Reza Aslan Makes a Lot of Sense Defending Islam. The CNN Anchors Sound Like Islamaphobic Bigots.

Author’s note: I’ve edited the title of this post to reflect more accurately the point I wanted to make.

Reza Aslan is responding here to this rant by Bill Maher:

It’s important to point out that Maher is right: Muslims who engage in offensive practices—whether they are individuals, governments, or groups like ISIS—should not get a pass just because they are Muslim and people are afraid to criticize them for fear of being called racist. Nonetheless, Maher’s critique of Islam is narrow and bigoted in exactly the way Aslan describes. And, frankly, the CNN news anchors are not much different.

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53 Responses to Reza Aslan Makes a Lot of Sense Defending Islam. The CNN Anchors Sound Like Islamaphobic Bigots.

  1. 1
    Brian says:

    When in doubt, look for where apostasy and blasphemy carry civil and criminal penalties as a good measure of relative freedom. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that societies that just put peer pressure on people rather than relying on fines, prison or death sentences to get people to conform are objectively better.

    http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/28/which-countries-still-outlaw-apostasy-and-blasphemy/

    “A new Pew Research analysis finds that as of 2012, nearly a quarter of the world’s countries and territories (22%) had anti-blasphemy laws or policies, and one-in-ten (11%) had laws or policies penalizing apostasy. The legal punishments for such transgressions vary from fines to death.

    We found that laws restricting apostasy and blasphemy are most common in the Middle East and North Africa, where 14 of the 20 countries (70%) criminalize blasphemy and 12 of the 20 countries (60%) criminalize apostasy. While apostasy laws exist in only two other regions of the world – Asia-Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa – blasphemy laws can be found in all regions, including Europe (in 16% of countries) and the Americas (31%).”

  2. 2
    Pete Patriot says:

    I am a US patriot, the USA is a great Christian nation and our laws reflect the great wisdom of Jesus Christ. If Reza Aslan is right that Muslim counties like Indonesia, Turkey and Malaysia value freedom I hope they will join with us against the threat of the Islamic State and funders of terrorism in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

  3. 3
    Doug S. says:

    Some people are afraid to criticize those practices for fear of getting assassinated.

  4. And your point is, Doug?

  5. I agree in principle with Aslan’s critique of Maher and Harris but it seems some of the arguments he used in that interview are not exactly honnest:

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/05/reza-aslan-is-wrong-about-islam-and-this-is-why/

  6. 6
    JutGory says:

    You say he makes a lot of sense defending Islam and makes the anchors sound like Islamaphobic bigots.

    He did that by identifying FGM as an “African” problem.

    Makes himself sound like a racist bigot, no?

    -Jut

  7. Jut—

    Actually, I didn’t say Aslan makes the anchors sound like Islamaphobic bigots. I said they sound like that, and I think they do regardless of what one thinks of Aslan’s statements. I have more to say about this, just not now.

    Jean-Nicolas—

    Thanks for the link. I will read it carefully when I have the time.

  8. 8
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Maher is talking in very general terms. Aslan objects to that response, but (as noted in the link posted by Jean-Nicolas) Aslan’s own responses are sort of ridiculous. He seems about as biased as Maher may be, albeit in the other direction. Just to take one of the single examples which caught my mind before I even read that response: how can Aslan seriously claim that the female leadership is the result of female-friendly politics, rather than what amounts to dynastic succession?

    Using the “bigotry” aspect to duck discussions about group facts is dirty, divisionist, argumentation.

    All Muslims are not the same. That much is obvious to anyone. But that is true of ANY large group. I doubt that anyone here would blink about making claims relating to men, whites, cisgendered folks, straight folks, Europeans, and so on. Those claims may not be true about certain individuals, but they don’t preclude conversations about the social pressures of larger groups.

    ETA: Notably, many groups that we discuss are geographic, and therefore much smaller-and much more ideologically diverse–than a given religious group. “Californians” or “Germans” says nothing about what you believe. “Christian” or “Muslim” is still pretty darned broad, but at least there’s a shared social mandate and commitment.

    And in that vein, Islam is, as Aslan notes, about 25% of the world population. Christianity is about a third. How the fuck can it be “bigotry” to discuss a quarter of the world? Should we call it “bigotry” when folks talk about problems with Christianity?

    We need to stop granting Islam what amounts to heckler’s veto. Blocking Mohammed pictures because folks fear violence is a bad thing. Shutting down conversation about multiple rich countries and the religious beliefs of a quarter of the world population is a bad thing. Aslan is simply wrong.

  9. 9
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Of course: religion is only a real moral force when people actually care about it. But Islam is, as these things go, pretty strong.

    Islam has a large set of daily reinforcing traditions, and its own, highly detailed, legal code. Adherence to those traditions is relatively high, and the use of the legal code is also relatively high.

    For example, a fairly high % of Muslims perform five daily prayers. That sort of behavior is designed to link religion and personal belief in daily life. But that level of religious commitment and practice is something which many folks would consider “conservative” or “orthodox” in the context of other religions.

    Similarly, the number of Islam-heavy places which explicitly or implicitly include shariah law into their legal code is also relatively high. But there are not as many analogues for other religions.

  10. G&W:

    I note the way that you personify Islam in both your responses, for example:

    Islam has a large set of daily reinforcing traditions, and its own, highly detailed, legal code. Adherence to those traditions is relatively high, and the use of the legal code is also relatively high.

    And also how you equate Islam—as if it were a monolithic entity—with the people who can be included under that label:

    And in that vein, Islam is, as Aslan notes, about 25% of the world population.

    I would suggest that that kind of framing—and it’s one that people use without even thinking about it—is part of the problem. I know that in the sentence after the second one I quoted, you did the same thing with Christianity, so my point is not that you are somehow singling out Islam in this way. Imagine, though, if I said something like this: There are an awful lot of Christians in the world who think all non-Christians are going to hell. Those same Christians want very much to see Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, shamanism, etc. disappear completely from the face of the earth. Therefore, Christianity promotes a kind of cultural genocide through proselytization. (And I am using inflammatory language on purpose.)

    This is not precisely the framing that Mahler uses, but it is pretty damned close, and the problem with it is, first, precisely what Aslan says: Islam promotes neither violence nor peace. Like any religion, it contains ideas, commandments, etc. that are often in contradiction with each other, that are open to vey different interpretations, to exploitation for political purposes, and so on. Like any religion, the interpretation of those things changes over time, according to geographical location, and many other factors. And so to frame a discussion about Islam as though it were a monolithic entity is, quite frankly, intellectually dishonest at the very least.

    Here is a link to the English text of an open letter written to ISIL’s leader, signed by 126 Muslim scholars and clergy from around the world. The letter explains in detail, in terms of Islamic exegesis and jurisprudence, why his understanding of Islam is wrong. Does the practice of all Muslims around the world conform to the vision of Islam set out in the letter? No. Are there points in this letter—and I am talking about the executive summary at the beginning—that are clearly open to interpretation that might still result in practices that we consider unjust? Yes. Do those practices deserve to be questioned, criticized and ultimately changed? I think so. But, at the very least, the existence of the letter gives the lie to the notion that Islam is a monolithic entity and that we can talk about it as if it were in a way that is not bigoted.

    I still have to read Jean-Nicholas’ link, so I will come back to that in another comment.

    ETA: Forgot one thing: Here is a link to the HuffPo write up about this letter.

  11. 11
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman says:
    October 7, 2014 at 9:33 am
    G&W:

    I note the way that you personify Islam in both your responses,

    And I note the way that you–like Aslan–focus on the smaller issues (in this case, a literal semantics argument) as your primary point, while ignoring the larger ones.

    And also how you equate Islam—as if it were a monolithic entity—with the people who can be included under that label:

    Which, oddly enough, seems to ignore this entire paragraph:

    G&W said:
    All Muslims are not the same. That much is obvious to anyone. But that is true of ANY large group. I doubt that anyone here would blink about making claims relating to men, whites, cisgendered folks, straight folks, Europeans, and so on. Those claims may not be true about certain individuals, but they don’t preclude conversations about the social pressures of larger groups.

    I would suggest that that kind of framing—and it’s one that people use without even thinking about it—is part of the problem.

    I wholly disagree. I would suggest that constantly focusing on the framing, rather than the statement behind it, is the problem. It limits the discourse and avoids the real issues.

    I know that in the sentence after the second one I quoted, you did the same thing with Christianity, so my point is not that you are somehow singling out Islam in this way.

    I’m glad you recognize that. But this amounts to a tone argument–and not even a good tone argument.

    Imagine, though, if I said something like this: There are an awful lot of Christians in the world who think all non-Christians are going to hell. Those same Christians want very much to see Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, shamanism, etc. disappear completely from the face of the earth. Therefore, Christianity promotes a kind of cultural genocide through proselytization. (And I am using inflammatory language on purpose.)

    But why would I imagine this? I don’t have to imagine your response at all. I can easily look at real life: so far, you are completely ignoring WHAT I wrote, and are entirely focused on HOW I wrote it. Even your ridiculous hypothetical is about tone and not content.

    But in any case, I do not think that language is either inappropriate or inflammatory. More to the point I think it should be viewed on a different axis: is it TRUE, or is it NOT TRUE?

    Dude; if you have a response, I’ll deal with it it. If you think mine is wrong, I’ll address your explanation as to why. But I’m not going to talk tone with you any more.

