At one extreme defining what a “just war” is. At another extreme, how to treat a naughty child.

To be human is to determine/know,in each situation, what is harm and what is necessary. No easy path to wisdom.

Your understanding of the doctrine is superficial and simple-minded and you’ve yet to demonstrate how the doctrine works in conjunction with, say, tafsir (e.g., exegesis by transmission, reason, and ‘indication’). So, your comment, as it stands, was absolutely wrong for two reasons: first, it was not a proper characterization of naskh (for instance, in addition to the various kinds of abrogation, what are the three categories of ‘repealed’ verses having to do with a verse’s ruling, wording and recitation?) and, secondly, the example was in no way an exemplary instance of same. Some Muslim scholars have denied the doctrine of abrogation entirely (e.g., Abu Muslim al-Isfahani, d. 1527) and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209), “one of the great commentators of the Qur’an, argued that the possibility of abrogation does not actually mean that it did occur.” And those resorting to the principle, differ as to the number (500? 235? 21? 5?: early on, the number of abrogated verses gradually increased in number, while in the modern period it has gradually, and substantially, declined) of verses “abrogated” (i.e., there is no trans-historical consensus here).

Contemporary Islamic scholars like Saeed also point out the importance of abrogation with regard to distinguishing the outward form of Quranic rulings and the moral or spiritual purpose that animates them. Thus, for instance, “the Qur’an does not abrogate the objective of a ruling, but rather reinforces the objective by amending the ruling itself.” This illustates one way in which temporal, cultural and circumstantial differences or contexts may be taken into account, as has been the case of the Quranic verse dealing with theft (the ‘amputation’ verse: Q. 5.38). At a point in time, amputation was an accepted means to an end or objective, hence today, many Muslims acknowledge that different, more humane means may be used to achieve the selfsame underlying objective: respect for personal property and the prevention of theft.

And this is apart from the fact that your first paragraph made no sense whatsoever in light of the fact that textual support for the Golden Rule relies on hadith literature and not the Qur’an, even if the latter can then be used, in turn, to support the principle itself (e.g., to the extent it relies on a principle of universalization or an awareness of assumptions intrinsic to basic moral behavior).

Abrogation is a widely held docrtrine and supported within the Quran itself. I’ll just quote one such support:

Abu Ja‘far Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari (d. 923), a Sunni famous as a historian, argued that “abrogation can only be done with regard to commands and prohibitions.”
Abu Ja’far Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari, Tafsir: The Commentary on the Qur’an, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 471-2

Whether YOU believe abrogation to exist or not, or what is abrograted by what is pretty immaterial. What is clear is that there is a long, well supported, classical understanding of abrogation.

Islamic scholars throughout history have used it in many contexts, and have in nearly all the legal schools done so to bring about a more absolutist understanding of Islam.

So, as you even point out, abrogration exists. How does that make me ‘absolutely’ wrong?

You join hands with not a few commenters in this thread who have proudly proved their ample ignorance of Muslims and the Islamic tradition. Moreover, you appear not to have read either the post or the subsequent comments, which discuss the Golden Rule in hadith literature, not the Qur’an.

The exegetical principle or doctrine of abrogation (naskh, or nasikh and mansuk, of which there are five distinct modes) is not absolute nor is it one of logical entailment: a later verse MAY (i.e., not necessarily) abrogate one revealed earlier, especially in cases of manifest contradiction. And while there are numerous works on the subject, Muslims themselves are not in agreement as to its “validity, meaning, and applicability.” In any case, this interpetive practice has to be examined in the light of (i.e., in conjunction with) other principles of Quranic exegesis and hermeneutics as I noted above. Those with a genuine interest in such matters should look at Farid Esack’s The Qur’an: A Short Introduction (2002), as well as Abdullah Saeed’s Interpreting the Qur’ān: Towards a Contemporary Approach (New York: Routledge, 2005). Other relevant works are found in Sec. 3 of my Islamic Studies bibliography.

In short, your comment is absolutely wrong.

I would agree that, as a logical matter, particularly without breaking down the text into symbols, there is little difference between the ‘positive and negative’ formation. However, I think that this reveals the limits of logic rather than impacts the overall argument. The argument is moral rather than legal – should I be concerned for the well-being of my neighbor? Or should I simply avoid doing him/her harm? Those are drastically different positions in terms of both intent and focus.

