not looking to burn everything down. She wants Islam's followers to have a comfortable place in the world. She believes that reform is the key.
Here's the dust jacket description:
>Continuing her journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a post at Harvard, the brilliant, charismatic and controversial New York Times and Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author of Infidel and Nomad makes a powerful plea for a Muslim Reformation as the only way to end the horrors of terrorism, sectarian warfare and the repression of women and minorities.
>Today, she argues, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into a minority of extremists, a majority of observant but peaceable Muslims and a few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own religion. But there is only one Islam and, as Hirsi Ali shows, there is no denying that some of its key teachings—not least the duty to wage holy war—are incompatible with the values of a free society.
>For centuries it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change. But Hirsi Ali has come to believe that a Muslim Reformation—a revision of Islamic doctrine aimed at reconciling the religion with modernity—is now at hand, and may even have begun. The Arab Spring may now seem like a political failure. But its challenge to traditional authority revealed a new readiness—not least by Muslim women—to think freely and to speak out.
>Courageously challenging the jihadists, she identifies five key amendments to Islamic doctrine that Muslims have to make to bring their religion out of the seventh century and into the twenty-first. And she calls on the Western world to end its appeasement of the Islamists. “Islam is not a religion of peace,” she writes. It is the Muslim reformers who need our backing, not the opponents of free speech.
>Interweaving her own experiences, historical analogies and powerful examples from contemporary Muslim societies and cultures, Heretic is not a call to arms, but a passionate plea for peaceful change and a new era of global toleration. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders, with jihadists killing thousands from Nigeria to Syria to Pakistan, this book offers an answer to what is fast becoming the world’s number one problem.
Articles:
Please stop saying the Nice attacks have nothing to do with Islam
A global culture to fight extremism
Why Islam Needs a Reformation - To defeat the extremists for good, Muslims must reject those aspects of their tradition that prompt some believers to resort to oppression and holy war
Excerpt:
>Here are the five areas that require amendment:
>1. Muhammad’s semi-divine status, along with the literalist reading of the Quran.
Muhammad should not be seen as infallible, let alone as a source of divine writ. He should be seen as a historical figure who united the Arab tribes in a premodern context that cannot be replicated in the 21st century. And although Islam maintains that the Quran is the literal word of Allah, it is, in historical reality, a book that was shaped by human hands. Large parts of the Quran simply reflect the tribal values of the 7th-century Arabian context from which it emerged. The Quran’s eternal spiritual values must be separated from the cultural accidents of the place and time of its birth.
>2. The supremacy of life after death.
The appeal of martyrdom will fade only when Muslims assign a greater value to the rewards of this life than to those promised in the hereafter.
>3. Shariah, the vast body of religious legislation.
Muslims should learn to put the dynamic, evolving laws made by human beings above those aspects of Shariah that are violent, intolerant or anachronistic.
>4. The right of individual Muslims to enforce Islamic law.
There is no room in the modern world for religious police, vigilantes and politically empowered clerics.
>5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war.
Islam must become a true religion of peace, which means rejecting the imposition of religion by the sword.
Quilliam Website
>Thanks radical Islam.
The problem is how pervasive Islamism has become. Even in Great Britain, one of the most Westernized countries:
>The results from NOP Research ... are startling. ... Forty-five percent say 9/11 was a conspiracy by the American and Israeli governments. ... almost one in four British Muslims believe that last year's 7/7 attacks on London were justified because of British support for the U.S.-led war on terror. ... Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law. ... Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state. ... Seventy-eight percent support punishment for the people who earlier this year published cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed. Sixty-eight percent support the arrest and prosecution of those British people who "insult Islam." SOURCE (Emphasis mine)
The United States has perhaps the lowest such rates among nationalized Muslims. The worry I have is that if we start letting in refugees en masse, they will most likely be further right than those in GB.
Modern Muslims are not the same as historical Muslims (aka the ones discussed by Jefferson).
Ninja Edit: If anyone wants a good look at the problems facing Islam and how they might get fixed, I recommend Islam and the Future of Tolerance.
> they're really just using religion as a justification
No, they're not. This is a common misconception. They're genuinely motivated by their insane religious beliefs.
To be sure, there may be regimes (present or historical) which cynically hijack religion to control people, but ISIS is genuinely theocratic.
I strongly recommend these two books:
> In any case, it's just a matter of them wanting their own land.
Not really, no. They don't just want to take over Iraq and be left alone. Global jihadism means exactly that: the ambition to globally impose Islamism through the use of violence.
ISIS isn't like Israel. ISIS don't want to just live peaceably in their own corner of the world.
