Esam Sohail from USA
 Are the lives and honor of Muslims more precious than those of Christians, Hindus, and Jews? Are Muslim clerics ready to condemn now and forever the insidious theory of the 'dhimmi' whereby a non-Muslim in a Muslim society was protected but at the sufferance of a distinctly second-class citizenship?
| Nope. Unless it maintains its illusion of superiority, Islam is merely the religion of some of the least-developed and most corrupt regions of the world. |
It is a peaceful religion that has given unprecedented rights to women and minorities. The social tenets of the faith encourage democratic consultation, discourage slavery, and promote learning. All that is true of Islam-provided you are talking about the seventh century through the Renaissance. Indeed, in relation to much of Christendom, many Islamic societies did provide a degree of tolerance for religious minorities and a degree of rights for women that would have been blasphemous in Western Europe. In its relations with the polities of the non-Muslim world, the Muslim Orient was no more given to warring and plundering than its contemporaries of the Occident.
| I can accept the fact that the Islamic world remained culturally competetive with the Western world up until about the time of the Siege of Vienna — with the reservation that I wouldn't have wanted to live under either society then, and I've got the option to live under only one of them now. |
That was then. This is now. The standards of humanity have evolved beyond the enlightened chivalry set in the sixth century. Repeating ad nauseum that Islam is a religion of peace and moderation is simply a cry of desperation that has lost the moorings of time.
| We can see the peace and moderation in the daily corpse counts and the occasional video of unarmed prisoners being slaughtered. Like yesterday. |
For mere tolerance of religious minorities is not enough and nor is the proposition that some rights are 'given' to women: a civilization worthy of the name must accept, rather than merely tolerate, the diversity of worship styles and rigorously uphold the idea that men and women are both endowed with certain equal and unalienable rights. That acceptance of human diversity and of the inviolability of human rights leads to the negation of the theory that the tenets of one religious faith are superior enough to other traditions so as to allow blatant discrimination and suppression of individual liberties.
| Not to mention forcible conversions or despoiling them of their property and their women... |
An Islam that cannot thus accept the idea that all individuals are created equal by the Creator and blessed inherently with certain basic and unalienable rights is then to be condemned as a religion of war, intolerance, and bigotry. When referring to that kind of Islam, let us then not be mealy mouthed.
| We're not, here at Rantburg. Nor are the muftis and mullahs when speaking among themselves... |
There is no reason to use mitigating phrases like 'it has been hijacked by extremists' or 'it gives rights to Jews and Christians'. Muslims who rightly criticize the harassment of their co-religionists in Europe and the United States must be asked about their total silence at the severe persecution of Christians in Pakistan, Jews in Iran, and animists in the Sudan. Are the lives and honor of Muslims more precious than those of Christians, Hindus, and Jews? Are Muslim clerics ready to condemn now and forever the insidious theory of the 'dhimmi' whereby a non-Muslim in a Muslim society was protected but at the sufferance of a distinctly second-class citizenship?
| Never happen. They're trying their utmost to bring back those golden days of yesteryear, when the Faithful could take their ease, supported by the dhimmi tax... |
Unfortunately, however, raising these issues with most educated Muslims yields but bland responses that have been fed to them from childhood. A 'dhimmi' is supposedly an honored Jew or Christian who has all the freedom to practice his religion in a benevolent Islamic state (as if that freedom is a gift rather than a right!). Or that Muslim women are actually protected by the restrictions placed on them and the polygamy sometimes foisted on them. Is Islam so weak that it cannot face the possibility of non-Muslims and women participating as equal members of society?
| Yes, it is. Islam simply doesn't thrive with competition. The entire religion's oriented toward eliminating it. |
The choice before Islam's clerical elite is simple. Either they can conduct ijtihaad (wide ranging consultations) and help bring to their contemporary tradition the spiritualism of reflection and personal piety that was envisaged by Sufi saints like Rumi, Hafiz, and Mansour Hallaj. Or they can continue defending obscurantism with nonsense like how good Islam is to women or how much it promotes peace and human rights. In the former instance, they should be helped with understanding, support, and patience. In the latter, the civilized world can have no option but to contain a religious system whose contemporary tenets fly in the face of the most fundamental concepts of humanity, decency, liberty. Tolerance of religious minorities and allowing women to choose their own husbands were good revolutionary ideas in the sixth century. Harping on these medieval achievements does not and must not absolve the apologists of Islamic fundamentalism from the severe deficit of human rights and the propagation of a superiority complex that Islam has presided over from Morocco to Malaysia.
(The author is a corporate trainer and former college lecturer of international affairs. He writes from the safety of a civilized nation Kansas, USA.) |