    This is not precisely the framing that Mahler uses, but it is pretty damned close,

    And this is relevant because….?

    and the problem with it is, first, precisely what Aslan says: Islam promotes neither violence nor peace. Like any religion, it contains ideas, commandments, etc. that are often in contradiction with each other, that are open to very different interpretations, to exploitation for political purposes, and so on.

    But of course, not all religions are the same. At all. In a sense, that is what we are discussing. If you want to accuse me of “intellectual dishonesty,” can you stop with this kind of malarkey?

    Religions differ in how they encourage their adherents to act. Some things are more specific (pray at this time, in this way; don’t eat peanuts; always carry a knife) and some are more generic (self reliance v. reliance on authority; direct communication v. communication through laity; status vis a vis the world and nature; treatment of unbelievers; etc.)

    Those are not the same starting points and on average, they don’t produce the same result. People can sacrifice people no matter what–but if they’re members of a religion which promotes human sacrifices then that outcome is more likely than if they’re in a religion which explicitly forbids them. There’s a reason that Muslims weren’t cutting people’s hearts out, and it has to do with what they believed.

    If you want to claim that those things are irrelevant, then you can make that claim. Here, I’ll write it myself: “Broadly put, the starting tenets of a religion; the holy books of the religion; the systems of a religion; and the views/situations of the people who set up most of its structures and systems; are functionally irrelevant and have zero effect on the average way that a religious adherent will behave.”

    Want to make that claim? No? Me neither. But absent a ridiculous claim like that, the whole “they are all the same” shit is a red herring.

    It’s a bit like government. You can have corrupt democracies and well-run dictatorships, but it turns out that certain structures actually seem to make a difference in how things develop. So do the words of their founding documents. And details matter.

    Would Judaism be a different religion if it had a component of mandatory proselytizing/conversion? You bet your ass it would.

    Like any religion, the interpretation of those things changes over time, according to geographical location, and many other factors. And so to frame a discussion about Islam as though it were a monolithic entity is, quite frankly, intellectually dishonest at the very least.

    Yeah, I don’t really put a lot of value on your “intellectual dishonesty” meter here, to be honest. Nor Aslan’s for that matter.

    Islam is a monolithic entity…. to the same degree as most other entities of amazing size. If you are arguing against the use of generic terminology as an overall rule–for example, if you think we should not discuss anything about “whites” or “men” or “women” or “Eastern Europeans” or “Christians” or without getting into a page-long set of social disclaimers to make sure that we all understand that there are outliers and variance everywhere… well, then I suppose you’d be consistent even though I doubt we’d have much to discuss.

    But to the best of my recollection that is not what you normally do, so forgive me if I refuse to change the rules, now, for the convenience of your argument.

    Here is a link to the English text of an open letter written to ISIL’s leader, signed by 126 Muslim scholars and clergy from around the world. The letter explains in detail, in terms of Islamic exegesis and jurisprudence, why his understanding of Islam is wrong. Does the practice of all Muslims around the world conform to the vision of Islam set out in the letter? No.

    I’m seriously scratching my head to figure out what this point is about.

    Are there points in this letter—and I am talking about the executive summary at the beginning—that are clearly open to interpretation that might still result in practices that we consider unjust? Yes. Do those practices deserve to be questioned, criticized and ultimately changed? I think so.

    You sure ’bout that? Because I see a whole lot of “I would love to discuss this” kind of claims, but when it comes down to the actual criticizing and changing, the “bigotry” label comes out pretty damn fast. This really seems more like that you would be willing to discuss it only with a specific set of predefined agreement–which i don’t agree, with.

    But, at the very least, the existence of the letter gives the lie to the notion that Islam is a monolithic entity and that we can talk about it as if it were in a way that is not bigoted.

    NOTHING is a monolithic entity. Since when does that preclude discussion?

  12. G&W:

    There is a great deal to respond to here, obviously, and I will need to digest this a bit, since on a first read anyway, it feels kind of scattered to me. But let me start here:

    I would suggest that constantly focusing on the framing, rather than the statement behind it, is the problem. It limits the discourse and avoids the real issues.

    Except that the frame determines what you see and the perspective from which you see it. It also determines what you don’t see, and so the frame sets the terms of the conversation, whether you intend it to or not. I recognize that this is, in part, the academic in me, but caring about the framing is also more than that. It is for me about making sure that the “terms of engagement” in a given conversation are clear and that each side can accept those terms. You accuse me of making a tone argument; I think I am talking more about underlying assumptions that are in fact expressed in the language people use when talking about issues like this and that I think need to be made explicit.

    You suggest that “Maher is talking in very general terms.” I disagree. I think he is being very specific in suggesting that Islam is a religion that promotes violence of many different kinds, that it fosters a culture that is misogynist, homophobic and so on, and that our culture is better. Now, is there homophobia in Islam? Sure. Misogyny? You betcha. But there are also Muslims who are challenging that in Islamic terms, through a revisionist reading of the Quran. (Unfortunately, I don’t think you can get to the second page of the article without subscribing. I don’t have the feminist Muslim links handy; I will try to remember to post them when I do.) In other words, there is within Islam itself a mechanism for progressive values to take hold. This is not something that Maher’s framing easily admits—not just in this clip, but in every one of his anti-Islam clips that I’ve seen—and I think denying this fact, intentionally or otherwise, is intellectually dishonest and bigoted.

    To put it another way, there is within Islam the same kind of potentially progressive mechanism that resulted here, to use the example of women, in married women gaining the right to inherit property, in women gaining the right to vote, get an education, hold political office, and so on. So when I criticize Mahler for treating Islam as a monolithic entity, it is the implicit denial of this process that I am critiquing—and I want to emphasize that the process (of interpretation, exegesis, jurisprudence) is built into the religious tradition; it is not separate from it.

  13. 13
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman says:
    the frame determines what you see and the perspective from which you see it. It also determines what you don’t see, and so the frame sets the terms of the conversation, whether you intend it to or not.

    I don’t think that is an issue here in any case. Since we should largely be discussing facts before analysis, then the initial framing doesn’t matter.

    It is for me about making sure that the “terms of engagement” in a given conversation are clear and that each side can accept those terms. You accuse me of making a tone argument; I think I am talking more about underlying assumptions that are in fact expressed in the language people use when talking about issues like this and that I think need to be made explicit.

    You can proceed with any limits and explanations you would like. I am less inclined to go down a detour, myself. To the degree that you require an extraordinary level of introspection and clarification in order to discuss generic traits of one of the world’s largest social groups, I guess I don’t see that as reasonable.

    You suggest that “Maher is talking in very general terms.” I disagree. I think he is being very specific in suggesting that Islam is a religion that promotes violence of many different kinds, that it fosters a culture that is misogynist, homophobic and so on,

    Those terms are general, insofar as Maher doesn’t suggest that ALL MUSLIMS are violent misogynist homophobes. The man is presumably aware that there’s a pretty huge difference between the “if I have to list a religion then, hmm, I guess you should put me down as Muslim but I don’t really practice at all” guy and the ISIS folks.

    and that our culture is better.

    Well. That is actually true.
    We have a lot of problems with our culture and there are many datapoints in which other cultures may beat us individually, but on average I would say that overall our culture is pretty damn good.

    Now, is there homophobia in Islam? Sure. Misogyny? You betcha.

    Great. This is a datapoint.
    Notably, it is ISLAM which contains homophobia, which is to say that the Koran itself is pretty explicit about homosexual sex. This is pretty darn common in the monotheistic religions of that area. Christianity and Judaism also share that trait, of course.

    But of course that isn’t a “human” trait, since there have been plenty of human religions (hello, Greeks!) that didn’t really give a hoot.

    So this datapoint not only reinforces the existence of homophobia in Islam, but also serves to help explain why, as a general rule, Islam contains a lot of people who are actively homophobic. (See, also: Christianity and Judaism.)

    But there are also Muslims who are challenging that in Islamic terms, through a revisionist reading of the Quran.

    In all seriousness: so what? Who cares that there are some people who are deliberately promoting a view that contradicts the plain language of the text? Why on earth are they relevant in a general conversation, since they are a tiny fraction of all Muslims? This is like demanding that people reference Alas in every conversation about social sexism.

    In other words, there is within Islam itself a mechanism for progressive values to take hold.

    Sure.
    But… so what?
    I mean, it’s nice and all that there’s a system, to the degree it exists. Whether it is better or worse than other systems is a subject for another conversation (is Catholicism more or less flexible by relying on a single Pope?)

    Nobody is insulting what Islam could be. Like every religion, it could be better or worse. People are talking about what Islam ACTUALLY IS, and in that context the “…but we could change!” doesn’t really matter much.

    This is not something that Maher’s framing easily admits—not just in this clip, but in every one of his anti-Islam clips that I’ve seen

    Do you expect people who are arguing against something to concede, ever time, that (a) there may be exceptions to the generalities; (b) averages are not always individually applicable; and (c) that if the group changes, it will-duh!–not be the same as it is now?

    Do you expect people to do that in the context of a national news show?

    If so, it would explain a lot. It would also be surprising because I doubt you do that yourself (I sure don’t) but perhaps I’m wrong.

    —and I think denying this fact, intentionally or otherwise, is intellectually dishonest and bigoted.