Your premise isn't far from the truth OP, I think fundamentalism can bring out the worst in religion and there are certain religions that glorify violence. The two together can be a dangerous mix.
However, I think many problems are due to the lack of objectivity within religion, as you alluded to with the gold coin. There are fundamentalist interpretations that do not involve violence, there are even lawful ways to work towards a caliphate. It definitely makes a difference what ideas are garnering the most support at the time. We only need to look a few decades back on Islamic history to see that what were seeing today is comparatively unrecognisable.
You might be interested to read http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-A-Dialogue/dp/0674088700 - interesting read about this very topic.
I agree that it may, at first glance, seem way over the top to ban such a large, generalized group of people. I sort of appreciate his vagueness, though, in that he says we have to "figure out what's going on".
http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf
the study is super long, but if you just skim through the graphs on the side you can get a lot of the meaningful info. Living here in America, I personally don't (think I) know anybody who shares pretty much any of the beliefs polled in the study, but actually thinking about how potentially dangerous some of those beliefs can be to our society is hard to even think about.
http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-Sam-Harris/dp/0674088700/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458096350&sr=8-1&keywords=sam+harris+islam+and+the+future+of+tolerance
I read this book recently, and it was really great. It addresses the issues with the religion (with some subsets of its followers, I should say) and is all around really informative. After reading it (and looking at the statistics), I can't think of a better way to put it than "we need to figure out what's going on".
I hope that helps
>This is quite the heated conversation we're not having.
You understood exactly what I was saying. If any criticism of Islam is met with a "Islam's a good boy!" then its no conversation that matters.
>No your right. His official position is "Motherload of bad ideas."
Here's his position on Christianity.
Here's an excerpt from that video:
>Ok, just think about that. In vast numbers of societies, people would bury children in postholes, - people like ourselves - thinking that this would prevent an invisible being from knocking down their buildings. These are the sorts of people who wrote the Bible. If there is a less moral framework... I haven't heard of it.
He's against any religion, he's an atheist. But you criticize him only for his attack on Islam? I wonder why?
His point is that all religions suck, some more than others since their effects (or acts committed while using said religion for justification, as you like to put it) are greater than others. Islam merits his more recent focus due to said effects, though he has extensively criticized Christianity as well (more so than Islam, yet curiously didn't get called so many names).
He also supports Islamic reform, and has written a book, with Maajid Nawaz. And you've yet to tell me how exactly is Ben Affleck right, for calling him a racist and bigot. That was all Ben did, and you said he was right, criticizing only his behavior. So?
>>But if he called himself Islamic John, frequently recited Islamic scriptures, killed people according to said scriptures, etc... I would be inclined to believe that Islam had something to do with it.
>
>And I'm being xenophobic?
Why are you implying criticism of a religion is xenophobia? Because that's all I did on the sentence you were replying to. What country did I mention, for you to imply I'm being xenophobic? Is Islam a country now, as well as a race?
See, you are quick to assume anything is racism or xenophobia. How about we drop terms whose meanings you're obviously misusing, and stick to the arguments at hand?
>You means like these guys?
Yeah, the OIC. These guys right?
>or these guys?
Al-Azhar? The ones who refuse to fully disavow or excommunicate IS?
>or these guys?
Oh yeah, the Arab League, with good ol' Saudi Arabia in it, and Kuwait, the UAE, also Yemen, and Lybia, and Oman as well, Jordan and the list goes on.
>or these guys?
>
>or these guys?
>
>or these guys?
In the UK and North America, secular, multi-cultural countries without a majority Islamic presence.
>or these guys?
The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia? That reminds me of the pot & kettle idiom, really.
>or these guys?
>
>or these guys?
Also UK and North America. Same as above. The video you linked, btw, had this Qur'an passage at the start, which was the only implication that what ISIS are doing might not be true to their faith (though it implies everyone must accept Allah, so it doesn't hold much water) - the rest of the video was them stroking the UK's ego, their message wasn't directed at extremists.
I never said there aren't Muslims calling out against ISIS, the point is they're either not enough in number, relevance or credibility. They hardly disprove IS religious claims at all, what they're saying amounts to well-intentioned platitudes, instead of completely discrediting IS based on Islamic interpretations.
>You missed the entire point of my example. What if John didn't believe Allah told him to? What if Allah is Johns scapegoat?
Have you got a mind reading device to be so certain of what goes on in John's mind? Because I can say I'm basing myself over everything John says and does. You seem certain he's lying, with nothing but your feelings to prove it.
Intelligent use of limited screening resources for the purpose of people traveling is not isolationist. Isolationist build walls and ban entry. You might have learned something had you read more than the title
>> Therefore, the implication is that religion can't be fixed - once a religious culture, always a religious culture.
