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[Editor's note: This is a very useful article,
well worth the time to read it. Sam Harris has recently
authored the book, The End of Faith. This
article comes from the liberal website
Truthdig.]
Sam Harris on the Reality of Islam
Posted on Feb. 7, 2006
By Sam
HarrisUpdate #1 (2/08/2006 1:35 p.m. EST): Sam Harris
responds to the comments and criticism of this piece.
Jump to read.
Update #2: Cilck
here for a Truthdig primer on who has, and who hasn’t
re-published the controversial cartoons
Verses from
the Koran
Pop Up: Quotations instructing observant Muslims to despise
nonbelievers.
In recent days, crowds of thousands have
gathered throughout the Muslim world—burning European embassies,
issuing threats, and even taking hostages—in protest over 12
cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first
published in a Danish newspaper last September. The
problem is not merely that the cartoons were mildly derogatory.
The furor primarily erupted over the fact that the Prophet had
been depicted at all. Many Muslims consider any physical
rendering of Muhammad to be an act of idolatry. And
idolatry is punishable by death. Criticism of Muhammad or his
teaching—which was also implicit in the cartoons—is considered
blasphemy. As it turns out, blasphemy is also punishable
by death. So pious Muslims have two reasons to “not accept
less than a severing of the heads of those responsible,” as was
recently elucidated by a preacher at the Al Omari mosque in
Gaza.
The religious hysteria has not been confined
to the “extremists” of the Muslim world. Seventeen Arab
governments issued a joint statement of protest, calling for the
punishment of those responsible. Pakistan’s parliament
unanimously condemned the drawings as a “vicious, outrageous and
provocative campaign” that has “hurt the faith and feelings of
Muslims all over the world.” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, while still seeking his nation’s entry into the
European Union, nevertheless declared that the cartoons were an
attack upon the “spiritual values” of Muslims everywhere. The
leader of Lebanon’s governing Hezbollah faction observed that
the whole episode could have been avoided if only the novelist
Salman Rushdie had been properly slaughtered for writing “The
Satanic Verses.”
Let us take stock of the moral intuitions now
on display in the House of Islam: On Aug. 17, 2005, an Iraqi
insurgent helped collect the injured survivors of a car bombing,
rushed them to a hospital and then detonated his own bomb,
murdering those who were already mortally wounded as well as the
doctors and nurses struggling to save their lives. Where
were the cries of outrage from the Muslim world? Religious
sociopaths kill innocents by the hundreds in the capitols of
Europe, blow up the offices of the U.N. and the Red Cross,
purposefully annihilate crowds of children gathered to collect
candy from U.S. soldiers on the streets of Baghdad, kidnap
journalists, behead them, and the videos of their butchery
become the most popular form of pornography in the Muslim world,
and no one utters a word of protest because these atrocities
have been perpetrated “in defense of Islam.” But draw a picture
of the Prophet, and pious mobs convulse with pious rage. One
could hardly ask for a better example of religious dogmatism and
its pseudo-morality eclipsing basic, human goodness.
It is time we recognized—and obliged the
Muslim world to recognize—that “Muslim extremism” is not extreme
among Muslims. Mainstream Islam itself represents an
extremist rejection of intellectual honesty, gender equality,
secular politics and genuine pluralism. The truth about Islam is
as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all
fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with
an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has
opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into
our world.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in
Europe. The demographic trends are ominous: Given current
birthrates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25
years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow.
Throughout Western Europe, Muslim immigrants show little
inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of their
host countries, and yet exploit these values to the
utmost—demanding tolerance for their backwardness, their
misogyny, their anti-Semitism, and the genocidal hatred that is
regularly preached in their mosques. Political correctness and
fears of racism have rendered many secular Europeans incapable
of opposing the terrifying religious commitments of the
extremists in their midst. In an effort to appease the lunatic
furor arising in the Muslim world in response to the publication
of the Danish cartoons, many Western leaders have offered
apologies for exercising the very freedoms that are constitutive
of civil society in the 21st century. The U.S. and British
governments have chastised Denmark and the other countries that
published the cartoons for privileging freedom of speech over
religious sensitivity. It is not often that one sees the most
powerful countries on Earth achieve new depths of weakness,
moral exhaustion and geopolitical stupidity with a single
gesture. This was appeasement at its most abject.
The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion
hijacked by extremists” is a dangerous fantasy—and it is now a
particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge. It is not
at all clear how we should proceed in our dialogue with the
Muslim world, but deluding ourselves with euphemisms is not the
answer. It now appears to be a truism in foreign policy
circles that real reform in the Muslim world cannot be imposed
from the outside. But it is important to recognize why
this is so—it is so because the Muslim world is utterly deranged
by its religious tribalism. In confronting the religious
literalism and ignorance of the Muslim world, we must appreciate
how terrifyingly isolated Muslims have become in intellectual
terms. The problem is especially acute in the Arab world.
Consider: According to the United Nations’ Arab Human
Development Reports, less than 2% of Arabs have access to the
Internet. Arabs represent 5% of the world’s population and yet
produce only 1% of the world’s books, most of them religious.