    Well, that’s OK with me. You can think it’s dishonest and bigoted, and I can think a variety of equivalent things about your argument and style which would probably get me kicked off, you being a mod and all. But let’s just leave it at the “disagree, and not bothered by your judgment” stage.

    To put it another way, there is within Islam the same kind of potentially progressive mechanism that resulted here,

    Potentially.

    …So when I criticize Mahler for treating Islam as a monolithic entity, it is the implicit denial of this process that I am critiquing—and I want to emphasize that the process (of interpretation, exegesis, jurisprudence) is built into the religious tradition; it is not separate from it.

    That is simply fucking ridiculous. To use an extreme example, that’s like looking at the christian faith during the inquisition and crusades period, and being all like “oh no, don’t you see, it can reform and stop killing Jews; you shouldn’t judge it without explicitly noting that the opportunity for ecclesiastical reform exists within the scripture and church, and you should always consider the fact that there are good thinkers, even if they’re minorities with minimal power who might even be at risk from their own church! ”

    It’s like you are so desperate to protect Islam that you are resorting to one eye squeezed shut and a few dice to pray for a good future.

  14. 14
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    I meant to address specific examples, but didn’t.

    Maher talked about the guy in front of the Jesus statute making it look like Jesus was giving him a blowjob.

    He mentioned-correctly, I think–that in any Muslim-majority country you couldn’t make the statue in the first place (I think that cultural restriction is bad) and that if you did you would probably be severely punished for it (which I also think is bad;) and that even if you weren’t severely punished you would nonetheless be likely to face severe physical risk or death from conservative Muslims, as did the folks who published cartoons of Mohammed or, even, certain authors. I think that is bad, too.

    Now, do you disagree? Or do you think those limits are A-OK?

    And in your discourse regarding Maher: Did you mention those things? When referring to his perspective (and remember, you’re writing and have no time limits) did you modify the discussion of “bigoted” and “dishonest” by making sure to include the points of his which are valid?

    I don’t think you did.

  15. 15
    brian says:

    I’m just back for few more days. I am writing to Robert when I can and wanted to sort of check up on you all in case he asks.

    I think you all mean well but you are talking in circles because of how you are framing the discussion.

    Try again but this time discuss how the Age of Enlightenment shaped some societies and totally skipped other cultures and subcultures. Either you are Enlightened or you aren’t. Either you agree to disagree or you don’t.

    The Social Contract wasn’t a suicide pact. If you don’t side with The Federation prepare for a barrage of photon torpedoes so we can get back to embracing Infinite diversity in Infinite Combinations.

    Discuss or stay in the talking in circles thing.

    Either

  16. 16
    Ampersand says:

    Maher talked about the guy in front of the Jesus statute making it look like Jesus was giving him a blowjob.

    I thought the example of the 14-year-old who got arrested for taking that gag photo was a bizarre choice on Maher’s part. The kid was arrested, and is being threatened with two years in jail. (No, he probably won’t be put in jail; but that doesn’t mean that being threatened with it is not a blow against free speech.) Nor is he even the first person arrested for blasphemy in PA – a college student was arrested under the same law in 2010 for peeing on a nativity scene.

    Are there many, many countries where things would be worse? Yes, of course. But in effect saying “at least he wasn’t killed or beaten, so yay USA!” is making excuses for censorship, not defending free speech.

    He mentioned-correctly, I think–that in any Muslim-majority country you couldn’t make the statue in the first place

    According to Wikipedia, in some Muslim countries – those dominated by Shia – images of Muhammad (for example, on postcards) are common. Sunni Muslims are more likely to object to such images. I don’t know if there are different rules or traditions about statues as opposed to images, and frankly, I doubt you know. In “any” Muslim majority country? Like, say, Turkey? How do you know that to be true, G&W?

    By the way, have you noticed that there aren’t any public statues of God (that I know of) in Israel? (Of the Jewish God, that is; there are a zillion Jesus statues). That’s because Jewish tradition says not to depict God (in order to avoid idolatry). If someone did put up a statue of the God of the Jews in a public area, both statue and the sculptor could face violence from ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists.

    Oddly, I’ve never seen anyone criticize Israel, or Jewish culture, for the prohibition against images of God. The equivalent prohibition in Islamic culture, on the other hand, I’ve seen criticized a thousand times over.

    (That’s not to say Israel is “just as bad” as a country like Saudi Arabia, of course.)

    …by making sure to include the points of his which are valid?

    From Richard’s post: “It’s important to point out that Maher is right: Muslims who engage in offensive practices—whether they are individuals, governments, or groups like ISIS—should not get a pass just because they are Muslim and people are afraid to criticize them for fear of being called racist. ”

    * * *

    I thought much of Maher’s monologue was foolish to the point of mind-numbing stupidity, especially his focus on allegedly trivial complaints in the US. Problems in the USA, don’t need to be as bad as the worst abuses anywhere in the world before it’s legitimate to criticize them, nor is “have you criticized every worse thing in the world first?” a fair requirement.

  17. 17
    Ampersand says:

    Brian, make sure to include your return address in your letter to Robert. Even if you use the email system to write him, he can’t write you back that way – he can only write back using the postal system. (I’ll be posting about this soon.)

  18. 18
    Phil says:

    Richard, you write

    The letter explains in detail, in terms of Islamic exegesis and jurisprudence, why his understanding of Islam is wrong.

    I’m having trouble squaring this with your criticism of treating Islam, the religion, as if it is a monolithic entity. It sounds like what you’re saying is that
    a) Islam, as a religion, is not a monolithic entity because
    b) an international group of Muslim scholars wrote a letter that claims that
    c) Islam is, in fact, a monolithic entity and that
    d) ISIL (and presumably, its sympathizers) have it wrong.

    In other words, if the group of Muslim leaders are to be believed, and the leader of ISIL is wrong about his/her interpretation of Islam, and we accept their arguments, then Islam is in fact a monolithic entity with a “right” and “wrong” and everyone should be free to discuss it as such.

    I don’ t think that’s what you intended, but I think it’s always a risk when discusses religion(s). The Muslim leaders you cited did not, in fact, frame their discussion the way you’re asking the discussion be framed. The letter in fact explicitly states that there are “fundamentals of Islam that all Muslims should know.” (Emphasis added.) To be fair, it also states that it is permissible in Islam [for scholars] to differ on any matter–but that’s a paradox. What if scholars differ on that matter?

    The scholars you link to are not saying, “Well, it’s a big world religion and it has the potential for people to hold lots of different beliefs and interpretations.” Do you think their criticism would be better if they carefully couched it with disclaimers?

  19. 19
    Ampersand says:

    Just to take one of the single examples which caught my mind before I even read that response: how can Aslan seriously claim that the female leadership is the result of female-friendly politics, rather than what amounts to dynastic succession?

    In countries all over the world – including the US[*] – the prime ministers or presidents tend to come from powerful and wealthy families. But in some countries, women from those families are able to be elected as the executive; in others (including, so far, the US), they are not. How is it dishonest to note that difference, or to suggest that women’s political progress is part of the reason for that difference?

    Also, to blanket claim that all women in power in Muslim countries are just inheriting their power as part of a dynasty – even though in many cases we’re talking about women who either won popular elections or put together a winning parliamentary coalition – seems both unfair and sexist. If Hilary Clinton becomes President, are you going to dismiss that as a sign of women’s political progress in the USA because her rise to power is based in part on being a Clinton? Do you really think that Tansu Çiller deserves no credit for her rise because her father was the governor of a province?

    By the way, can you please link to blog posts where I’ve said all men are the same, or all white people are the same – or discussed them as if they were a single hive mind? You seem to think that this is a claim that is made on “Alas” all the time, so it shouldn’t be any problem for you to point out a few examples. For my part, I think I’m actually pretty careful to avoid saying things like that, but maybe I’m mistaken.

    [*] In recent decades in the US, this has been more true of GOP nominees for President than of Democrats – Obama and Clinton both came from poor families, whereas the Bushes and Romneys are rich, powerful families, and McCain married into such a family before beginning his political career. But then again, the Democrats also sometimes go for the bluebloods, too – there’s John Kerry, and going back further the Kennedys.

  20. 20
    Phil says:

    By the way, can you please link to blog posts where I’ve said all men are the same, or all white people are the same – or discussed them as if they were a single hive mind?

    I’m not the person this was addressed to, and I don’ t think there are reasonable examples of you doing this on this blog; the closest examples that come to mind are situations where you’ve said things like “virtually all men benefit from sexism.”

    But reading this reminded me of Internet discussions about the meme and the concept behind “Not All Men!” –which gained traction in the blogosphere recently. Rhetorically, I think there are some similarities between what Reza Aslan and Richard J. Newman appear to be requesting and the people who are critiqued/mocked by the “Not All Men!” discussion.

    Some examples:
    A YouTuber posts a video titled “Things Guys Say to Lesbians,” and a commenter writes, “please re-title your video ‘Things SOME guys say to lesbians’ or even ‘things MOST guys say to lesbians.'”

    A blog post is written that ” that the world is full of threats if you happen to be female” and commenters are quick to add “not all men catcall.”

    These behaviors were criticized, because, according to a Slate writer:
    “[…]the people saying it aren’t furthering the conversation, they’re sidetracking it. The discussion isn’t about the men who aren’t a problem. ”

    This form of critique isn’t limited to feminist discussions. A commenter on Jezebel wrote, “This reminds me of how sick Dan Savage got of hearing defensive Christians say ‘we’re not all like that!’ in response to every story about fundamentalist homophobia, as though Christians were the real victims here.”

