islam

My project in life is generally to try to make sense of the world as best as possible (which of course is inherently doomed to failure), and to maybe, someday, escape this Aporia and find the Logos.

So with this whole Islamic violence thing, how can we account for it? one response is to say that “Islam just is a violent religion”.

Well, no more violent than any other of the two other monotheistic faiths.
A response to this would be “but then how come the other two aren’t so violent?”.

My theory is this:

Actually the other two religions were as “barbaric” as Islam, in some of it’s forms, appears to be today.

When the Jews first appeared on the scene, all such violence was going on. A response would then be: “but that was talmudic times where such behaviour was the norm and accepted throughout the middle east. Today we are living in different times, there are a multitude of other competing ideologies and fundamentalists attitudes are not accepted.”

I would say, that actually, the world is no more barbaric today than in those ancient times. Of course it is different in how it manifests it. I see it not only in Hiroshima, the holocaust, darfur………..but also poverty, exploitation and multinationals exerting violence on the most vulnerable.
So yes, we are definitely still living in violent times. I really cant bare the way people talk about the world today as more progressive than other times in history (is it a Hegelian view?).

So Judaism, as it matured from it’s infantile stage, had it’s more violent teachings removed and it evolved into the religion it is today where there is no more stoning of women or such like.

Then along come the Christians, and yeah they were dam barbaric too! The Crusades for instance. And then they started to reform!

Then, along comes Islam, and hey, what do you know, they ALSO have a barbaric stage! Funny isn’t it, seeing as all these religions derive from the same book!!!!!!!!!

Now all of a sudden, we conceive of Islam as having some innate violent streak! But why should we expect Islam to be the exception to the rule. And the notion that we are living in more progressive times just doesn’t make sense, since violence surrounds those living in war torn places, and living in poverty (happens to be quite a few Muslims experience these things, strangely enough.)
Expecting Islam to suddenly reform in line the west (even though it definitely has in vast areas) is ridiculous a concept as trying to, by force, set up a democracy in Iraq by waging war on it! religions, like anything, take type settle, and seeing as anyone who isn’t Islamic doesn’t have much respect (not surprisingly from a modern secular standpoint) for Islamic fundamentalist beliefs, then I think it’s going to take some time and we should view it from an objective and historical perspective.