JK: Dan F.,
As a logical matter I don’t think there is really a difference between the “positive and negative” formations.You could easily say “I wouldn’t want to not be invited to my neighbor’s BBQ, therefore I should invite him to mine.”There might be a difference in tone that I think you accurately summarize, but I think that could easily be overstated, particularly without looking into the use of negatives in the original language more closely.

Abrogation, in Quranic terms, means that the later passages that were given chronologically abrogate any contradictory passages. Thus statements like ‘there is no compulsion in religion’, while in the Quran, are void of meaning since the Sura of the Sword (9th Sura) comes after which states ‘slay the unbelievers where you find them…’.

I went to Iraq as a soldier and did intelligence work both in an office and regular face-to-face meetings with locals.

[Was your experience in those parts of the world gained through the military or other federal or NGO employment?]

Yeah, you’re right – we should probably wrap this up. This will be my last reply. I believe that religion is a necessary but not sufficient explanation for extremist behavior. Having worked closely with Iraqis who were religious, I don’t see why the religion they follow necessarily will result in extremism against the west. Iran has had some experience with democratic forms of government. Muslims from Indonesia and Malaysia don’t seem to be causing much trouble either – and they are a nontrivial proportion of the world’s Muslims. My pointing out these guys is just to demonstrate that any dismissal of Islam as unreformable is to miss the potential opportunities in front of us.

Our enemies in Iraq use prostitutes, gamble, and drink alcohol. They aren’t all that religious. I can’t speak for our enemy in Afghanistan, where I expect they are more religiously motivated, but my personal experience with Iraqis (both friendly and hostile) showed that there was little correlation between religious enthusiasm and hatred of the United States. Really, most of it was family/tribal affiliations and a desire for vengeance.

I’m not trying to minimize the role that religion plays in our enemies’ motivations. Putting aside the fact that I don’t think they play an existential threat to us, it’s not useful in our current fight to just throw up our hands and say “all Muslims hate us; we shouldn’t bother with COIN strategies.” Nor do I think it’s good to criticize our Presidents for reaching out to moderate Muslims. I remember Bush taking a lot of flak from the right on that, and the same guys are criticizing Obama, too.

I don’t understand why I wasn’t able to make that correction, since I saw it only a few seconds into the 5 minute window allowed for edits, made the change and hit “save.” But while the screen then said “saving,” and continued to do so, when it was all final, the original typo remained. Have others experienced this too? Am I doing something wrong when I try to make corrections like this one, or is there a technical glitch with the website?

I see no way to minimize the role of religion, specifically Islam, in any discussion of the greatest threat to Western Civilization since Communism. And it helps not at all to substitute “culture” for “religion,” especially when the religion in question, Islam, is such a huge component of the “culture,” affecting (infecting?) as it does so many aspects of life, from governance, to laws, to education, to the treatment of women, to economic organization, to attitudes regarding “martyrdom,” to acceptance of “unbelievers,” to the place of clerics, to…

The role of Christianity has waned so much in Europe in just the past few decades that perhaps one could talk about the culture there without most of the discussion immediately pertaining to religion, but there is no way that one can talk about the “culture” in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and the other countries of greatest concern to us without a lot of attention to the place of Islam in those societies.

To be clear: I am agreeing with you that Middle Eastern societies are fairly backwards in their thinking, as compared to Western society. But then so are non-western Christian nations. To me, it’s not the religion – it’s the entire culture, of which the religion is only a small part.

But to bring it back around to the original discussion – I think Islam has a golden rule, and attempts to disqualify Islam as a world-religion-with-a-golden-rule is holding Islam against a double standard.

Shane: neurodoc,I think you assume that I believe that progress is inevitable and always forward moving in religion. I do not believe this.

No, I don’t assume you to believe that, nor do I believe it myself.

Therefore, I don’t frame this discussion as how many hundreds of years behind Christianity Islam is.

But it is the case that Islam has not undergone anything like the reformation/enlightenment that Christianity underwent hundreds of years ago. And that is hugely important whether or not you chose to frame this discussion in terms of that number of years Islam is behind Christianity. (Yes, I see it as “behind,” no matter how many “believers” may think it is not “behind” in any sense of the word.)