    Although the rhetorical tactics (“Not all men! and “There are also Muslims who are challenging that!”) are very similar, the difference is probably context.

    When someone says “Not all men make more money than women!” they are derailing a discussion about the fact that lots of men do, in fact, make more money and lots of women make less money and this is a problem. But they are also doing the derailing on behalf of a group that is generally more powerful and enjoys more privilege than the group against whom the transgressions are being perpetrated. Not all men, of course, enjoy all of these privileges.

    On the other hand, someone who says, “Islam isn’t homophobic because some of the people who follow Islam aren’t homophobic!”–even though it might be fair to say they are derailing a discussion about a legitimate problem experienced as a result of many people who do follow Islam–they are doing the derailing on behalf of a group (Muslims) that is generally less powerful than non-Muslims within U.S. society. So, to the people doing the derailing, it doesn’t feel like a derailment, it feels like an important an necessary qualification.

    On the other hand, it is quite likely that a lot of the people saying “Not all men harass women!” and “Not all men get more job interviews than women!” feel like they are adding an important and necessary qualification to the discussion as well. So there’s that.

  21. 21
    Harlequin says:

    Phil, I think you’ve hit on a good point there, but I’d extend it: When the “not all men” crowd pops up, they’re usually addressing people who are trying to affect the opinions of men–your example of “things guys say to lesbians” would likely be part commiseration with other lesbians, part example to men of things they shouldn’t say. But Bill Maher’s comments aren’t aimed at Muslims at all, they’re aimed at his fellow Americans who could (theoretically, depending on his audience) impact whether the U.S. engages in war with majority-Muslim nations. I think it matters that it’s a discussion of (essentially) a third party, instead of something like a dialogue between two people.

  22. G&W:

    I don’t think that [framing] is an issue here in any case. Since we should largely be discussing facts before analysis, then the initial framing doesn’t matter.

    Of course it is. The frame determines which facts you admit as relevant and which you don’t, as evidenced by your dismissal of my link to the Muslim theologian who is arguing against homophobia within Islam (through, by the way, a reading of the Quran, the actual text, not some fantasy of what he would like the Quran to say).

    To the degree that you require an extraordinary level of introspection and clarification in order to discuss generic traits of one of the world’s largest social groups, I guess I don’t see that as reasonable.

    I don’t require anything. People can discuss what they see as “generic traits” as much as they want; that doesn’t mean they are not accountable for their own ignorance or bias when what they say demonstrates it. And I think Maher demonstrates a level of bias and perhaps even ignorance that he should be called out for.

    Who cares that there are some people who are deliberately promoting a view that contradicts the plain language of the text? Why on earth are they relevant in a general conversation, since they are a tiny fraction of all Muslims? This is like demanding that people reference Alas in every conversation about social sexism.

    Well, no. Those people matter because those are the people with whom real change starts, and they are relevant in a general conversation precisely because the general conversation (a term that I don’t like, but I will use for convenience), as Maher frames, portrays Islam as a religion that is more or less immune to change. If the conversation about sexism on Alas were truly innovative regarding sexism, if what we talked about was potentially revolutionary within feminism, then yes I think that someone trying to talk about what feminism is should have to account for the conversation here.

    And in your discourse regarding Maher: Did you mention those things? When referring to his perspective (and remember, you’re writing and have no time limits) did you modify the discussion of “bigoted” and “dishonest” by making sure to include the points of his which are valid?

    Amp already pointed this out, but I will repeat it here. This is from the original post:

    It’s important to point out that Maher is right: Muslims who engage in offensive practices—whether they are individuals, governments, or groups like ISIS—should not get a pass just because they are Muslim and people are afraid to criticize them for fear of being called racist.

    In the context of someone just having watched the video, I guess I assumed that it would be clear that I object to the specific things Mahler mentions just as much as he does, but I am willing to grant that assumption might have been wrong. So I will be clear: I think it is wrong for people who make statues of Mohammed, etc. to be punished, to live in fear and so on—and the same goes for the illegality of homosexuality, FGM, and all the other practices that Maher listed.

    I also note, however, that flag desecration has been a huge issue in this country, and it was at one point a federal crime—just to take an example of an image/artifact that we have at one point protected in a way that is analogous to Sunni Islam’s protecting the image of Mohammad. The fact that flag burning is now protected as speech has to do with the process built into our legal system for deciding such issues, which operates on the same principles of fact finding, reading, and interpretation of texts that religious exegesis and jurisprudence operate on. And we arrived at the point where flag burning could be protected because someone, an individual, was willing to start the discussion by offering a more expansive reading of the constitution—just like the guy I linked to whose revisionist reading of the Quran has come up with a non-homophobic version of Islam.

    There is, in other words, something disturbingly ahistorical about Maher’s position. It implicitly denies that we in the “enlightened west” once engaged in many of the practices that he finds, rightly, so abhorrent in Islam. And not way back during the Crusades, but as recently as the 19th century, when, for example, clitoridectomies were performed to “cure” women of sexual desire. Or in the 20th century, when husbands could rape their wives with impunity or when homosexuality was illegal and being gay could get you killed—maybe not through a legal process, but through a “social process” that would leave the people who killed you free of any consequences. (And that is still true now, in the 21st century, and it is appallingly true for trans people.)

    Now, is it “better” to live here as a woman than in, say, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia? Sure.

    Is it “better” to be gay here than in any of those countries? Sure.

    Is it better to be a poet or a writer or a journalist or a blogger, a human rights lawyer, a community organizer, an educator, here than there? Sure.

    Do we need to call out Saudi Arabia for the fact that women cannot leave the house without a man or drive or vote? Sure

    Do we need to call out Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Taliban, ISIL, Hamas, and any other Muslim individual, group or government for the human rights violations they commit? Sure.

    When those human rights violations are committed explicitly in the name of Islam, justified by references to the Quran, etc, do we need to say openly, explicitly, without being afraid we are going to offend someone’s multicultural sensibilities, that this reading of Islam is wrong precisely because it leads to human rights violations? Absolutely.

    However, what I think is wrong, what I think Maher does, is present Islam as ahistorical and immune to change. I think his vision of Islam is reductive and propagandistic more than it is engaged and thoughtful, and I think he needs to be called out on that, even though I agree with at least some of the impulse behind his anger, as I said above in the bit that I quoted from the original post.

  23. Phil:

    In other words, if the group of Muslim leaders are to be believed, and the leader of ISIL is wrong about his/her interpretation of Islam, and we accept their arguments, then Islam is in fact a monolithic entity with a “right” and “wrong” and everyone should be free to discuss it as such.

    Any group, religious, national or otherwise, is going to have a bottom line beyond which you no longer fit within the definition of that group. That hardly makes the group monolithic.

    ETA: It occurs to me that there is more to say here:

    The letter in fact explicitly states that there are “fundamentals of Islam that all Muslims should know.” (Emphasis added.) To be fair, it also states that it is permissible in Islam [for scholars] to differ on any matter–but that’s a paradox. What if scholars differ on that matter?

    Well, in part, that is how you get different religious denominations, isn’t it? It’s how you got Shia and Sunni Islam; it’s how you got Catholicism, Protestantism, Lutheranism, Methodism, etc.; it’s how you got Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism.

  24. 24
    closetpuritan says:

    I thought the example of the 14-year-old who got arrested for taking that gag photo was a bizarre choice on Maher’s part. The kid was arrested, and is being threatened with two years in jail. (No, he probably won’t be put in jail; but that doesn’t mean that being threatened with it is not a blow against free speech.)

    It also seems bizarre because “you couldn’t make a statue of Mohammed in those countries but you can make a statue of Jesus in Christian countries” is irrelevant unless there was a similar Christian prohibition on making statues of Jesus that the maker of the statue in question was somehow breaking.

    When I read Jean-Nicholas’s link, Hillary Clinton came to my mind, too. For a lot of the points there, it seems like the authors are implicitly comparing the Muslim countries to a truly gender egalitarian country, rather than to Christian(ish) countries. Not that comparing to Christian countries eliminates all the differences, but it makes the contrast less stark. Of course you could argue that both Islam and Christianity are toxic and we should be comparing to non-Christian, non-Islamic countries, but from what I know those are also not feminist/free-speech paradises…

    I noticed that when they say “the major collections of the Hadith Sahih Muslim 3:684 and Abu Dawud 41:5251 support the practice”, they link to two passages that mention female circumcision, but that seem to me to neither recommend nor condemn the practice. (The passages I believe they intended to highlight: “When anyone sits amidst four parts (of the woman) and the circumcised parts touch each other a bath becomes obligatory”; “A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said to her: Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.”)

    Also, not strictly relevant, but I’m reminded of this If It Happened There story.

  25. 25
    closetpuritan says:

    Phil,
    In other words, if the group of Muslim leaders are to be believed, and the leader of ISIL is wrong about his/her interpretation of Islam, and we accept their arguments, then Islam is in fact a monolithic entity with a “right” and “wrong” and everyone should be free to discuss it as such.

    I think if two groups make contradicting claims about the “right” and “wrong” interpretation of Islam, that’s an argument for at least an initial presumption that there is no one right way of interpreting Islam.