> He is also doing the best that he can to reform islam
I am showing you where you are wrong, not offering likelyhood of success.
I thought we would have an intelligent disagreement about his actual arguments. Forgive me, I will make that mistake no longer.
If you're interested in the topic, this was a very informative short book that I learned a decent amount from about radicalism and the motivations and goals of Jihadists and Islamists.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islam-Future-Tolerance-A-Dialogue/dp/0674088700
I'd recommend reading Islam and the Future of Tolerance by Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz.
Sam Harris is a well known Atheist who had been extremely critical of Islam (Here's a clip of him on Bill Maher going up against Ben Affleck )
Maajid Nawaz is a former Islamist radical who has recanted and become a leading voice to reform Islam and incorporate modern secular morality.
All in all its a very informative read. They disagree on many things, but they have a constrictive dialogue about the issues that are being faced and the best way to move forward.
Pleas do not put words in my mouth I never said Muslims were defending ISIS. What you tried to do was compare the two groups that are not equivalent in the modern crimes committed in there name.
I've heard people say that to and they are dumb people who can't own there shit.
Look I am atheist I don't even like religion to began with, but anyone can see that this religion needs some reform. Look I am not great at summing up my views on the internet if you want ill point you towards a short book that sums up my views.
https://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-Sam-Harris/dp/0674088700
He literally wrote a book on the subject, and makes that distinction all the time.
(Edit: this is long, but I think the terms used by Nawaz are important and I wish more people would use them. I think when people understand the difference between Islamists and Islam, the nature of the discussion can change.)
It depends on how you define things. The majority of Muslims hold one or more views that Americans would consider extremist, but the majority are not Islamist or Jihadist.
I use the terms as defined by Maajid Nawaz & Sam Harris in their recent book Islam and the Future of Tolerance:
> Nawaz: Obviously, this won’t be an empirical answer, but I’ll give you my gut reaction. Continuing with your concentric-circles imagery, in the center, as you have rightly said, are the jihadists. Beyond them is a larger group of Islamists. So that there’s absolutely no confusion for our readers, when I say “Islamism,” I mean the desire to impose any given interpretation of Islam on society. When I say “jihadism,” I mean the use of force to spread Islamism.
>Islamism and jihadism are politicized, contemporary readings of Islam and jihad; they are not Islam and jihad per se. As I’ve said, Islam is a traditional religion like any other, replete with sects, denominations, and variant readings. But Islamism is the desire to impose any of those readings on society. It is commonly expressed as the desire to enforce a version of shari’ah as law.
>Political Islamists seek to impose their views through the ballot box, biding their time until they can infiltrate the institutions of society from within. Revolutionary Islamists seek change from outside the system in one clean sweep. Militant Islamists are jihadists.
>It is true that no traditional reading of jihad can ignore the idea of armed struggle, and it is incredibly naive to insist that Muslims ever held jihad to mean an inner struggle only. However, any and all armed struggles, in any or no religious contexts, can be defensive or offensive, just or unjust, reactive or preemptive, and terroristic or conventionally militaristic. My usage of jihadism refers only to a particular armed struggle, regardless of which sub-category it fits into above: that which seeks to spread Islamism.
> These are only my definitions; in my life working in this field I have yet to come across any that seem more accurate. Others will have their own.
Most Muslims do not fall into either of those categories, and in fact most Muslims oppose an Islamic state as the Islamists define it. Harris and Nawad continue to look at how many Muslims are Islamists or Jihadists:
> Harris: What percentage of Muslims worldwide are Islamists, in your estimation?
> Nawaz: I’m using Egypt as an example because that’s where the Muslim Brotherhood is particularly successful. And if the Brotherhood in Egypt could gain only 25 percent in the first round of elections, it’s probably less popular in other Muslim-majority societies. This is what my gut tells me; I have no empirical evidence.
> Harris: Actually, one group analyzed the past forty years of parliamentary elections in Muslim-majority countries and found that on average, Islamist parties have carried 15 percent of the vote.6 This suggests that 15 percent of the world’s Muslims are Islamists. However, poll results on the topic of shari’ah generally show much higher levels of support for its implementation—killing adulterers, cutting off the hands of thieves, and so forth. I’m not sure what to think about a society in which 15 percent of people vote for an Islamist party, but 40 percent or even 60 percent want apostates killed.7 If nothing else, that would seem to nudge the proportion of Islamists a little higher. I’ve been saying that the number is probably around 20 percent worldwide—an estimate I consider fairly conservative, whereas Muslim apologists consider it an outrageous fiction that testifies to my bigotry and paranoia.