I neither believe that this beneficial development was inevitable in a Christian society, nor that Christianity in the 1600’s was any more conducive than other religions to giving secular rationality a higher standing than religious dogma. Frankly, I believe that like most things in history, it just happened.”

OK, feel free to believe “it just happened,” that such changes are just random developments with nothing to explain why they happened. But don’t waste your time trying to convince me of that view of history.

You also seem to believe that religion alone is what motivates our enemies.

No, I don’t believe that simplistic, reductionist answer to the question of what motivates our enemies.

Our enemies in Iraq don’t hate us because we’re not Muslim — they hate us because we’re in their country.

So, you think religion explains nothing there, not the divisions among Iraqis, the involvement of foreign jihadis, etc.? The Taliban are not animated by any religious faith? Al Qaeda is all about geopolitics, not at all about religious faith?

Besides, you wouldn’t say our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan are “less Muslim” than our enemies, right?

Huh??? (Sorry, I’m not going to follow you down every logical rabbit hole you dive into.)

I think it’s a…more accurate perspective to view our current enemies as driven by a narrow ideology, rather than by a major world religion.

(Health is health, and we are not talking about health matters here.) I don’t think it helpful to deny the role of religion when young men are recruited to blow themselves and innocents up by talk of virgins waiting for them in the afterlife if they commit themselves to “martyrdom,” even if the religion is “a major world religion.”

Patrick S. O’Donnell:
neurodoc,

The “practice” of Muslims is many respects unintelligible or opaque to the extent one lacks a basic understanding of the various theoretical and normative construals of the tradition from both within and outside Islam (this is not unrelated to the fact/value distinction, meaning while facts and values are conceptually distinguishable, these are not two independent realms*): be they implausible, irrational, plausible, rational, persuasive or sound. An ability to understand, assess and possibly alter whatever practices are found, say, ethically or legally repugnant or wanting, is only possible from (and in any case assumes or presumes) plausible and arguable normative standards and viewpoints, both Islamic and non-Islamic. One cannot criticize or alter “practice” without normative standards and theoretical guidance. I was concerned here to articulate the fundamental lineaments of same from within the Islamic tradition, as any alteration of such practices will have to rely on sources of belief and motivation common to Muslims themselves, however much non-Muslims may want to assess or critique such practices in a language or terms foreign to the tradition (and to the extent that non-Islamic critiques and assessments aim to be principled and thus universalizable, they need to explore whether or not there are values and concepts within Islam that are compatible or supportive of such universalization, as has in fact taken place, for example, where Muslims support human rights principles based on the Sharī‘ah).

Were it that this putative concern for “practice” by those quick to critique Muslims in general or the Islamic tradition in toto be exemplified in their own case: “the mote and the beam” thing here apropos.

*Please see my post on “Facts and Values, Truth and Objectivity” at Ratio Juris.

Cf. (courtesy of Hilary Putnam, from A.E. Singer,Jr.):
1. Knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of theories.
2. Knowledge of theories presupposes knowledge of facts.
3. Knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values.
4. Knowledge of values presupposes knowledge of facts.

Forgive me, I intend no offense, but are you: i) an academic who cannot avoid ponderosity even when responding to a simple question; ii) someone striking an academic pose for whatever their reason(s); or, iii) a person just unable to communicate clearly and effectively? Whichever, I take your answer to my earlier question to mean you do not “appreciate that for many of us what Islam may be understood by its adherents to say about such matters as ‘believers’ vs ‘unbelievers,’ that is the ‘theory’ of Islam, is of little or no interest or concern, whereas the ‘practice’ of Islam, e.g., the treatment of ‘believers’ vs ‘unbelievers,’ is of great interest and concern.”

I don’t think my views are at all exceptional among non-Muslims, or “unbelievers” if you will. Indeed, I think most non-Muslims don’t give a fig, a crap, a rat’s ass, or anything of the sort, what theological explanations there may be for the Islamic world’s many barbarous expressions. Nor are we impressed by tu quoque’s of the sort Shane offers on behalf of Muslims, or his suggestions that non-Muslims with their criticism and/or harrassment of Muslims are somehow responsible for those barbarous expressions.