  26. 26
    Phil says:

    It implicitly denies that we in the “enlightened west” once engaged in many of the practices that he finds, rightly, so abhorrent in Islam. And not way back during the Crusades, but as recently as the 19th century, when, for example, clitoridectomies were performed to “cure” women of sexual desire.

    Can you be more specific about how Maher’s point “denies” this, even implicitly? I can’t speak for Maher, but I cannot imagine that if you were debating him and you brought up 19th century clitoridectomies or 20th century killings of gay as counterexamples, he would say that those things were fine because Muslims weren’t the ones doing them.

    It feels like what you’re saying is that, even if people, in the name of Islam, do horrible shitty things, we shouldn’t criticize Islam for that because people of all cultures have done horrible shitty things at some point in history, and the popular understandings of Islam might change such that people stop doing these horrible shitty things in the future.

    It seems like an odd or strained argument, and one that could be applied any time any human being criticizes any belief system, ever. Is anyone on planet Earth completely disconnected from any historical group that did terrible things?

  27. 27
    Phil says:

    I think if two groups make contradicting claims about the “right” and “wrong” interpretation of Islam, that’s an argument for at least an initial presumption that there is no one right way of interpreting Islam

    What you’re saying is that because two groups who actually follow Islam are making the claim that there is one right way of interpreting Islam, we should presume that there isn’t one right way of interpreting Islam.

    I don’t disagree with you.

  28. Phil:

    It feels like what you’re saying is that, even if people, in the name of Islam, do horrible shitty things, we shouldn’t criticize Islam for that because people of all cultures have done horrible shitty things at some point in history, and the popular understandings of Islam might change such that people stop doing these horrible shitty things in the future.

    I do not normally respond this way, but did you even read the end of the comment you are responding to?

  29. 29
    JutGory says:

    Amp @ 16:

    Oddly, I’ve never seen anyone criticize Israel, or Jewish culture, for the prohibition against images of God. The equivalent prohibition in Islamic culture, on the other hand, I’ve seen criticized a thousand times over.

    Yeah, kind of because it is in the Ten Commandments. And, it makes sense. First off, the supernatural or metaphysical is difficult to comprehend and to see God would cause your head to explode, or something. So, I get that for both Jews and Muslims. I even get it for Christians; it is just that Christians don’t seem to fear that depicting God is idolatrous if you don’t think the object is a deity.

    But, Islam (or certain sects of it) take it a step further by saying that you cannot depict Muhammad (and, I understand, other prophets(?)) for fear that you will deify him. That seems to be a perversion of the whole notion. “Because we are afraid that you will idolize Muhammad if you draw a picture of him, you must treat him as you would treat Allah and make no images of him.” The analogous position would be if it was forbidden to depict Moses (or pick your favorite prophet) in Israel.

    -Jut

  30. 30
    S says:

    @Richard 28

    I think that’s a little harsh to Phil. Quoting the end of your comment which you cited:

    When those human rights violations are committed explicitly in the name of Islam, justified by references to the Quran, etc, do we need to say openly, explicitly, without being afraid we are going to offend someone’s multicultural sensibilities, that this reading of Islam is wrong precisely because it leads to human rights violations? Absolutely.

    This to me, seems compatible with Phil’s reading that:

    even if people, in the name of Islam, do horrible shitty things, we shouldn’t criticize Islam for that

    because the blame/criticism for human rights abuses which you advocate is directed at the individuals perpetuating them, but explicitly *not* at the belief system represented by the Islamic faith.

    I’m interested in particular in the part of your comment where you say:

    [this] reading of Islam is wrong precisely because it leads to human rights violations

    Can you expand a little on what you mean by ‘wrong’? Do you mean morally/ethically/universally ‘wrong’, or do you mean ‘wrong’ as in ‘un Islamic’? If the latter, does that not presuppose that it is possible to put some boundaries on what is and is not Islamic; which would then render it intellectually feasible to criticise (or praise) ‘Islam’ as an entity, as Sam Harris tried to do? (I’m pointing at Harris rather than Maher because I think his arguments are a lot more nuanced). And if the former, doesn’t the existence of morally wrong behaviours which a) are strongly justifiable through core Islamic texts (the Quran), and b) are performed by self-identified Muslims, motivated by their understanding of their faith pass the threshhold for justifying criticism of ‘Islam’ as a belief system?

    Of course Islam is not monolithic – no ideology with a large number of adherents is – but if those criteria are insufficient, I’m struggling to imagine a situation where criticism of any major ideology would be justified.

  31. 31
    S says:

    Apologies for the double post, but to clarify:

    Any group, religious, national or otherwise, is going to have a bottom line beyond which you no longer fit within the definition of that group. That hardly makes the group monolithic.

    What if remaining within that ‘bottom line’ requires certain beliefs (for example, accepting to some degree the divinity of the Quran/Bible/Tripitaka) which, logically and practically, lead to negative consequences in an increased number of cases relative to those who don’t fall within the the group? Is it then acceptable to criticise Islam/Christianity/Buddhism as a belief system, notwithstanding the existence of individual Muslims/Christians/Buddhists who do not display these negative attributes?

  32. 32
    RonF says:

    Richard, what do you mean by “Islamophobia”?

  33. 33
    Brian says:

    “When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.” GK Chesterton The Way of the Desert, The New Jerusalem

    Are you all deliberately ignoring that a society/subculture is more than the theology it espouses? It is a shared cultural set of values that often goes unspoken. You seem bogged down in what Islam “is” and what Christianity “is.” It would be more fair to look at geopolitics over what liberalism “is” or what oligarchy “is.”

    To my thinking there are no nations or civilizations fighting. Just the memes of “Do as the Chief says” and “let’s just do business like professionals” duking it out, bandits and merchants seeing which will be the world of the future. A state of nature of all against all, or a marketplace at a crossroads.

    Enough with the faith based debating. What about Hobbes vs. Locke?

    Just a thought.

  34. S:

    First, I apologize for the scattershot nature of this response, but I might very well not be able to respond after this until some time next week and I didn’t want to let this sit till then.

    because the blame/criticism for human rights abuses which you advocate is directed at the individuals perpetuating them, but explicitly *not* at the belief system represented by the Islamic faith.

    Well, no. I very purposefully talked calling their reading of Islam wrong, because it is their belief system (as a version of Islam) that motivates/justifies those abuses. So I am talking about criticizing both the people and their system of belief.

    the existence of morally wrong behaviours which a) are strongly justifiable through core Islamic texts (the Quran),

    Except those morally wrong behaviors are also refutable through those same core texts, as evidenced both by the open letter I linked to above and the theologian arguing against homophobia within Islam. Are those refutations suddenly not part of Islam? The Quran, the Hadith, etc. are texts, just like the Bible and the Constitution of the United States are texts. The readings of them that result in policies, laws, religious practices, etc. are informed by many, many things, not least the social, cultural, political and socioeconomic conditions of the people doing the reading—and those categories, of course, include things like gender, sexual orientation, etc. Even among people who believe the Quran is unambiguously, word for word, the word of Allah, there are different readings. So the fact that one set of readings might be privileged over another has a lot more to do with the politics of the time than anything inherent to the text itself—or to some abstract entity called Islam.

    or do you mean ‘wrong’ as in ‘un Islamic’?

    Aside from the fact that I am hardly qualified to decide what is and what is not Islamic, I confess I am not even sure what that question means. Is burning the flag un-American or not? Depends on context and on whom you ask, doesn’t it?

    So, for example, Sufis are Muslims. Sufi Islam looks very different from mainstream Sunni or Shiite Islam. If we decide to draw a ring around what Maher or Harris call Islam and agree to call that Islam, which means we will have excluded the Sufis from Islam, we are basically arguing from a false premise, no?

    Again, I am sorry that this so scattershot. If I can come back sooner rather than later, I will. Otherwise, I will probably not be back until some time early next week.

  35. 35
    Phil says:

    Well, no. I very purposefully talked calling their reading of Islam wrong, because it is their belief system (as a version of Islam) that motivates/justifies those abuses. So I am talking about criticizing both the people and their system of belief.

    I don’t see how this is a helpful or unique argument. All readings of Islam are wrong, insomuch as they motivate supernaturalist beliefs. It might be accurate to say that some translations of the texts are more linguistically accurate than others, but that is clearly not what you’re trying to say.

    Sufi, Shiite, and Sunni Muslims have different readings of the texts, but they’re all “wrong” in terms of correctness. You think so, I think so, Sam Harris thinks so, and Bill Maher seems to think so. If we believed in the literal truths that one of those groups believe, we’d be Muslim.

    This is not unique to Islam; it’s also true of supernaturalist beliefs borne of Christian texts, and Scientologist texts, and Jewish texts, etc.

    I don’t mean this to be cute. The logical endpoint of your arguments is that we can never criticize a belief system or a text, because there are always people who interpret it differently from other people. But you’re engaging in the fallacy of Loki’s wager, insisting that the larger thing cannot be criticized because some unknowable number of the parts that make it up are less bad than others. You speak of religions as though they have self-correcting mechanisms, as though they go from wrong to right over time. But that’s not accurate. Religions (or, the critical mass of believers in particular religions), go from wrong to “wrong in different ways. ”

    FGM, for example, is horrible and wrong. This is true if female circumcision is not supported by the “correct” reading of the Quran, but it is also true even if FGM _is_ supported by the Quran in every imaginable way. The accurate interpretation of the text is immaterial to me; and if you’re being honest, it’s immaterial to you too.