In fact, Spain translates more books into Spanish each year than
the entire Arab world has translated into Arabic since the ninth
century.
Our press should report on the terrifying
state of discourse in the Arab press, exposing the degree to
which it is a tissue of lies, conspiracy theories and
exhortations to recapture the glories of the seventh century.
All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology
that now threatens to destabilize much of the Earth.
Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool
necessary to win a war of ideas with their coreligionists.
Otherwise, we will have to win some very terrible wars in the
future. It is time we realized that the endgame for civilization
is not political correctness. It is not respect for the
abject religious certainties of the mob. It is reason.
Sam Harris is the author of “The End of
Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason” (W.W.
Norton). He can be reached through his website at www.samharris.org.
Sam Harris responds to comments and
criticism
Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am
extremely critical of all religious faiths. I have argued
elsewhere that the ascendancy of Christian conservatism in
American politics should terrify and embarrass us. I have
argued that the religious dogmatism of the Jewish settlers could
well be the cause of World War III. And yet, there are
gradations to the evil that is done in name of God, and these
gradations must be honestly observed. So let us now acknowledge
the obvious: there is a direct link between the doctrine of
Islam and Muslim violence. Acknowledging this link remains
especially taboo among political liberals. While liberals are
leery of religious fundamentalism in general, they consistently
imagine that all religions at their core teach the same thing
and teach it equally well. This is one of the many
delusions borne of political correctness. Rather than continue
to squander precious time, energy, and good will by denying the
role that Islam now plays in perpetuating Muslim violence, we
should urge Muslim communities, East and West, to reform the
ideology of their religion. This will not be easy, as the
Koran and hadith offer precious little basis for a Muslim
Enlightenment, but it is necessary. The truth that we must
finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of
martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim
violence. Unless the world’s Muslims can find some way of
expunging the metaphysics that is fast turning their religion
into a cult of death, we will ultimately face the same
perversely destructive behavior throughout much of the world. It
should be clear that I am not speaking about a race or an
ethnicity here; I am speaking about the logical consequences of
specific ideas.
Anyone who imagines that terrestrial concerns
account for Muslim terrorism must answer questions of the
following sort: Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers?
The Tibetans have suffered an occupation far more brutal, and
far more cynical, than any that Britain, the United States, or
Israel have ever imposed upon the Muslim world. Where are the
throngs of Tibetans ready to perpetrate suicidal atrocities
against Chinese noncombatants? They do not exist. What is the
difference that makes the difference? The difference lies in the
specific tenets of Islam. This is not to say that Buddhism could
not help inspire suicidal violence. It can, and it has (Japan,
World War II). But this concedes absolutely nothing to the
apologists for Islam. As a Buddhist, one has to work extremely
hard to justify such barbarism. One need not work nearly so hard
as a Muslim. If you doubt whether the comparison is valid,
ask yourself where the Palestinian Christian suicide bombers
are. Palestinian Christians also suffer the indignity of the
Israeli occupation. This is practically a science experiment:
take the same people, speaking the same language, put them in
the same horrendous circumstance, but give them slightly
different religious beliefs--and then watch what happens.
What happens is, they behave differently.
While the other major world religions have
been fertile sources of intolerance, it is clear that the
doctrine of Islam poses unique problems for the emergence of a
global civilization. The world, from the point of view of Islam,
is divided into the “House of Islam” and the “House of War,” and
this latter designation should indicate how Muslims believe
their differences with those who do not share their faith will
be ultimately resolved. While there are undoubtedly some
moderate Muslims who have decided to overlook the irrescindable
militancy of their religion, Islam is undeniably a religion of
conquest. The only future devout Muslims can envisage—as
Muslims—is one in which all infidels have been converted to
Islam, politically subjugated, or killed. The tenets of Islam
simply do not admit of anything but a temporary sharing of power
with the “enemies of God.” Devout Muslims can have no doubt
about the reality of Paradise or about the efficacy of martyrdom
as a means of getting there. Nor can they question the wisdom
and reasonableness of killing people for what amount to
theological grievances. In Islam, it is the moderate who is left
to split hairs, because the basic thrust of the doctrine is
undeniable: convert, subjugate, or kill unbelievers; kill
apostates; and conquer the world.
It should be of particular concern to us that
the beliefs of devout Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear
deterrence. There is, after all, little possibility of our
having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range
nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be
mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom
and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United
States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more
or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. We must come to
terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous
to die as the September 11th hijackers may one day get their
hands on nuclear weaponry. As Martin Rees, Britain’s Royal
astronomer, has pointed out, there is no reason to expect that
we will be any more successful at stopping nuclear
proliferation, in small quantities, than we have been with
respect to illegal drugs. If this is true, weapons of mass
destruction will eventually be available to anyone who wants
them. It seems a truism to say that there is no possible
future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for
us.
From Wikipedia.org
This fragment of the Koran (Sura 33,
Verse 73-74) translates in part as
“...That God may chastise the
hypocrites, men and women alike,
and the idolaters, men and
women alike...” (A.J. Arberry
translation). Idolatry is at the
center of the Muslim outrage over
the satirical Muhammad cartoons.
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