It is said, “Beauty is as beauty does.” The same might be said of Islam, at least from the perspective of us “unbelievers.” And Islam isn’t very beautiful in our eyes, notwithstanding all the apologies its apologists can muster on its behalf.

A decade ago, my views were considerably different. My thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its antecedents has always been decidedly partisan, so I did not have a very favorable opinion of Arabs generally. That was about Arabs, though, not Islam. And for years I favored the “believer” Pakistanis over the “unbeliever” Indians, until I came to see Pakistan as a curse upon the world. Then 9/11 came and my thinking about the Islamic world, like that of many I know, changed dramatically for the worse. (Note, I speak of Muslims or “believers” and the Islamic world, so as not to be drawn into any discussion of the religion per se.)

The “practice” of Muslims is many respects unintelligible or opaque to the extent one lacks a basic understanding of the various theoretical and normative construals of the tradition from both within and outside Islam (this is not unrelated to the fact/value distinction, meaning while facts and values are conceptually distinguishable, these are not two independent realms*): be they implausible, irrational, plausible, rational, persuasive or sound. An ability to understand, assess and possibly alter whatever practices are found, say, ethically or legally repugnant or wanting, is only possible from (and in any case assumes or presumes) plausible and arguable normative standards and viewpoints, both Islamic and non-Islamic. One cannot criticize or alter “practice” without normative standards and theoretical guidance. I was concerned here to articulate the fundamental lineaments of same from within the Islamic tradition, as any alteration of such practices will have to rely on sources of belief and motivation common to Muslims themselves, however much non-Muslims may want to assess or critique such practices in a language or terms foreign to the tradition (and to the extent that non-Islamic critiques and assessments aim to be principled and thus universalizable, they need to explore whether or not there are values and concepts within Islam that are compatible or supportive of such universalization, as has in fact taken place, for example, where Muslims support human rights principles based on the Sharī‘ah).

Were it that this putative concern for “practice” by those quick to critique Muslims in general or the Islamic tradition in toto be exemplified in their own case: “the mote and the beam” thing here apropos.

*Please see my post on “Facts and Values, Truth and Objectivity” at Ratio Juris.

Cf. (courtesy of Hilary Putnam, from A.E. Singer,Jr.):
1. Knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of theories.
2. Knowledge of theories presupposes knowledge of facts.
3. Knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values.
4. Knowledge of values presupposes knowledge of facts.

I think you assume that I believe that progress is inevitable and always forward moving in religion. I do not believe this. Therefore, I don’t frame this discussion as how many hundreds of years behind Christianity Islam is. That might be the source of our disagreement.

When I refer to The Enlightenment, I speak specifically of the movement in European thought that elevated rationality over religion, and the cultural change that resulted. I neither believe that this beneficial development was inevitable in a Christian society, nor that Christianity in the 1600′s was any more conducive than other religions to giving secular rationality a higher standing than religious dogma. Frankly, I believe that like most things in history, it just happened.

You also seem to believe that religion alone is what motivates our enemies. Our enemies in Iraq don’t hate us because we’re not Muslim – they hate us because we’re in their country. Besides, you wouldn’t say our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan are “less Muslim” than our enemies, right? Again, you’d be playing right into the enemy’s propaganda. Any other Muslim country would be having difficulty occupying Iraq as well, especially if the occupying force were not Arabic-speaking (but still Muslim). I think it’s a healthier and more accurate perspective to view our current enemies as driven by a narrow ideology, rather than by a major world religion. Otherwise we’d have a difficult time trying to isolate those who actually wish to do us harm, versus those who just plain don’t like us.

Patrick S. O’Donnell: Believers and unbelievers, in theory and sometimes in practice, are indeed on equal footing in Islam.

Do you appreciate that for many of us what Islam may be understood by its adherents to say about such matters as “believers” vs “unbelievers,” that is the “theory” of Islam, is of little or no interest or concern, whereas the “practice” of Islam, e.g., the treatment of “believers” vs “unbelievers,” is of great interest and concern?