    There is no difference between what a person _believes_ their religion to be and what their religion actually is.

    If someone critiques an Islamic belief, it would be reasonable to ask them to call it a “commonly held Islamic belief,” and then you could argue about factual information–how common is that belief, really? What are the geographic and political regions where that belief holds sway? But to say that the belief isn’t a real Islamic belief is a red herring. It doesn’t matter whether the belief is “real” or not.

    Tl;dr — it is reasonable to criticize people who speak out against Islam and to call them out on factual misrepresentations or exaggerations. But to claim that there is some “true” or accurate version of Islam is immaterial.

  36. 36
    nm says:

    What you’re saying is that because two groups who actually follow Islam are making the claim that there is one right way of interpreting Islam, we should presume that there isn’t one right way of interpreting Islam.

    But the two groups aren’t making that claim. One of them is; the other is saying that there are a lot of possible correct interpretations but that some interpretations are wrong. It’s like I have told my students: there’s almost always more than one right answer to a question,* but that doesn’t mean that all answers are right — some answers are just plain wrong.

    *obviously, I’m in the humanities

  37. 37
    Ben Lehman says:

    nm: Also true in mathematics and science, most of the time.

  38. Phil,

    You quoted me:

    Well, no. I very purposefully talked calling their reading of Islam wrong, because it is their belief system (as a version of Islam) that motivates/justifies those abuses. So I am talking about criticizing both the people and their system of belief.

    I meant, and should have written, morally wrong. I did not mean that their reading is merely an inaccurate rendering of some platonic, pure Islam. All readings are misreadings. There is no one true reading of any text, even those that people believe have been divinely given—as any look into religious exegesis will reveal. And I also should have made clear that by “Islam” what I really meant was “the texts of Islam.”

    You speak of religions as though they have self-correcting mechanisms, as though they go from wrong to right over time. But that’s not accurate. Religions (or, the critical mass of believers in particular religions), go from wrong to “wrong in different ways. ”

    Define what you mean by right and wrong here.

  39. 39
    S says:

    Thank you Richard, I appreciate your thoughtful responses. That said, I don’t think you have entirely addressed the question I was trying to pose, maybe because it was less clearly expressed than I intended, so I will try and elaborate a little. For the purposes of this post, I will define ‘Islam’ as ‘the beliefs and practices flowing from adherence to core texts (in particular, the Quran)’. (I recognise that an alternative, equally valid definition could be, ‘the beliefs and practices engaged in by self-identified Muslims in the name of faith’, but I want to focus as much as possible on the ideology as distinct from its practitioners, while acknowledging that to entirely divorce the two is impossible.)

    I agree with you that there is no single, ‘right’ reading of the core Islamic texts (or any others). But as other commentors have argued, and I think you implicitly accept through your earlier statement about all groups having a ‘bottom line’ for membership, there is such a thing as a *wrong* reading, as well as certain necessary conditions which need to be met for an idea or behaviour to fall underneath the label of ‘Islamic’, notwithstanding the diversity within that label.

    (I appreciate your un-American analogy; however I don’t think it works quite as well as it might, since being American is primarily an identity rather than a system of belief. Even there, though, there are some boundaries; certainly what it means to ‘be American’ varies depending on who you ask and how, but surely a person who, say, has never been to America, but claims to be an ‘American’ because she has seen one Hollywood movie that she liked has a weaker claim to the label of ‘American’ than a person who has taken citizenship and lived twenty years in the United States.)

    Basically there is a continuum: a statement like: ‘The Quran is holy and bears the imprint of the divine’ might sit to the ‘definitely Islamic’ end of the spectrum; ‘There is no god’ would sit on the ‘definitely un-Islamic’ end, and a statement like ‘Apostates should face social and legal sanctions’ sits somewhere in between those poles, with different readings of the texts suggesting different answers, as evidenced by the gulf between mainstream/conservative positions and the reformist scholars you link to above.

    Where we differ, I think, is this statement:

    “the fact that one set of readings might be privileged over another has a lot more to do with the politics of the time than anything inherent to the text itself.”

    The point that Harris has often made, and which I think I agree with, is that actually, the contents of the text itself do have a great deal of influence on interpretation and behaviour. The text is not the *only* factor which goes into constructing a reading and privileging certain readings over others – there is also context, local power structures, etc – but it is a statistically and practically significant determinant. (In my day job I’m an economist).

    So, bringing me back to my question, and an example:

    a) Let’s say that one necessary condition, or ‘bottom line’ as you put it, of ‘Islam’ is accepting some level of divinity in the Quran.
    b) Let’s say that the Quran contains considerably more support (in terms of both the number of verses and the explicitness/non ambiguity of their contents) for the idea that ‘apostasy should meet severe social/legal sanctions’, compared to ‘everyone has the right to change their mind without being punished’.
    c) …and let’s say the vast majority of self identified Muslims in the world, today and throughout history, support the first interpretation.

    …would it then be appropriate to criticise Islam, in this case for its treatment of religious freedom, but also more generally where these criteria are met?

  40. S:

    I think you are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, you acknowledge that there is no such thing as a single reading of the Quran that is objectively authoritative; on the other hand, you want to say, backed by some sort of statistical analysis, that this particular single reading of the Quran—about apostasy, to take the example you give—is, in some sense, the version of Islam that includes all others and that therefore it can be used to criticize Islam-as-a-whole (if you’ll grant me that awkwardness).

    You make this argument based on the notion that there has to be—and I agree there has to be—a line beyond which something can reasonably, by definition, be called “not-Islam.” The problem I have with this is twofold:

    1. I don’t know that you or I, or anyone who is not Muslim and not thoroughly educated within Islam, has the knowledge and authority, much less the right, to decide where that line is for Muslims.

    2. It makes sense to me to assume that “belief in Allah” is such a line and that it transcends any given historical moment, and I know that sounds obvious, but I state it by way of comparing it to the issue of apostasy which you bring up. How to respond to apostasy is a question of the moment, not a question of faith. So, for example, if you read the letter I linked to above, those Muslim scholars point out in a couple of different ways that Islam has changed over time. One instance is in its stance towards slavery, which is in the Quran. They say, “The re-introduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam. It was abolished by universal consensus.”

    In other words, despite the fact that slavery is in the Quran, and that Islam does not forbid the practice, and that Muslim law deals with slavery, and despite the fact, one can assume, that there was a time that the majority of Muslims supported slavery and what the Quran had to say about it—despite all that, it is now, because of a universal consensus, forbidden to reintroduce slavery into Muslim practice. There are other ways in which those leaders point out that ISIL’s leader is treating Islam as if it were an ahistorical religion, as if things which were said and decided centuries ago—not in the Quran, but in the Hadith—in response to specific circumstances of that time and place, apply today with the same force despite the fact that our time and place is very different. And they say this is a wrong thing to do. My point being that they see Islam as situated in history, as a developing tradition, not as something that can or should be frozen in time because a majority of Muslims happen to believe something.

    So, to go back to your example about apostasy. Do I think we should condemn as immoral the imposition of the death penalty—or some other severe punishment—on someone who chooses to leave Islam? Yes. Do I think we should say that those Muslim clerics, scholars, politicians, whomever, who are promoting this practice are promoting something immoral? Yes.

    Do I think we should say that the practice is not Islamic because it is immoral and therefore deviates from some pure, ideal form of Islam in which the practice would not exist? No. To the degree that it is rooted in and justified by a reading of the Quran, etc. it is part of Islam. However, I also do not think we can say—especially if we are not Muslim—that this practice somehow defines the line between what is and what is not Islam because to do that is to deny that there are Muslims who do not support this practice, that there have been and are Muslim scholars and clerics who disagree that Islam mandates the death penalty and severe punishment for apostasy. (I will admit to not having read the text at that site as carefully as I might have, and so in linking to it I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with everything it says. My point is simply that its existence indicates differences within Islam about this question, such that you can’t use the question as a defining line between what is and is not Islam.)

    And this is the problem I have with Maher and Harris. They reduce Islam to an ahistorical religion using cherry-picked facts, denying, dismissing or trivializing the differences within Islam. So I will say it again: I don’t think you can have it both ways. You can’t, on the one hand, accept that there is no one right reading of the Quran, but then, on the other hand, argue that there is a reading that somehow defines Islam and Islamic practice, and therefore Muslim identity, as a coherent entity, with clear boundaries across all Muslims everywhere—excepting, for example, something like the requirement to believe in Allah. It’s either one or the other.

    To me, the latter ends up constituting bigotry, while the former absolutely does not preclude condemning those Muslim practices—by which I mean religious practices engaged in by Muslims (since we seem to agree there is no pure version of those practices independently of the people who engage in them)—which deserve to be condemned.

  41. 41
    Rash92 says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman:

    As someone who, while not being a muslim at present, used to be a muslim, and grew up studying islam:

    There’s more to being a muslim than just ‘the requirement to believe in allah’.

    I find that people who grew up with christianity often have trouble with the differences in how concrete islam is about certain things, and try to extend how vague ‘being christian’ is to ‘being muslim’.

    I especially don’t appreciate being told i’m a bigot for condemning islam as a whole due to some of its core concepts, or specific parts of islam which i consider to be abhorrent by people who know very little about it, and assume that islam is a lot more varied than it actually is.

