So, there’s this whole controversy going on in the United States about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”. It’s been going on for months now, though I only first heard of it in early September. I’ve been meaning to comment on it, but I’m somewhat hesitant to wade into the “debate”, considering just how nasty some people are being over it. And I wish I could say it was just the flag-waving, conservative, “this-is-a-Christian-nation” types who were being nasty, but it isn’t; there seems to be an inordinate number of atheists who are also being just as nasty about this issue too, which I find pretty disappointing.
Now, I could easily start writing a long and detailed explanation of how Park51 is actually a community centre and not a dedicated mosque, which will provide a number of secular services to the local public, such a five hundred-seat auditorium, a performing arts centre, a fitness centre, a swimming pool, a basketball court, a childcare area, a bookstore, a culinary school, an art studio, and a food court, in addition to providing space for Muslims to pray in. I could easily explain that part of the reported reason for building this place is to promote peace and understanding between different faiths, and that the complex will also include a memorial to the victims of 9/11. I could tell you that the complex is going to be built a whole two blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center and not even on the same street, and that there is already a mosque much closer to Ground Zero that has existed since before 9/11 and that no one is protesting them. I could tell you all these things and I could spend a long time doing it, in arduous detail.
But I’m not going to waste my time on such irrelevancies. The fact of the matter is, under the first amendment of the United States Constitution, the Islamic community in Manhattan absolutely has the right to build this centre at the location they want. So long as it’s on private property, whether it’s a mosque or a community centre--hell, whether or not it’s a “victory mosque” and whether or not it was built on the very site of the World Trade Center itself--the only regulations the building must comply with are the local building ordinances and zoning laws; there is no law against building a religiously themed centre on private land. So, the protesters have no legal grounds on which to object to the building being put up. I think some of them know that, which may be why there are rumours flying around about some of the funding coming from terrorists, which is absurd; if that could be demonstrated, the authorities could prevent it. No, there is absolutely no legal reason to prevent Park51 from being built; indeed, it would be illegal to try and prevent it.
But I’ll be the first to admit that what is legal is not always the same thing as what is moral. For instance, I think that bans on gay marriage in places like Texas are wrong; what is legal (the fact that gay marriage is forbidden) is not the same as what is moral (the fact that gay couples should have the right to marry if they choose). So, is the issue of Park51 a case like that? Do I think that, while it’s legal, it’s immoral and that the Muslims shouldn’t build their community centre, even though they have a right to? I suppose there’s an extremely vague sense in which I feel that way, yes, but it has nothing to do with 9/11 or the building's proximity to Ground Zero. As Zinnia Jones on YouTube has said of herself, I too am as much against the building of a new mosque as I am against the building of a new church. I think places that seek to propagate religious faith are doing harm to society; whether it’s a mosque or a church or, hell, an interfaith community centre, they’re all doing something I object to for moral reasons. This is one of the reasons I speak out against religion and support others who do, in the hope that I might convince people to give it up and subsequently reduce the harm being caused. However, religious faith is a reality we have to deal with for the time being, so we need to figure out the fairest possible way in which different religions can co-exist with each other as well as with those who do not follow any religion.
And, what do you know? James Madison and Thomas Jefferson figured it out way back in 1789, when the Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution. The answer is separation of church and state: the government doesn’t get to make decisions in favour of or against any religion, they don’t get to make laws based on religious beliefs, and they allow people to worship as they see fit (provided they do not intrude on the rights of others), without fear of discrimination or persecution at the hands of the state. This means Christians get to build their churches, Muslims get to build their mosques, and atheists don’t have to attend either of them. So long as it’s all done on private land with private funds, they’re within their rights. So, in this case, I think the law in the United States is right; it’s as fair as you can possibly get, and I honestly don’t understand how anyone can seriously object to it. That being the case, I must necessarily support the right of the Muslim community in Manhattan to build Park51, though I do not personally like the fact that they plan to build it. It is much the same as how I would defend the right of a Muslim to have his religious beliefs, even though I find those beliefs to be largely abhorrent; however, the moment he causes harm to someone else in the name of his religion is the moment my tolerance ends. I am a liberal, and my position on questions like these is always that people ought to be free to think and act as they choose, so long as they’re not causing overt harm to anyone else. Of course, I think authoritarian religious beliefs, like Islam and Christianity, necessarily cause a degree of harm both to the believer and to others they interact with, but it’s a degree of harm that we need to tolerate for the time being, since the forceful elimination of religion would almost certainly lead to far greater harm; it is usually a bad idea to try and force your values on others, even if your values are right. But I digress. The point is, while I may not like what you choose to do with your freedom (and I have a right to say as much), it’s your freedom to do with as you choose.