Believers and unbelievers, in theory and sometimes in practice, are indeed on equal footing in Islam. I never claimed that for any and all purposes they are always on an equal footing, as this would remove many of the items that help to distinguish this religious tradition from others. When it comes to important metaphysical and ethical beliefs (propositions), as well as for many legal purposes, they are indeed on the same footing. If in specific Islamic regimes there is a failure to live up to specific (normative) principles and ideals in the tradition this is a lamentable fact and one which not a few Muslims have found reasons for opposition and critique. In argument terms, actual practice can neither decisively prove nor refute normative arguments or this sort (as Hobbes reminded us).

Incidentally, when you speak of “the Islamic judicial system” you are referring to an empty set: there is no one Islamic system of fiqh found instantiated geo-historically throughout the globe. Islamic legal systems have been many and various, the relevant variables being both time and place. Moreover, it is probably safe to say that there’s never been a purely or wholly Islamic legal system, as such systems have invariably, in practice, incorporated pre-Islamic, and other legal systems and codes (this is apart from whatever differences that exist between legal schools). In the Qur’an, legal topics form but a small portion of the text and thus are not always determinative or decisive on many questions, apart from the degree of legal indeterminacy that comes about as a result of the logical, metaphysical and conceptual gap that exists between Shariah and fiqh (even if Muslims and others use the former concept in a way that serves to obscure or ignore such a gap):

“Historically, the term Sharī‘ah refers to all the elements of a proper, i.e. righteous life; this includes moral behavior, proper respect towards Allāh, correct belief, personal piety, and so on. In other words, it means the right way to live one’s life as a Muslim in conformity to God’s will. In more recent times, the scope of its reference has narrowed to that which falls under the rubric of Islamic law (fiqh), but there is a logical, conceptual and practical difference between Sharī‘ah and fiqh. The latter involves the human process of understanding and implementing the divine law. It is a serious (religious, epistemological, ontological, ethical…) mistake to conflate Sharī‘ah and fiqh, or to use these terms, as often happens today, as synonyms. The Sharī‘ah, writes Khaled Abou El Fadl, ‘is God’s Will in an ideal and abstract fashion, but the fiqh is the product of the human attempt to understand God’s Will. In this sense, the Sharī‘ah is always fair, just and equitable, but the fiqh is only an attempt at reaching the ideals and purposes of Sharī‘ah (maqāsid al-Sharī‘ah). [….] The conceptual distinction between Sharī‘ah and fiqh was the product of a recognition of the inevitable failures of human efforts at understanding the purposes or intentions of God.’ The function of Sharī’ah is here analogous or similar to that of Natural Law intimations among the Stoics and both religious and secular Natural Law doctrine as it developed from and after Grotius.

Recently, Abdullahi An-Na‘im has made the provocative argument that ‘precisely because sharī‘a is supposed to be binding on Muslims out of religious conviction, a believer cannot be religiously bound except by what he or she personally believes to be a valid interpretation of the relevant texts of the Qur’ān and Sunnah. Yet, given the diversity of opinions among Muslim jurists, whatever the state elects to enforce as positive law is bound to be deemed an invalid interpretation of Islamic sources by some of the Muslim citizens of the state.’ Moreover, such ‘objections to the enforcement of sharī‘a through positive law and the notion of an Islamic state do not, of course, preclude Muslims from personally conforming with every aspect of sharī‘a.’

