It always puzzles me why Islam in particular is so afraid of people questioning their belief system and why they are so afraid of other belief systems running alongside them.
It's almost like they worry that by shining a light on them people will see the Emperor's New Clothes
It's not clear that the religion is the source of the religion, or that the adoption of the religion by authoritarian cultures and regimes results in the fatwas and violence. After all, Muslims constitute 1.8 billion souls in this world, yet how many of their leaders or branches supported the fatwa on Rushdie?
There were NPR interviews this week with women journalists in Afghanistan, and they told of how the Taliban seeks not not only repress women, but to hide the repression so that they can enjoy the lack of condemnation from both their fellow Muslims as well as the world at large. That is a tacet admission that they need a better image for little things, like economic aid.
Characterizing all of Islam as extremist when it is just a faction is tantamount to blaming all physicists for Oppenheimer's work, or all Europeans for the German pogroms, or all Africans for the Somali pirate attacks.
What is perhaps relevant is the stage of Islam in some nations, where it closely resembles Christianity in its teen years, with heretics burned at the stake, witchcraft trials, and purges washing through nations as Protestant reforms saw CounterReformation and repression. As Christianity spread and grew and diversified, the total control of the church in civil matters eventually faded to only cultural and not absolute. There are relatively few countries now with the church actually in vested power within the justice, legislative, and penal systems.
Islam isn't as pacified. It has many adherents who DO see it as an absolute authority and they drive to have it be universally so. The parallels in Christianity and Judaism lack the belief that their Fundamentalist versions will in fact succeed in dominating their global population with their views. Christian Fundamentalists in North America and Africa KNOW that their version is not accepted by large segments of their religion worldwide. Ultraconservative Jews in New York or Israel KNOW that their views are not embraced by a great many in the larger Jewish faith.
And, of course, Buddhism is incomparable, as its adoption in many Western countries has resulted in it being repackaged as a philosophy rather than a religion, which is a direct contradiction of how the
majority of its adherents in the East see it and define it, where it is very much a religion there, and where they very much acknowledge is has not only a god, but many gods, not mere symbols. So, in Buddhism, the extremists are the Western faithful.
And, lest sophistry get away with only targeting religion as the source of violence or retrograde actions in our cultures, political ideologies see similar ranges in spectra, with absolutists willing to do violence in order to realize the change they desire, in contrast with moderates who do not. This was seen in the suffrage movement, abolition and civil rights, pacificism, gay rights, socialism, and several other movements.
what do you think of Mr Rushdie's work, any book in particular you'd recommend, brother?