    Most muslims are sunni, with shia being second, and a few very small sects and offshoots of islam that are all way smaller than the shia sect. Sunni and shia mostly disagree about what happened after the prophet’s death, and who should have succeeded him. They still have a LOT of agreement about the core parts of islam.

    Now, there are cultural muslims and non practicing muslims, and many muslims in western countries are these, who don’t particularly believe in islam, don’t pray, drink alcohol etc., or somewhat practicing muslims who observe the basics but are not particularly knowledgable. You can’t look at their actions and extend that to islam. Just because you have a mate who’s muslim and who drinks alcohol and eats pork, does not mean drinking alcohol and eating pork is acceptable in islam. There are no islamic scholars who say that it is acceptable to drink alcohol or eat pork in islam. There is more to a person than their religion, and their actions are not all linked to their religion. Me condemning islam does not mean i think all muslims are evil or bad people. Just as condemning communism, fascism, christianity, scientology, or any other ideology or set of beliefs does not make me a bigot, even though not all communists agree about everything to do with communism. I should be allowed to have problems with the core parts of certain belief systems without being labelled a bigot or an islamophobe (and for this reason i find islamophobe as a term to be bullshit, as we do not have a term for christianophobe or communiphobe.)

    obviously i can’t go into everything here, as there are a lot of parts to it that i can’t fit into a single comment. But some of the important parts. This is for sunni islam, there may be some differences in shia islam and other major sects, but for all subsects of sunni islam accept this, and shia accept a fair bit of this as well (but there may be subtle differences i don’t know about as i do not know a huge deal about shia islam):

    There are ‘things which you must believe’. these include believing in allah, all of hit prophets, all of his holy books, his angels, the day of judgement, and fate/ destiny. That is part of the core of islam, called the 6 pillars of faith (or imaan).

    The qur’an is the literal direct word of god (not ‘divinely inspired’ like the bible, literally god said it and muhammad memorised it), and one must accept it in it’s entirety to be a muslim. The qur’an is meant to be the perfect guide for humanity for the rest of time until armageddon.

    There are parts of the qur’an that are clear cut, and if one denies such parts, they are not a muslim. If someone says that it is permissible to drink alcohol in general (not including for medical reasons or other specific exceptions) they are not a muslim. Ignorance of those parts are okay, and one can still be a muslim. There are parts that are less clear and open to interpretation, and scholars may disagree on those portions of the qur’an.

    The hadith are a collection of accounts of the life of the prophet, what he said and how he acted in certain situations. They were compiled after his death by asking his companions about stories about him. They are classified as ‘strong (sahih)’, ‘good (hasan)’, ‘weak (daif)’ and ‘fabricated(madou)’. There is a whole field of islamic study on how to properly classify hadith in terms of their trustworthyness. By general consensus among sunni muslim scholars bukhari is the most authentic book of hadith, followed by muslim, which are full of strong hadith and possibly the occasional ‘good’ hadith. I believe shia disagree on this.

    obviously the fabricated hadith are discarded, there is some disagreement about whether the weak hadith should be completely discarded, or accepted on the condition that they do not contradict sahih and hasan hadith and the quran. hasan and sahih hadith are accepted, with more confidence given to sahih hadith.

    the prophets sayings are strongest, as they are explicit rules that he gives. His actions are second, as they are less explicit. His silence is third, where someone did something in front of him and he did not say that what they did is wrong is taken to mean that such actions are permissible.

    In the case of finding out what the ruling for a specific issue are, one should:

    look to the qur’an, if it has a clear ruling, use that.

    if not, look to the hadith for how the prophet and his companions interpreted any unclear portions, or in the case where it isn’t mentioned at all in the quran, see how the prophet and his companions acted in those situations. The quran says to pray, but you need to look to the hadith to find the rules of exactly how to pray for example.

    If that doesn’t work, scholars may look for analogous situations from the time of the prophet, and how he acted (e.g. rulings regarding cars are often the same as the rulings for camels, caravans and other transport that was available at the time of the prophet, for aspects of cars that are analogous).

    If THAT doesn’t work, then the scholars of islam should try to come to a consensus about what to do.

    in short, qur’an > hadith > analogy > consensus among scholars in terms of the strength of the ruling and how sure what can be that such a ruling is correct.

    ALL sects agree on the first part, and there are a lot of rulings that are not disputed. All sunni agree on the second part, i’m not sure completely about the shia.

    If a muslim worships someone other than allah, they are no longer a muslim. Also, if a muslim commits one of a certain class of sin (kalled kufr) they will also stop being a muslim. This class of sin includes things like attempting to use magic, insulting the prophet, calling what is explicitly forbidden in islam acceptable or calling what is explicitly acceptable forbidden.

    It takes a scholar of mufti level or above to declare someone no longer a muslim due to kufr, as one must make excuses to allow for ignorance etc., if one calls someone who claims to be a muslim a non muslim without doing due dilligence, one is at risk of themselves commiting a major sin. You will notice that in that letter from muslim scholars to the leaders of ISIS, they did not call them non muslims.

    Yes, not all of islam is completely agreed upon by all muslims, but there are a LOT of parts of islam that are. There are some parts of islam that depends on the times, and these are mainly regarding issues of technology, rather than issues of belief or rules about things which existed at the time of the prophet. there are a LOT of parts of islam that are ahistorical (and explicitly so, not just according to some sects).

    A MAJOR part of islam is that the qur’an is meant to be the final revealed book and muhammad the final prophet, and they are meant to give rules for how to live until the day of judgement (armageddon).

    Slavery was, even at the time of the prophet, something that was meant to be gradually reduced, and the prophet talked about this. There were rules for dealing for slaves since they existed, but islam had as one of it’s long term goals to eradicate slavery and strongly encouraged people to purchase and free slaves, or to free their existing slaves. Muslims could purchase and trade slaves, but they were not to enslave people who were not already slaves, except in the case of prisoners of war (and the prophet did take prisoners of war as slaves). ISIS justifies their slaves by saying that they are from prisoners of war. As such, this is an example of a difference of opinion on how to handle this. However even the scholars who are against slavery are using to justify their anti-slavery stance what was said at the time of the prophet about wanting slavery to end. It is still using ahistorical ideas.

  42. Rash92:

    First, thanks for commenting.

    I especially don’t appreciate being told i’m a bigot for condemning islam as a whole due to some of its core concepts, or specific parts of islam which i consider to be abhorrent by people who know very little about it, and assume that islam is a lot more varied than it actually is.

    If what Bill Maher and company had to say about Islam were half as well informed as what you have written here, I would not be calling what he has to say bigoted or him a bigot. My main point is, and has been, not that one can’t critique or condemn Islam, but that what is bigoted is to do so in a way that presumes, and is intended to demonstrate, that we in the west who are not Muslim, who are somehow superior because the west is superior—not because we have studied Islam and have something substantive, from within to say on the topic—are able authoritatively to tell Muslims what is wrong with Islam.

    As an aside—and I mean it, truly, as an aside; I am not trying to sneak in the notion that I really think what you wrote above is bigoted—I am well acquainted with the difference between what you call the vagueness of being Christian and the concreteness of being, in my case, Jewish. That distinction was part of the foundation of a great deal of medieval European antisemitism and an awful lot of Jews were tortured, killed, forced from their homes, forcibly converted because of the meaning the Church gave to that difference.

  43. 43
    brian says:

    My main point is, and has been, not that one can’t critique or condemn Islam, but that what is bigoted is to do so in a way that presumes, and is intended to demonstrate, that we in the west who are not Muslim, who are somehow superior because the west is superior—not because we have studied Islam and have something substantive, from within to say on the topic—are able authoritatively to tell Muslims what is wrong with Islam.

    Now you’re just being silly again. That’s the “Culture excuses everything” fallacy and it doesn’t hold water for a second.

    Also, no matter how well ANYONE seems to know whatever culture you’re defending, you sniff your nose and say “Well, if you ONLY understood it as well as I do…”

    I’ve JUST seen you in effect tell someone who grew up a Muslim that YOU know their culture better than they do. If I tried that I’d be crucified!

    That’s cultural imperialism for a culture you’re not a member of, which is just weird IMHO.

  44. Brian,

    I did not say culture excuses everything; I have never said culture excuses everything.

    I did not say that I know Islam better than Rash92, who clearly knows it better than I do.

    I am not defending Islam. I never claimed to be defending Islam.

    And since, I will say again, that I assume you have read what I have written as carefully as you seem to think people should be reading your words, my only conclusion is that you are willfully misrepresenting me, and so I will ask you to stop.

  45. 45
    Rash92 says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman:

    I’m new to commenting on these types of blogs, is there a way to reply to actual people or am i meant to just copy/ paste a persons name like i’m doing?

    I was a little defensive because i have been called an islamophobe and a bigot for speaking negatively about islam by western liberals who have very little knowledge about islam in the past, who bring their biases about their own faiths and apply it to islam.