We might describe the function of Sharī‘ah along the order of a Platonic Form, at least in its ‘bedrock version’ as outlined by T.K. Seung in Intuition and Construction: The Foundation of Normative Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993). In this account, intuition and construction are two integral processes intrinsic to the functional role of Platonic Forms (or ‘Ideas,’ ‘Archetypes,’ etc.). Platonic Forms—like the Sharī‘ah—are (is) fairly indeterminate, while nonetheless serving as normative, intuitive, and largely nonpropositional foundations (in theory, accessible to any Muslim) for constructing (propositional, hence legal) models or ‘middle terms’ as guides for determinate social realities and the means to endeavor to close the gap between theory and praxis, the ‘is’ and the ‘ought,’ the (utopian or transcendent) ideal and reality, thus, for example, (the Form) Justice is only the normative foundation for constructing principled models of determinate social orders, none of which fully realizes Justice, and all of which endeavor to approach Justice, succeeding by degree. What is more, the attempt to instantiate or embody the model is never wholly successful, given the nature of the human condition and the model’s idealized qualities in reference to the Form itself: ‘The indeterminacy of Platonic Forms makes them flexible standards, and their flexibility assures their eternal durability.’ Philosophically speaking, Sharī‘ah is like the Platonic Form in being universal, abstract, and ‘indeterminate,’ and thus cannot directly serve as a normative standard (i.e., any interpretation of the Divine Will needs religiously rationalized and principled justification by way of textual hermeneutics and exegesis). This is perhaps one reason Norman Calder writes that, ‘in modern academic analysis of Islamic law, the word Sharī‘ah is of little use: what we can study and describe is always fiqh.’ Fiqh represents a Platonic-like endeavor to translate Sharī‘ah into direct, concrete, and normative models for particular contexts. As with Platonic intuitionism in which all human beings have access to Platonic Forms, all Muslims, as noted by An-‘Naim above, have access to Sharī‘ah, indeed, they are under a spiritual obligation to attempt to understand (and live by that understanding of) the divine law. Such understanding is necessarily partial and fallible and may vary according to the individual (every Muslim is different): ‘Indeterminacy and relativity are inseparable in the domain of realization.’ The divine nature of Sharī‘ah means that it retains a normatively transcendent and evaluative function whatever the extent of its positivization as fiqh (we can put this in theological terms by stating that Muslims can always get closer to God or become ever more proficient in acting according to their understanding of God’s will). In other words, law as such, or positive law, cannot exhaust the evaluative function of divine law as one’s understanding of same can always deepen, one’s intuitive discernment can always be keener. As a transcendent (nonpropositional) guide for action, and despite its integral relation to Islamic law, Sharī‘ah should not be confused or conflated with any of its specific principled and propositional constructions by way of fiqh, or any political proposal for a putatively Islamic state.

Nonetheless, fiqh can serve as an aid in coming to understand divine law insofar as it enables us to obtain further, dialectical insight into that which transcends positive law; discursive reasoning and rational understanding, in other words, and in this case intrinsic to the Islamic science of jurisprudence, are part and parcel of the process of acquiring (intuitive or nonpropositional) insight into divine law. The jurist’s fallible, limited, and historical understanding of Sharī‘ah, in other words, is evidenced by his facility with ’usūl al-fiqh: how he has arrived at the determination of law, rather than simply the result, that is, the legal determination or ruling itself, or, in the case of furū‘ al-fiqh, the persuasiveness of the arguments explicating the concepts and rules that relate to religious rituals and ethico-religious conduct in the widest sense. And it is fitra, the Islamic term that designates our primordial inclination or general predisposition to the good as a constituent feature of human nature, that allows individual qua individuals, to have insight into the Divine Will (and thus functions like soul memory in Platonic thought: permitting individual intuitive awareness, however dim or partial, into the Good; this insight is what Socrates set out to awaken in the interlocutors of the dialectical dialogues). In fact, fitra can serve as the Islamic equivalent of individual conscience, according individuals in effect the right of principled objection to interpretations of Sharī‘ah that violate their sincere and sustained endeavors (made in the context of the Islamic tradition) to realize this dispositional awareness of ‘the Good,’ the Divine Will or Sharī‘a.” (from my study guide for Islam)

Shane: You don’t think I can pull out examples of Christianity making no progress, or even regressing, over a period of several centuries?…

But you have already conceded, have you not, that Islam is hundreds of years behind Christianity in terms of “enlightenment.” Does the existence of a Reverend Phelps and other Christian misanthropes and troglodytes provide you with your “examples of Christianity making no progress, or even regressing,” and negate or diminish that gap of centuries between Islam and Christianity? (Of course, it does not all reduce to a time lag between them, but time makes for an easy comparison, especially when you have Islamists calling for a return to the good old days, those being the 7th Century, the time of the Caliphate, and the fulfillment of irridentist designs on Al-Andalus.)

…I won’t dispute that Islam is a hurdle towards progress, but then again, I feel the same way about Christianity.

Sorry, I don’t understand. In your opinion, Islam and Christianity have equally far to go in the direction of progress, but you acknowledge that Islam is hundreds of years behind Christianity in terms of “enlightenment”?!

