Religious Tolerance
I'm confused and need a little help. Religous tolorance is a good thing , right? So is it ok to tolorate a religion that practices human sacrifice? Would a modern society put up with a religion that laid people out on a rock and cut their heart out?
Why do we tolorate a religion that cuts people's head off? What is the difference?
See why I'm confused.
Religious tolerance is not just a good thing, it's socially responsible. Failure to be tolerant of other peoples' identities causes you to alienate them, leading to outbursts like this. You can tolerate a religion but not agree with everything in it. In Judeism, it is permissable to stone women to death if they are caught prostituting themselves, but that isn't our characterization of Judeism, nor do we allow it in modern society. We also don't let people kill adulterers, as the Torah allows. Which is also the Bible. Which speaks to all three faiths of the book. Besides, when we have things like the Waco debacle we don't say that Christianity is to blame for the actions of religious extremists.
From the inside of a culture, it's easy for us to disown our religious wackos, and there are people all around the Muslim world who look at the Islamists, the Fundamentalists, the Terrorists, or whatever you want to call them as being completely rotton in the gourd. Influential Imams (religious leaders in Islam) have condemned all of the same stuff that we condemn here in the west, but there's no "pope" in Islam that can hand down a definitive decree that all Muslims will accept, so Muslim extremists use the handful of rulings from the minority of Imams who declare that these actions are permissable. There is a fight right now in the Muslim community between the extremists and the moderates, and even though there are a lot more moderates right now, the extremists are getting all of the press because their position is so much more sensational.
But back to tolerance, it has served us well in America. We have a largely content Arab and Muslim American population here in the US. I contend that it's because they've been treated well. If you're going to oppress a class of people and not tolerate their religion, you have to get pretty medieval on their collective asses in order to prevent them from kirking out and retaliating. History has shown us numerous examples of that. In the current political climate, cracking down hard just gives sympathy to the underclass, giving them a greater ability to leverage international political support (a la the IRA, the PLO, and a few other acronyms). Simply wiping out the underclass is considered such an unpleasant thing that they've invented a new word for it--Genocide. What's left? If we want to keep "them" from rioting every time a percieved injustice gets out of hand, we have to make sure that they are treated with courtesy and humanity as long as they continue to abide by the laws and mores of their host country. We need to make it feasable for people to keep their identity, but integrate into a larger cutural melieu. When you ban slavery and genocide, that's really all that's left.
posted by sadiq at 11/09/2005 03:42:00 AM
4 Comments:
You make good points. I think the problem is while all religions have horrible doctrains, Islamic acts seem to be in abondance... or atleast in the news latesly.
Its just difficult to recognize Islam as a tolerant religion when every single nation that identifies itself as islamic has a horrible record of human rights RIGHT NOW.
If we go back in time then of course Christianity and Judiusm appears just a barbaric in its treatment of women, infidels, etc.. But our opinions are based on what we see in the news today. And today, google has Islamic terrorism as its top stories in 3 different countries.
Your a good man and a good blogger, keep it up!
Per usual it's a fantastic post. Tolerance is of utmost importance but it would also help if Islam was tolerant of itself. By this I mean the following: I have lots of Muslim friends some covered some not. I find they are always throwing digs at each other over the way they each chose to worship. The ones who are covered diss the one's who aren't and vice versa. Sheesh let's all just get along..lol
You're absolutely right. That is a big problem in the Muslim community.
It reminds me of when I first started dating my wife, who was raised a strict Calvanist and who was raised to believe that fundamentalist protestantism was the only viable religious persuasion. When I told her that my father is Catholic, she couldn't believe that he wasn't Christian. It took me about a week of explaining, discussion, and dialogue with her to convince her that Catholics are Christian!
I also know a reform Jew who looks down his nose at other reform Jews who don't keep kosher during Passover. He doesn't have a problem with his bacon cheeseburger, except when it's one of the high holidays. And he thinks that Orthodox Jews are still living in the stone age. Anyone who is less devout than he is a heathen, and anyone more devout is an idiot!
I guess what I'm saying is that, although RIGHT NOW the problem is the intolerance in the Muslim community, it has always been somewhere. The only reason the Muslim community is so bad right now is because it's under considerable stress, and under stress people with strong beliefs tend to polarize. At least, that's the most significant factor that I see. If it was ideology or history that was specific to Islam and not to Christianity, Judaism, or even Hinduism or Buddhism, then we wouldn't see the same trends in those religions at other periods in their histories.
Just came across your blog from the comment on Big Pharoah. Well written, good content. Thank you.
As to this post on Religious Tolerance, good thoughts. It must be so difficult to be Muslim these days with world news so skewed against. It occurs to me that each religion has room for tolerance and for intolerance. The question is which one do I choose to see?
And as a corralary, how do we get the world to see the tolerant side of Islam?
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