President Obama's superlative speech at Cairo University will be much analyzed. It was, as expected, an address that was rational, intelligent, eloquent, and fair. In stark contrast to George Bush's catch phrase, "clash of civilizations," Obama made every effort to weave common threads between the West and the Islamic world. He won his first applause with the phrase "holy Koran," and in that vein more applause followed whenever he praised Islam and the glories of its past.
Overall, it was a cobweb-clearing speech. The content wasn't exceptional. Before Muslims assumed the role of bogeyman after 9/11, any tolerant educated person realized that Islamic civilization has a great heritage. Nor is it news that the Muslim world is far more complex than the picture painted by a tiny minority of fanatical extremists. Yet to hear an American president reiterate these things had a powerful emotional effect.
The heart of the speech, once we get past its effort at reconciliation, was Obama's candid talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the social obstructions in Arab society. It was bracing to hear him say that "Israel isn't going away," just as it was moving to hear the words, "peace be upon them" when he referred to Muhammad and Abraham. In one stroke Obama set America's policy toward the Arab world back on a sensible, moral, even idealistic path.
Yet there is a glaring problem that the speech didn't confront directly, which is the inability of "good" Muslims to stand up for change. "Good" is equated with devout, and that's a huge obstacle to reform. The Muslim world has not liberated its core values from the dogmas of religion. In the name of devotion to God, women are denied even basic rights; terrorists march under the banner of faith; mullahs control credulous masses of believers; education for the average citizen is totally centered on the Koran. All of these are backward trends. They run counter to the modern world. In fact, the overwhelming dominance of dictators and royal families in the Arab states doesn't begin to be consistent with democratic values that are two hundred years old in the West. Human rights are more or less non-existent. This is an appalling state of affairs, and no amount of tolerance from America's side alters that fact.
Therefore, as civilized as it was for President Obama to extend a hand to the faithful, Muslims cannot have it both ways. They can't demand respect while using religion as a reactionary force. In every Muslim country without exception, core social values have medieval roots. Atop the swelling masses of illiterate people, a tiny oligarch sits. This oligarchy is rich, secular, and westernized. It pays lip service to the mullahs and fears their power. But the oligarchy rarely lifts a finger to share its wealth and influence, to extend opportunities to average citizens, or to challenge the reactionary social forces that the jihadists represent. Their sole aim is to stay on top and suppress anyone who opposes what the elite wants.
Obama addressed multiple issues and threw light upon all of them. He didn't shy away from hot-button topics like women's equality, to the point that he chided Muslims for telling women how to dress in public. In all respects he told his audience what the modern world, and particularly the West, honestly thinks of them. Will they listen? The mullahs won't. The extremists won't. The illiterate will get only a vague sense that America isn't as hateful and fearsome as the demagogues have told them. But until the small sliver of privileged Muslims quit playing their hypocritical games, problems will only get worse. These are people who lunch in London restaurant and shop in Paris boutiques as often as they attend the mosque. Obama has delivered a wake-up call to them. If they don't change, then the religious backwardness of the Arab world will keep on blindly supporting its opposition to Israel, modernity, democracy, and a better future for ordinary people.
Published in the Washington Post
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Friedrich Nietzsche
The mystery in the world is provided by spirituality and founded on personal experience. This is what mystics of all ages point to.
And this is why most "organized " religions with their dogmas and intolerance fear the most: you avoiding their middlemen and going straight to the source-- within..
Regardless, the mystery of Universe and human mind is quite sufficient without having to wade thru' human created chimeras.
Fun fact: Although the Holocaust wasn't necessarily started because of religion, Martin Luther set up an environment of anti-Semitism in Germany that endured for 400 years because of his extra-biblical interpretation of the New Testament.
Since you asked, I can tell you one thing that comes to mind: algebra. The book "al-Jabr" written by Khwarizmi in 820 AD, is actually structured on word problems dealing with how to properly divide inheritance among one's children according to the Qur'anic instructions. Try to find a translation of it if you can - really interesting stuff. Oh, also property inheritance for females, for that matter. I believe women were not yet officially human in Europe at the time.
(And yes, daughters are apportioned 1/2 the share of sons. No, not because of some misogynistic plot, but because men are tasked with providing for their families financially while women have no such obligation.)
Back to your other points: people use ANYTHING as a basis for their own personal hatreds: Atheism, nationalism, political affiliation, economic ideology, ethnicity, language, geography... So it is not honest of us to single out religion as some bogeyman. Maybe that makes you feel better about not being religious; I don't know. Doesn't really matter.
If you actually take a look at history and have some understanding about anthropology and geography, such sweeping generalizations become intolerable.
"What has religion accomplished?" is an extremely valid question. What purpose does any organzation have? To simply exist without purpose? Religions don't exist for nothing. The original intent was to teach however, as it turns out, the intent was actually to control the masses....(common knowledge about ancient Rome). They exist to teach the followers how to live life. The fact that we see such failure in religious history is explained by the holocausts created by religion....the crusades was but one example. It's strange that you think religion has actually accomplished something constuctive on this planet when it has destroyed millions of lives over the years. If you were to say "spirituality" has made a difference, then I might agree but religion is the cause of much of the problems on earth. Go back a read your history books.