…And I’m at least polite enough to let Christians practice as they please with a minimum of harassment, so long as they don’t hold other religions to a double standard.

Who do you imagine is stopping Muslims from practicing their religion as they please, except to “harass” them when their practice of their faith entails killing and/or asserting dominion over non-Muslims? And how do you imagine that but for your minimal “politeness” you might prevent Christians from practicing their religion “with a minimum of harassment, so long as they don’t hold other religions to a double standard”? And what “double standard(s)” do you have in mind?

neurodoc:
A few hundred years, or even a couple of hundred years, allows for a huge amount of progress in terms of the “enlightenment,” or the lack thereof that Islam has seen.

You don’t think I can pull out examples of Christianity making no progress, or even regressing, over a period of several centuries? The Enlightenment was about a cultural elevation of reason over dogma and blind faith, leading to a more secular society. Secular reason is no more intrinsically compatible with Christianity than it is with Islam. And it’s hard to say that simply viewing the first 1500 years of Christianity would lead one to believe that western nations would develop the way they did.

I won’t dispute that Islam is a hurdle towards progress, but then again, I feel the same way about Christianity. And I’m at least polite enough to let Christians practice as they please with a minimum of harassment, so long as they don’t hold other religions to a double standard.

Shane: …I believe that the evolution of Christianity has generally been in a positive direction in the past few hundred years…

A few hundred years, or even a couple of hundred years, allows for a huge amount of progress in terms of the “enlightenment,” or the lack thereof that Islam has seen.

…But the mere fact that western, Christian cultures have had an enlightenment period to refine their religion to be less barbaric…

A “mere fact”?!

…doesn’t mean that Islam is intrinsically evil, incapable of reform. There are plenty of activists pushing for reform from within Islam, but every time a western leader talks about the evils of Islam, bans minarets or hajibs, and quotes the Quran out of context, they play right into the extremists hands. Besides, my time spent in the middle east showed that even in a war zone, the vast majority are nonviolent. I’m a big fan of the counterinsurgency concepts that conceptually frame the ordinary populace as the prize to be won in this war — and pushing them towards the extremists by insulting their religious views is counterproductive. Not to mention despicable.

No, doesn’t mean that Islam is or isn’t intrinsically evil, incapable of reform. But Islam’s failure to reform is no more attributable to anything non-Muslims have or have not done than the “enlightment” of non-Muslims is attributable to anything Muslims have or have not done.

Shane: In any case, plenty of passages in Judges, Chronicles, Kings, etc. show some abhorrent activity being directly commanded by God.

For instance, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Sam. 15:2-3).

In other parts of the Hebrew Bible, there is a clear commandment to completely destroy the nation of the Amalekites so that the memory of them is blotted out of history forever. Needless to say, this divine commandment applied to women and infants as well as men. If anyone wants to defend genocide or wars of extermination as compatible with the Golden Rule, I’m all ears.

The real point is that many historical principles did not apply universally. Few people thought at the time of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” applied to blacks. Instead, we widen the sphere of moral concern so that fundamental moral principles like the Golden Rule or equal rights get expanded beyond the extended family, clan, tribe, or nation.

Although I didn’t vote for Barack Obama, he is my President…

Agreed here too. IMO, the identity of the person who won that spot is much, much less important than the fact that we had our election when we were supposed to have it and the person who occupies the White House got there the way every president before him did, all the way back to the beginning. To say that Barack Obama is “my” president is to say that I am an American citizen who values and appreciates the rule of law and the orderly progression of constitutionally-limited power from the previous president to the current one.

ChrisIowa: I find the use of the possessive related to a President as irritating. No President is “My” President. I am a free person and not ruled over by any office holder in any office. Bush was “The” President not “My” President. Obama is “The” President not “My” President. The President is only an office holder, he is not a ruler.

It’s mere “office holder” versus “ruler”? How about acceptance of the indisputable fact that he/she is the highest office holder in the land, this country’s legally recognized leader, someone freely chosen by voters, and as such presumptively entitled to our respect and support? If you find it irritating to hear others refer to him/her as “my president,” feel free to do so, but don’t expect your irritation to be paid much heed. And understand that when others refer to him/her as “my president,” especially those who oppose him politically, they are probably emphasizing our common bonds over partisanship and disaffection.

