From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Tue Sep 18 2001 - 23:31:28 MDT
Greg Burch <gregburch@gregburch.net> writes:
> I have just listened to Duncan Moon's September 18 piece on Islamic
> reaction to the terrorist attacks on the United States. I do not doubt the
> sincerity of the moderate Islamic clerics who spoke in this piece, but I do
> doubt that Mr. Moon knows anything about Islam and especially about the
> central scripture of that religion, the Koran.
> Like the rest of the U.S. press corps, Mr. Moon has passed on without
> question the statements by moderate Muslims that "Islam does not endorse
> violence." We will not as a nation come to understand how and why the
> events of September 11 occurred until we take the time to study Islam and
> develop an understanding of how a large number of people in the world use
> religion to justify violence. The simple and undisputable fact is that
> there is clear and explicit language in the Koran that:
>
> <> endorses the use of violence against "unbelievers"
>
> <> requires that Islamic countries institute legal discrimination against
> non-Muslims
>
> <> demands unequal treatment of women
>
You could say the same of the Bible yet most Christians today do not believe
that their religion mandates that they act like Islamic fundamentalists or
turn the country into a theocracy. Now it is true that there are some
Christians in the US and elsewhere that do believe this and historically
there have been entire countries that believed this.
> How do we, as a free people, come to terms with these facts? How do
> moderate Muslims rationalize their calls for peace and tolerance in light of
> the clear and unambiguous text of their scripture to the contrary? How can
> democracy flourish in cultures where a religion based on that scripture is
> enshrined in law? These are the hard questions that our contemporary
> cultural relativism apparently makes it impossible to ask. By dodging these
> questions, NPR does not encourage a pursuit of truth, but rather becomes
> complicit in our civilization's unwillingness to come to terms with them.
>
Modern Muslims justify peace and tolerance the same way moderate Christians
do. You could find scriptures in both holy books that put down such
tolerance and you could find other scriptures that can be and are used to
justify it. So?
What would you suggest? Are you going to try to tell moderate and liberal
Muslims that they aren't good Muslims and should either drop the entire business
or start a jihad? Are you going to tell Christians that they should stone
adulterers in the streets or drop the entire business? Or are you going to accept
and nurture what tolerance is to be had regardless of people's religious
belief structures?
How tolerant would it be to only tolerate the unreligious?
- samantha
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