But not everyone agrees with that. Some people would like to see restrictions imposed upon Islam that no other religion is subjected to. Last year, for instance, Switzerland passed a constitutional ban on new minarets throughout the country; while this got most of its support from conservative politicians (unsurprisingly), certain feminist groups in the country also supported the ban, ostensibly due to Islam's treatment of women--as if banning a piece of architecture will make Islam a more egalitarian and progressive religion. And there are others elsewhere in the world who would like to outlaw other innocuous aspects of Islam (things like Halal meat, for instance) that are really not the root of the problems with the religion; it's treating the symptoms, not the cause. Some of these people, naturally, are conservative Christians; the kind of people who think the United States (or whatever country they’re from) is a “Christian nation” and that this justifies limiting the rights of other religions, especially those in direct rivalry with Christianity. I intend to deal with that issue another time and I’m not that interested in addressing the conservative Christians in this post, since they’re not doing anything terribly unusual or surprising; this kind of behaviour is typical of them. No, the people that really bother me in the whole debate on Park51 and Islam as a whole are the atheists.
Now, as anyone who knows me will already understand, I am an atheist. I’m not going to spend any time explaining why here, since that’s another topic in itself. As I’ve already explained, I’m not objecting to the Islamic community in Manhattan building Park51, nor am I objecting to Muslims practising their religion (at least, no more than I object to religions in general doing this sort of thing), provided they’re not causing anyone overt harm. Throughout the years, I’ve known many other atheists, and many of them are very much in my camp when it comes to Islam and Park51. However, there seems to a disturbing number of atheists, like YouTube personality, Pat Condell, who are very much on the same side as the conservative Christians when it comes to Islam; in fact, some of these atheists will often forego any criticism of Christianity, focussing instead purely on criticism of Islam. People like this argue that Islam is clearly the worst of the two religions and they tend to accuse people like me (whom Condell condemns as “liberal leftists”) of being too harsh on Christianity and too soft on Islam. Furthermore, there appear to be a number of atheists, whom I’ve encountered on the Infidel Guy forums as well as at Richard Dawkins.net, who believe in this bizarre idea that all Muslims are necessarily fundamentalists, and that they all want to take over the world. They argue that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim; if a Muslim claims not to want to take over the world in a violent Jihad, then they’re either lying so they can work against us in secret, or they’re not true Muslims. These atheists will often cite passages from the Hadith in support of these claims.
However, they run afoul a major logical fallacy, known as the ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy, which goes a little like this; you narrowly define a group of people according to a limited set of criteria and then deny that anyone not fitting those criteria exactly is truly part of the group. For example, “no true Scotsman eats sugar with his porridge”, and any example contrary to this is dismissed as simply as: “well, that's not a true Scotsman”. By this exact same logic, I could deny that any Christian who accepts evolution is a true Christian, or that any Jew who doesn’t stay kosher is a true Jew. I'd be wrong in both cases, because I've no business defining what a true Christian or a true Jew is. There are plenty of self-professed Christians who accept evolution and plenty of Jews who pay no attention to religious dietary rules; who am I to tell them that they're not true believers? And likewise, who are we to tell a Muslim, who does not believe in violently subjugating the world to his religion, that he is not a true Muslim? What does the fact that it’s written in the Hadith matter, when Christians can reject the biblical story of creation without being similarly dismissed as “not true Christians”? These Muslims do exist; indeed, they appear to make up the majority of all Muslims in the West, if not the world as a whole, or else we should see far more violence in the name of Islamic dominance.