I mean, I want to be sympathetic to your view, because I believe that the evolution of Christianity has generally been in a positive direction in the past few hundred years. Most Christians today recognize that slavery is wrong, and that’s a great development. There’s still a long way to go, though. It was only a generation ago that preachers were railing against the abomination that was interracial marriage. Today, their proteges are screaming about faggots.

But the mere fact that western, Christian cultures have had an enlightenment period to refine their religion to be less barbaric doesn’t mean that Islam is intrinsically evil, incapable of reform. There are plenty of activists pushing for reform from within Islam, but every time a western leader talks about the evils of Islam, bans minarets or hajibs, and quotes the Quran out of context, they play right into the extremists hands. Besides, my time spent in the middle east showed that even in a war zone, the vast majority are nonviolent.

I’m a big fan of the counterinsurgency concepts that conceptually frame the ordinary populace as the prize to be won in this war – and pushing them towards the extremists by insulting their religious views is counterproductive. Not to mention despicable.

Waste93: Your post could easily have been about the Christian Bible and the Roman Catholic Church through the years.

Yes, we have to have this heavy duty security apparatus in place and be fearful to simply be American all over the planet, because everyone knows that those awful Xtianists, headed by the Devil Pope, are constantly fomenting violence against us, goaded on by the Satanic rituals in their holy book.

Good thing we can count on the Muslims and their Religion of Peace (and Perpetual Outrage) to be our allies against Catholicism.
(sarc off)

Just in case, on the offhand chance you didn’t notice, the local churches here and in every other country on the planet are not preaching violence against all the infidels, and have not done so for, oh, I dunno, maybe several centuries or so. (Well, OK, there is that one TUCC church in Chicago…)

I for one am getting very fed up with the commenters who react to every horrific outrage committed by Islamists and the content of the official writings they use to justify blowing up children and cutting off heads and enslaving women and others and marriage to nine year olds and so much more wonderfulness with the standard “yes, but those eeevvviiiilll vicious Xtianists, did you know that 1,000 years ago they…”.

Believers and nonbelievers are not on equal footing in Islam. Nonbelievers are obligated to pay a tax (jizya). Believers are not. The Koran also obligates Muslims to subjugate, kill, or convert other members of the Book (jews and christians). Other religions are supposed to be offered the choice of death or convert though they were also sometimes allowed to be subjugated.

You can also look at the Islamic judicial system to see how Muslims and non-believers are treated differently. Punishments vary depending on the religion of the victim and the accused. Also non muslims are barred from holding positions of authority of Muslims and is not considered a citizen.

If the Koran treated non-believers equally you would not have the ban on building and repairing places of worship of a non-Islamic type. Though I don’t beleive this is mentioned in the Koran but is also from the ahadith. In a number of Islamic countries converts from Islam are routinely executed or in some cases (Egypt)not allowed to change their ID cards to reflect their new religion. You probably couldn’t name a single majority Islamic country where non-believers are on equal footing with Muslims. Turkey may qualify though it had secularism forced on it after WWI and that is starting to fade.

The examples of Islamic societies treating believers and non-believers differently is overwhelming. The examples of equal treatment is extremely scarce.

egd: This post is totally right on point. All religions are equal and have the same belief structures. Any difference in practice of those religions (e.g. domestic violence counseling vs. stoning rape victims) cannot be attributed to religious differences, but is rather based on the acts of a few people (those few people definitely NOT being Jesus and Mohammad) who take the wise words of prophets out of context.

Not at all. I wouldn’t say that the Bible and the Qu’ran teach the same things, though I haven’t read the Qu’ran at all so I don’t have a particularly informed opinion. I would say that the texts in question (or at least the Bible) are vague and contradictory enough that people can read whatever they want into them. Especially if they are prone to selective reading, as most of them are. They remember the stuff about homosexuals, but forget (or handwave away) the bits about polygamy, stoning people for adultery, marrying your brother’s widow, and prohibiting divorce. They remember loving thy neighbor, but forget the bits where God endorses genocide. And so forth and so on, so that the Bible turns out to contain exactly the stuff they wanted to believe in the first place.

Also, domestic violence counseling exists as a result of the modern feminist movement, so it’s hard to give Christianity credit for it.