This is what religious oppression creates.Try fast forwarding to 17th Century and begin with the rudiments of the scientific method. Combined with rejection of wholesale rote memorization of "holy" texts as a substitute for education.
Next subject.
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. ”
— Steven Weinberg
This is a call to everyone. Look at what we have in common rather our differences. Look to what the great masters of each religion have tried to teach us. Ignore the dogma.
See, I am not a minister and I can easily issue a call to the faithful.
Very true. Scriptures are polyvocal texts, and as such they communicate different meanings to different people. They also can be read differently depending on whether one looks at verses or chapters in isolation or engages in a holistic study. Historical context is important as well. With all these layers of complexity, it would naive of us to surmise that religious texts are inherently radical. Even more so in the case of Islam, which explicitly defines itself as a path of moderation between the extremes of asceticism/puritanism and hedonism. (Before Christian polemicists were attacking Islam as a repressive, constricting force, their main slander was that the Qur'an dared to accept and even CONDONE (sorry no italics) the sexual aspect of marriage. How scandalous! Predictably, now that norms have changed, the same old attacks are inverted, and Islam becomes a sort of sexually repressive force. It's all quite silly.)
The Muslim community is referred to in the Qur'an explicitly as "the middling community". This is how Muslims understand their faith. This is also why it is particularly irritating for them to hear people talk of the supposedly elusive "moderate" Muslim, that prized white unicorn of the blogosphere.
Islamic civilization has been in a deep slumber for about 400 hundered years now.
What have YOU, as a Muslim from whatever country, have contributed to the advancement of your people? the lugubrious bellyache about Americans doesn't count,.
O we of little faith elected Obama. your turn to fix stuff
Now about that other 48%.........
If a person doesn't subscribe to their fanatical beliefs, "off with his/her head"!!
There is NO difference...a violent extremist is a violent extremist, no matter their country of origin or religion of choice
We must push for real separation of church and state in the USA and for both freedom of religion and freedom FROM (someone else's) religious belief
If we were truly policing these internal hate groups, there would be a lot of people in jail...but, instead, we prosecute drug users and pat ourselves on the back for winning the war on drugs....
The right in the USA is protecting these extremists and their caches of weapons
Speaking as an inheritor of Western culture and a devout secularist, I need to respect others even when I find their ideas mistaken or even repugnant.
Starting a conversation with arched-eyebrow superiority isn't going to get us anywhere. And especially when we've intervened so aggressively in Muslim nations -- we have the recent lie-based invasion of Iraq, the imposition of a "friendly" government in Iran after WWII, and the insertion of Israel into a region that was unwilling but powerless to stop us.
And shall we imagine how impressed these benighted people were with our superior actions at Abu Grab and Guantanamo?
If Obama can act on his stated principles, we can start to have open discussions increasingly free of accumulated resentments.
Yes, I share your desire for positive evolution. In fact I'm confident that Islamic peoples will arrive at the same conclusions westerners did about separating religion and politics. But their societies will need to develop naturally, and they aren't going to be helped by lectures from us. We and they need peace, security and the chance for economic development.
A good example would be much better.
Only when the religious opression will significantly diminish. This can only be done by violence ( Chinese, Russian, French revolutions) or by increased influence of secularism and anti-clericalism.
The latter is conceivable only when illiteracy rates are significantly reduced.
You shouldn't just toss around massive events in history like that when you don't understand them.
Accuracy in matters like this is evidenced by precision, nuance and complexity; not generalization and false equivalence.
Information will leak into these societies, even the much more technically adept Chinese are having trouble filtering out things they don't want their people to know.
Ottoman, British, French, Mamluks, Mongols, Tatars.
They still talking about the Crusaders!!!
"At least the president spoke with respect, even if he glossed over the differences between America and the Muslim world, which have nothing to do with religion, but, with the effects of colonial imperial policies directed against people who happen to sit on a lot of oil and resist an irreligious new world order. One looks forward to him lecturing on the deficiencies of Roman Catholicism in the Vatican: "Abortion's here to stay" and of the modern Israeli religion Zionism in the Knesset: "Palestine's here to stay"
.The core values of Islam have already been liberated from the dogmas of religion in the vast majority of Muslims and the way they live their lives, a fact much distorted by the MSM.
.Muslims aren't demanding respect, but justice.
.Women do have basic human rights like the franchise; in the most populous Muslim countries Indonesia Pakistan and Bangladesh they have even been elected as head of state, something America has yet to do.
This notion of free will in religion demonstrably wrong.
There little to no free will in religious identification.
Children of Sunni remain Sunni due to early age indoctrination. Same goes for any other religion, of course.
However, Islam is the only modern religion that proscribes AND practices dea th for those who leave or criticize its dogmas.
Not much free will there.
New York Times reports:
"With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. "
It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states). But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/opinion/12luttwak.html
The problem is that due to lack of separation of religious and secular leadership, the Islamic religious fanatics play an inordinately large role in the culture and politics, with predictably disastrous results.
In the West and large parts of Asia, religious leaders' power has been curtailed and in some cases negated. Not the case in the Muslim-controlled states and communities around the world.
this is the point that Dr. Chopra has made so courageously.
If you believed that, you'd be speaking out about Israel, too. The gaping inconsistency in your critique reveals what your real agenda is.