Another objection is that, if moderate Muslims actually do exist, then they’re not doing enough to make their voices of opposition to the extremists in their own religion heard; they don’t do enough to condemn Islamic terrorism, they don’t do enough to oppose oppressive Islamic theocracies, they don’t speak out enough against the brutality of some of their co-religionists insofar as the treatment of women and administration of criminal justice is concerned, and they are far too eager to defend Islam from criticism rather than openly acknowledge the flaws in their religion. But, if there is a lack of criticism of fundamentalist Islam from moderate Muslims, then there could be many reasons for it, having nothing to do with a paucity of moderate Muslims or an ultimate allegiance of the moderate Muslim to their fellow Muslim rather than to their fellow moderate, and I’ve read some fascinating discussions regarding some of these possible explanations. However, I’m not going to discuss them here, because, honestly, I think the expectations people have of moderate Muslims are absurd. The reaction of moderate Muslims towards the inhumanity of the Islamic faith, be it in countries where Islam is the law or against the West, is no different to the reaction of Christians to the inhumanity of Christianity in similar situations. For both groups, the most common tactic in dealing with these genuine concerns about the religion is outright denial.
When a Muslim apologist in the West is confronted with an example of what’s wrong with Islam, such as the 9/11 or 7/7 terrorist attacks, the chances are they will assert that Islam is a religion of peace and subsequently deny, therefore, that the attacks were in keeping with Islamic values. They may also argue that the attacks were not even based on a misinterpretation of the religion, so much as purely political grievances between predominantly Islamic nations and the West; religious language may have been used to win the hearts and minds of fellow Muslims, but the real reasons for the attacks had nothing to do with Islam. Indeed, the apologist may even go so far as to say that the attackers or, at least, those who planned and organised the attacks, were “not true Muslims”. Furthermore, the apologist may argue, as I have often heard, that the term “Jihad” is being misused and that a Jihad is actually any kind of personal religious struggle; it does not mean a holy war of extermination against the infidels. Furthermore, when the burqa and general Islamic practices regarding women are criticised as oppressive, the apologist may argue that they’re not intended to be oppressive but, rather, to protect Islamic women, by hiding their physical appearance from lecherous men, who would be unable to control their sexual desires if they could see it. In addition, many apologists for the burqa will argue vehemently that, in western societies at least, Islamic women wear it by choice, not because they are raised to or compelled to by male relatives. Personally, I am not all that convinced by any of these arguments, but they are what I would expect of a religionist who is confronted by criticisms of his religion.
Moreover, this is precisely the sort of thing we hear from Christian apologists when their religion is criticised for its role in atrocities, past and present. If you cite the Crusades or the Inquisitions as an example of Christianity’s inhumanity, then the apologist will tend to argue that these things weren’t really about forcefully spreading Christianity but rather they were purely political campaigns for land, power, and wealth that used religion to win the support of the ignorant; but Christianity itself was not the cause. Moreover, if you speak to Protestants about the Crusades and the Inquisitions, they will readily condemn these atrocities as crimes of the Catholics, who are not true Christians, while absolving true Christians (i.e. themselves) and the Christian faith, as it is meant to be properly understood, of any responsibility. Centuries of anti-Semitism will be readily dismissed as not in keeping with a Christian worldview, and its ultimate expression in the holocaust during the Second World War will be blamed, not on nearly two millennia of uninterrupted hatred of the Jews by Christians, but on atheism and on the theory of evolution. When the Catholics are confronted with the child abuse scandal in their church and with their own failure to properly deal with it, with their policy of silence, covering up abuse, paying off the victims and their families, and shuffling priests on to new parishes where they can continue to offend, the Catholic apologist will accuse the media of sensationalising the issue and lay the blame at the feet of homosexuals in the clergy, perpetuating the lie that homosexuals are more inclined towards this kind of perversion than heterosexuals, rather than accepting any responsibility for the church's own failure and, indeed, the church's own crimes. In any church, the sexist, racist, and homophobic laws of the Bible are dismissed by moderates as part of the Old Testament, arbitrarily rendered irrelevant by the coming of Jesus Christ, and some theologians will even argue that opponents of Christianity are opposed to a Christianity that doesn’t really exist, since no one who really understands what Christianity is interprets the Bible literally. I’m no more convinced of any of this than I am of the apologetics for Islam by moderate Muslims.