> Nawaz: I think it would be extremely helpful if people focused on the ideas being discussed here, rather than on calling you names—which is an easy way to ignore your ideas. Besides, using Egypt as an example, I just estimated the proportion of Islamists worldwide as slightly below 25 percent (keeping in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood reached its peak at 25 percent in Egypt), so I don’t think you’re that far off the mark. For me, any society in which 15 to 20 percent of the people vote for Islamists is a society facing a severe identity crisis, still struggling to come to terms with the challenges of globalization.
> As for your point about higher percentages of support when Muslims are asked specifically about issues such as death for apostasy, I believe that may be rooted in an archaic interpretation of shari’ah. But for the sake of my definitions, I would not classify such fundamentalists as Islamists. Their support of death for apostates hails more from a medieval, tribal desire to punish the “out-group,” which is justified by religious scripture, than from a belief in the Islamist ideological project of codifying shari’ah as law and imposing it on society. This is not to say that such attitudes are healthy—on the contrary, they are incredibly problematic. It’s just that they pose a different and sometimes overlapping set of problems in addition to Islamism.
>In fact, in many instances these same fundamentalists have been known to violently oppose Islamists, considering them entirely a product of Western modernity born from Western innovations of codifying law in unitary legal systems. A case in point is the well-documented conservative movement against the political Islamist group Jamat-e-Islami in the Indian subcontinent during the partition of Pakistan. The Barelvis would chant an anti-Semitic Urdu slogan against the Jamat’s founder, Mawdudi—“Sau yahudi aek Mawdui,” or “Mawdudi is worse than a hundred Jews.” Though despicable, this slogan highlights my point about the animosity between many fundamentalists and Islamists. Mumtaz Qadri, who assassinated Salmaan Taseer, the blasphemy-law reformer and governor of Punjab in Pakistan, hailed from this same Barelvi movement.
>That leads perfectly to the next circle, which is by far the largest: religiously conservative Muslims. Whether one looks to Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, or the Gulf, the majority of Muslims are currently conservative—some would call them fundamentalists. Let’s call them conservatives, because they don’t wholeheartedly subscribe to contemporary liberal human rights.
Don't mistake me for a Muslim apologist. I have a philosophical opposition to Conservative Muslims, just like I do to Conservative Christians. And considering some of these people advocate for death for apostates, honor killings, etc., my view is generally even much harsher (to put it is politely as I can).
But at the same time, you approach a radical religious group that is NOT trying to violently overthrow the rest of the world differently than you approach one that is. I am not minimizing their horrible views, but on the grand scheme of things, they are a minor problem.
One final point: I am not using "Islamist" as some attempt to avoid blaming Islam or paint this as a political thing. You can't be an islamist without first being a Muslim, and while it might be a political movement in many ways, it is driven by people's desire to force their view of their religion on others. Anyone denying Islam's role is simply lying, but at the same time it is only one interpretation of Islam that leads to these views.
Tämä on juuri Harrisin ja Maajid Nawazin (jostakin syystä hyvin usein väärintulkittu) argumentti. Islamismi/poliittinen islam on ideologiana vähintäänkin ongelmallinen. Heidän kirjoittamansa lyhyt kirja kannattaa lukea, jos ei niin ole vielä tehnyt.
> Using the term conservative and applying it to something that is worldwide can never be correct.
Actually, Majid Nawaz makes a very good definition of what is defined as a conservative Muslim worldwide. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to write the chapter of the book here, but there is a definite definition of what is to be considered a conservative Muslim. Just as the difference between Islamist and Jihadi. One wishes to spread Islam and convert the non-believers, the other wishes to do so using violence.
Just so you know, someone else said this thread is full of people calling muslims [insert pejorative] and my immediate response was to denigrate the redditors calling muslims horrible names because Islamophobia has no place in my worldview. Its there for you to see, I can link it to you if you like. But as for your comment:
You're full of shit. The purpose of your words are to make you feel bad by avoiding actually critcizing Islam, not to describe reality. "No one had a problem with Muslims a few decades ago". Wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre. Go learn your history. Grow a pair and talk about reality as it happens, not with your quivering fence-sitting bs. Let's say you had a relative who was blown up from an Islamic suicide bombers. I guarantee you all your fucking bs "Are there bad muslims? Yes? Are there bad Jews? Yes" third-grade reading level moral relativism would immediately go out the window. GROW A PAIR. Learn your history, both past and current. Stop forming your argument on what makes you avoid feeling bad the most. I have plenty of Muslim friends. I have no qualms with them. Don't pretend to know me. Go read this book. Seriously. https://www.amazon.com/Islam-Future-Tolerance-Sam-Harris/dp/0674088700