For more great cartoons lampooning the latest idiocies of religion ….
[This post has been substantially edited two or three times.]
In view of Charles Sullivan’s comment below — which is obviously the reason for this particular Jesus and Mo cartoon, and my reason for including it here — there is part of a London Times comment on Lady Warsi’s speech and the reasons for people’s concern about Islam, here at richarddawkins.net (“It’s not a phobia — it’s rational to fear Islam”). The article itself is behind a paywall.
I was listening to Rachel Maddow last night about the increasingly ugly “Islamophobia” in the US. I agree. There probably is an increasing amount of anti-Islam feeling. But how much of this, I wonder, is sparked by the fact that, because of widespread threats, Islam is the one religion that cannot be discussed and criticised freely anywhere in the West? This is very dangerous. So long as the threat posed by radical Muslims means that people dare not speak freely about Islam and their fears of Islam, those fears can only grow and intensify. In the Globe and Mail this morning (27 January 2011) there are estimates as to the growth of Muslim populations in North America and Europe (as well as around the world). One person suggests that this will prompt alarm, and there will be “rhetoric” about the threat that this poses. Her solution? Can the rhetoric!
We have a young, vibrant, very engaged youth community,” she said. “Their faith is intertwined with their self-identity, and so to continuously identify that faith as a very violent ideology, incompatible with democracy – that rhetoric has to be checked.
But people should be positively encouraged to speak freely about their fears. Social fear is not allayed by imposing checks on freedom of speech. The only way social consensus can be achieved is through free speech, and if we had more of it, we would all get some idea as to what is acceptable, socially, in how we find identity through our religious traditions. Unless Muslims in the West wake up and recognise that only freedom of speech will resolve some of the uncertainties that people feel, and do everything in their power to defeat the radicals in their midst, the tension can only grow, and speeches like Lady Warsi’s will remain words in a vacuum that is filled only with hysterical rather than rational speech – quite aside from the fact that Lady Warsi’s words themselves failed to address real problems, or even, in some cases, contributed to them, as Edmund Standing points out so well — see “Warsi’s Wasted Opportunity” over at Butterflies and Wheels.
Lady Warsi just doesn’t get it, does she?
There is anti-Islam feeling in the States, but I don’t think it has risen to level that we see in Europe.
Someone (I forget who) suggested that most Muslim immigrants to the States tend to be middle-class, and tend to fit in better in the local culture.
Whereas in Europe many of the Muslim immigrants are poor and in need of government assistance, which can often create resentment among the locals.
In the States resentment of immigrants seems more focused on Mexicans rather than Muslims from the Middle East or South Asia.
Charles, I don’t know where you live, but I think anti-Islamic feeling is pretty high in most parts of the US.
There was a lawsuit challenging the right of a congregation to build a mosque in Tennessee. The OUTRAGE over the “Ground Zero Mosque” (which was neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero) was expressed far beyond the borders of New York City.
In Oklahoma (that fine bastion of religious tolerance), 70% of the voters passed an anti-Sharia-law amendment to their state constitution for apparently no reason other than pure unbridled fear and hatred of the unknown/different. There was just recently a Faux News-led kerfuffle over a financial service company offering a Sharia-law based mutual fund (HORROR! No investments in pork producers or alcohol manufacturers, etc.).
The difference between the US and Europe is that Muslims are still a tiny fraction of the population over here — 0.8% of the US population according to this morning’s newspaper. And that would include our homegrown black Muslims; remember that this movement began in the 1960s so now there are grandchildren of the original converts walking about, presumably adherents to their parents’ religion, as most children are.
Whereas in France, for example, Islam is the second-most widely practiced religion, with an estimated total of 6% to 10% of the population.
The issue, I think, then turns to the difference between evaluation and discrimination. Am I discriminating against someone whose views on just about every aspect of living in our modern society runs counter to mine; or am I evaluating that person?
Discrimination is hatred based on lack of knowledge. Evaluation is based on knowledge. Both can have negative consequences for the target of the discrimination/evaluation. One is silly, stupid and wrong. The other isn’t. Even though the ultimate outcome might be indistinguishable.
The problem, then, is how to separate the two. Is it discrimination to insist that someone who fits the profile of a member of a group who is willing to kill himself for his god be subjected to slightly more scrutiny at an airport (rather than my 85-year-old mother whose artificial knees set off the metal detector), or is it evaluation? Is it discrimination to insist that a father not mutilate the genitals of his daughters even though his god insists upon it? Should we not oppose violent extremism of any ilk, brand or flavor merely because those advocating violence do so under the imprimatur of some invisible force?
Of course, Christianity isn’t immune to violent extremism, and it’s my contention that it is by far the more fundamentally amoral religion. But as a total percentage of adherents, and as a function of the current threat to modern society, Islam is hands-down the leader in the extremism race. Because it’s part and parcel of their beliefs. Death to the apostate. 72 heavenly virgins await martyrs. And on and on.
OK. Off the soap box.
Kevin. I’m surprised at your claim that Christianity is the more fundamentally amoral religion. Would you care to explain? For my own money Islam wins hands down, but I would be interested in why you think that Christianity does.
Kevin – it’s good to hear someone being lucid on that particular soap box. I live in France but am English and it frightens me how far we have allowed Islamic customs to continue even though they are against our principles of freedom
Kevin: a small correction – the proposed islamic centre in NY was two blocks from Ground Zero; close enough not to make much difference. Also it was going to have prayer space for several thousand worshippers. That makes it a mosque even though it might have other functions as well……
just saying!