Where are the moderate Christians speaking out against Christianity’s moral failings, both historical and contemporary? They don’t exist, at least no more so than do the Muslim moderates speaking out against Islam’s moral failings. Religionists simply do not accept criticism of their religion. They will accept criticism of followers of their religion; they will accept criticism of interpretations of their religion; they will even accept criticism of actions carried out in the name of their religion. But always, it seems, will the religionist spin any and all criticism of their religion in such a way as to absolve the religion itself of any wrongdoing or any responsibility for wrongdoing done in its name. This is not unique to Islam, but very much a practice within Christian apologetics as well, and I really wonder what other people, other atheists, expect of Islam or what they think they’re getting from Christianity and other more “moderate” religions. I don’t see Catholics marching in their thousands on the Vatican in protest of the church’s child abuse scandal or their attitudes on women, homosexuals, and contraception any more than I see Muslims marching in their thousands on Mecca in protest of the oppression of women, homosexuals, and non-Muslims under Sharia law. And what excuse do the Catholics have? It’s not as if they’ll be shot dead for trying it, whereas organised protestors in Saudi Arabia might. No, I do not expect religionists to acknowledge the flaws of their religion. At best, you’ll get them to concede that their holy book may not be the literal word of God, but they will still insist that it contains truths that transcend space and time and are as relevant today as they were when the book was written. This is not a flaw to the moderates who believe it, and they use this position to condemn the fundamentalists as “not true X”, since they believe in a literal interpretation of scripture. To acknowledge a flaw in the religion is to admit that something in the religion is wrong, and no religionist is willing to do that; after all, if part of it is wrong, then it could all be wrong. Therefore, all perceived flaws must necessarily be the result of misinterpretation of scripture or some outside influence affecting the way in which the religion in practised.
It’s ironic, really, considering it was the outside influence of the Enlightenment that arguably kick-started the process of forcing Christianity to be more civilized. Indeed, this, in my opinion, is one of the most important differences between Christianity and Islam: one was subjected to a long period of reformations still aren’t finished yet, whereas the other was not and has only just begun to be exposed to the Western concepts of pluralism and individual liberty. Of course, I think the reality is a bit more complicated than that and I could go into a long discussion of it, but this blog entry is already very long, so I shall come to my conclusion now.
Honestly, I am sick of all this hatred from atheists towards Islam. I don’t like the religion; I hate it in fact, but I hate it as much as I hate any organised, authoritarian religion. Islam, interpreted literally, is hardly more dangerous than Christianity interpreted literally; Islam just happens to the be the one that has the greater propensity for fundamentalism at this time. I do not believe the reasons for this are inherent to the religion itself, but rather are based on historical, cultural, political, and economic factors. Islam is a younger religion than Christianity--six hundred years younger, in fact. Why should we be so surprised that much of Islam is largely where Christianity was in the fourteenth century? I’m grateful that moderate Muslims do exist and do not want to wage a genocidal war against all non-believers, in the same way that I’m grateful that moderate Christians exist and don’t want to exterminate all gay people, in spite of what both their holy books may say. Now, Sam Harris makes the case that religious moderates make society safe for fundamentalists, and I do agree with him; if societal memes are such that believing in something purely on “faith” is acceptable, then we’ve opened the doors for fundamentalists as well as moderates. This is why I won’t go any easier on moderates in debate than I would on fundamentalists, especially concerning matters of “faith”. However, I do not think it is helpful, in the current political climate, for us to be treating all Muslims as equally part of the problem. Some are worse than others--far, far worse--and I think we need to acknowledge that. I’m not saying we should thank moderate Muslims for not wanting to kill us, nor should we treat their watered-down theology as if it is better than it really is, but I do think we ought to acknowledge and respect the fact that these Muslims do not agree with those who consider themselves to be our enemies. There’s no denying that there are Muslims in the world who want to do us great harm, who want to convert or kill all non-believers, and establish an Islamic-dominated world; but that’s not all Muslims--it probably isn’t even most. I think it is unwise and dangerous to assume otherwise. If we want to see Islam change for the better, the last thing we should be doing is alienating those Muslims who actually share our Western values of democracy and individual liberty by throwing them in the same bucket as the fundamentalist lunatics who don’t. After all, the moderates may be our best hope of making Islam a more civilized religion. I’d like the religion gone, personally, as I would with all religion and all superstitious belief; but, being pragmatic, I’ll accept a kinder, more liberal Islam if that’s the best we can do.