    My point is that

    reduce Islam to an ahistorical religion using cherry-picked facts, denying, dismissing or trivializing the differences within Islam……Muslim identity, as a coherent entity, with clear boundaries across all Muslims everywhere—excepting, for example, something like the requirement to believe in Allah

    Islam DOES have clear boundaries/ is a coherent entity, if not completely than certainly more so than western liberals like to think it is. And it is not bigoted to treat it as such. Muslims have more to their identity than just their religion, and how much of their identity is based on religion, how much is based on culture and other factors, how strictly they adhere to religion tells you about the differences among muslims. It IS largely ahistorical, and is so by design. There are much fewer differences within islam than western liberals like to think. Once you restrict yourself to just sunni islam, there is even less.

    turkey for instance is a very secular country, it has much less of an islamic influence than most other muslim countries. bangladesh has a lot of influence from hinduism, and the culture combines aspects of both islam and hinduism. Bangladesh is also a fairly secular compared to many other muslim countries, though nowhere near as secular as turkey.

    that we in the west who are not Muslim, who are somehow superior because the west is superior—not because we have studied Islam and have something substantive, from within to say on the topic—are able authoritatively to tell Muslims what is wrong with Islam.

    slight aside, i’m not saying you disagree with this but just a point i want to make since it sometimes comes up:
    Sometimes one culture CAN be superior to another culture. As a hypothetical, Take 2 identical cultures, and in one add homophobia. I would say the culture that does not have homophobia is superior. And it is not wrong for the culture that does not have homophobia to point out that the other culture is worse off because it does have homophobia.
    end of aside

    One does not need to be a muslim to study islam. Bill maher is a dick, but Harris has, from what i’ve seen, studied islam a fair bit. He certainly has more knowledge of islam than Ben Affleck, and is closer to the truth of the situation than Affleck is. Harris does not generalise to all muslims, he just says that the proportion of fundamentalist muslims is greater than western liberals want to admit, it’s not a fringe.

    Reza Aslan as an apologist has been dishonest about, among other things, the situation in bangladesh, saying that it was an equal country gender wise because it has had female heads of state. I caught that particular point because i have a bangladeshi background, i don’t know how honest or dishonest he was being about indonesia or the other countries he used as examples as i do not have experience with them. Turkey i can believe, because turkey is very secular, however i very much doubt that is the case in indonesia and malaysia, but i will reserve judgement on that.

    Bangladesh is a VERY unequal society, the reason the two current party leaders are women has mostly to do with the fact that one of them is the daughter of one of the founders of the country, and the other is the widow of another of the founders of the country. Most of the political ads and campaigning are not focused on the two women themselves but on their associated founders and which was better. Bangladesh is also one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and when a few years ago the military took over and instituted martial law, most of the people i talked to from over there were happier under martial law than under either of the ‘legitimate’ parties, because corruption decreased by such a large amount.

    There is some level of equality in the capital and in private schools and universities, but even there it’s not much, and it is much worse in the rest of the country.

    If you have 3 hours to spare i would reccomend watching this:

    which is a much more honest debate on the topic (and having more time is kind of neccessary for that). I have some disagreements with both Harris and Cenk on this, but it is overall a much more honest discussion of the situation, and the disagreements are smaller disagreements, and more about how much influence different factors have than about any fundamentals.

    I’m about halfway between Cenk and Sam in terms of how much is based on religion and how much is based on situation. I haven’t studied the bible or the torah in detail so i can’t particularly comment on the comparisons between the religions. ALthough i will say that from the conversations i’ve had with orthodox and ex-orthodox jews, they are very similar in a lot of ways. Islam is certainly more similar to judaism than it is to christianity.

  46. 47
    brian says:

    Doug, on a similar note and just as applicable…

    Many suspicious of more inclusive Montana KKK chapter

  47. 48
    Ampersand says:

    Doug, in that metaphor essentially wiping out the bad text – Nazism – was actually a possibility. Because it was a political party, not a religion. Political parties, especially in the right context, can be outlawed; the fact that there are still Jews in the world shows that outlawing a religion is not so effective.

    Unlike the Nazi Party, there is no realistic possibility of wiping out Islam or Christianity, so pragmatically speaking, supporting revisionists is the best idea.

    Finally, “if you have a bad foundational text, does “revisionaism” really justify letting it still be influential,” if we take it at all seriously, is an argument that says that we should have wiped out the US Constitution rather than revising it.

  48. Rash92:

    I am sorry it’s taken me a little while to respond; I’ve been needing to give my attention elsewhere.

    I have not given as much attention to Sam Harris’ ideas, and I will watch the video you linked to when I can.

    You wrote this and called it an aside:

    Sometimes one culture CAN be superior to another culture. As a hypothetical, Take 2 identical cultures, and in one add homophobia. I would say the culture that does not have homophobia is superior. And it is not wrong for the culture that does not have homophobia to point out that the other culture is worse off because it does have homophobia.

    I am not sure it is an aside, since I don’t think it is possible to find two cultures that are identical in all aspects except homophobia. It is one thing to say that I value, for example, the freedom of expression that is a norm here in the US and that I therefore abhor and want to work to change, for example, the circumstances that led to the violence that ensued, and the murder that was committed, in the name of Islam, after cartoons of Mohammed were published.

    It is quite something else to argue from a Western perspective, from outside Islam, with little or no knowledge of Muslim thought, culture, theology, religious jurisprudence or practice, that it is impossible to arrive at a notion of freedom of expression from within Islam, and that Islam, therefore, is somehow inherently flawed, more inherently flawed than any other religious tradition.

    That latter perspective is what I find so problematic. (If you, for example, told me Islam could never evolve to include a fully developed concept of freedom of expression, I would wonder why you think so, but I would not conclude that you were an Islamophobe or what have you.

  49. 50
    Rash92 says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman:

    I’m not saying that there exists 2 cultures that are identical except for just one difference, that was just a hypothetical example. Obviously real life is more complicated. But you can still have cultures that are better in some aspects and worse in other aspects, and you can have cultures that are very similar with a few small differences. You can have a culture that has fewer bad aspects than other cultures.

    And just because a culture is currently worse doesn’t mean that it can’t change and get better. But one can still comment on the state of the culture at present. Obviously you shouldn’t talk about problems with cultures without knowing about the culture, but i think you’re placing a little too much importance on the ‘from outside islam’ bit. one can study a culture wihout having to be part of it. And i think sam harris has studied it enough to be able to comment on it.

    I don’t think that cultures with an islamic tradition cannot fix their islam related problems, but to fix those problems they have to go further away from islam, and give it less importance in their culture. They need to become more secular, and to ignore more of the problematic parts. I believe christianity has a ‘give unto ceaser what is his’ clause, i’m not sure about judaism, but islam does not. It inherently calls for theocracy, that the world will eventually follow god’s law instead of man made law, and god’s law is superior to man made law. Just that give unto ceasar clause by itself does a lot to make it easier for christianits to become secular, that muslims will have more trouble with.

    christians accept that the bible is written by man, and is therefore historical, but an inherent part of islam is that the qur’an is not. Therefore islam is much less changeable than christianity is. I’m not sure about judaism’s stance on the changeability of the torah.

    And although all religions have problems, that doesn’t mean all religions have problems of equal severity. the abrahamic religions are all pretty similar in many ways, i don’t know enough about christianity and judaism to be able to rank them in terms of how inherently problematic they are in relation to islam. however from what i know about them, i would say that buddhism or jainism probably have less inherently problematic parts than the abrahamic faiths. (but i could be wrong and buddhism/ jainism may have a lot of problems i’m not aware of).

    As for the freedom of expression thingy, here is some of the evidence in relation to insulting the prophet and where those views come from: http://islamqa.info/en/22809

    For sunni muslims who follow those hadith, there isn’t any escaping those rulings. One could have a shift towards just following the qur’an and ignoring the hadith (which would be quranist and no longer be sunni/ shia islam) but there are plenty of inescapable parts of that as well. the culture can improve by getting less religous, and just ignoring those parts of the religion, but because of what the religion IS (being unchangeable is a core part of it), i can’t see how the religion itself can improve beyond a certain point (the vague bits may improve, but the clear cut bits can’t).

    Also, remember that there does not exist a currently fully islamic state/ caliphate that uses all of the laws of islam (except possibly iran for shia, and ISIS is trying to make one for sunnis at present, but are not being accepted). None of the muslim countries are fully islamic, they all have varying degrees of secularness. In terms of improving muslim culture, it’s a matter of making the secularness go up and the religiousness go down. Saudi is very religous, the UAE are less so, egypt is somewhat secular, bangladesh is fairly secular, turkey is very secular for example.

    Attaturk made a HUGE difference in making turkey as secular as it is today, and one could see Attaturkization of other muslim countries as well for example.

  50. 51
    brian says:

    http://www.salon.com/2014/11/15/wake_up_and_oppose_theocracy_bill_maher_rula_jebreal_and_the_urgent_islam_debate/

    rash92, was curious about your take on this piece in salon. Does it make sense from your own experiences?

  51. 52
    Rash92 says:

    brian:

    I agree with the article. While i don’t agree with all of whay maher says, he should certainly still be allowed to say it. The only real error is that female genital mutilation isn’t inherently islamic, that’s a cultural thing that has been mixed into it.

    Criticism of religions should ALWAYS be allowed. If you get into the territory of judging muslims as people based on just the single aspect of them being muslim, and ignoring how strict they are about adhering to the religion and which parts they actually practice and which bits they ignore, you can get into murky territory, and you need to be more careful. But the article is not doing any of that, so yes i agree with it.

    I’m not american so i don’t hold the constitution with as much reverence as some americans seem to, but the first amendmant i feel is one where america has definitely gotten it right, and i wish other countries took free speech as seriously as the american constitution does.

  52. 53
    brian says:

    I wish AMERICA took free speech as seriously as the American constitution.