Religious intolerance or freedom of speech.

[Kommodus]

I'm starting to get the feeling that this isn't about the cartoons anymore. This seems to be evolving into a general Anti-West 'movement'. The longer this goes on, the less sympathy I have for them. It's rare that incidents cause me to change my mind about my most basic beliefs, but my belief in the general goodness of the greater Muslim population is being severely shaken. In situations like this, if you do not decry the violence that is being done, you are condoning it.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
-Edmund Burke

You know, over the past few days I've begun to feel the same way. I don't want to believe that Islam is a religion of violence, and many events over the past years failed to make me think so. For example:

1. Pre-9/11 acts of terrorism didn't do it. In truth I didn't hear about them often, and didn't pay much attention when I did. Terrorism was just something that popped up on the news now and then, and it was done by many different groups.

2. 9/11 didn't do it. Crowds of Muslims celebrated in the Middle East came close, though.

3. Suicide bombings, car bombings, and other violent acts post-9/11, which have received more media coverage, didn't do it. These and all of the previously mentioned incidents could be dismissed as a relatively small number of extremists committing acts of insanity.

But lately, we have:

1. The election of an radical with intolerant and violent tendencies in Iran.

2. The election of a terrorist group to lead the Palestinians.

3. Large-scale, violent (even deadly) protests across the Muslim world over a cartoon.

These are actions of the mainstream, not a few fringe groups. It can no longer be denied - something is seriously wrong with Islam as it is currently practiced. The question is, what can be done to fix it?

[Watchman]

It can no longer be denied - something is seriously wrong with Islam as it is currently practiced.

You're confusing religion and society now, although I'll give you te two can be hard to keep apart when discussing Muslim countries. Muslims aren't rioting (or whatever) because of Islam; they're rioting (or whatever) over a whole host of issues, for which Islam provides a socially acceptable and fairly safe front.

Remember, for most Muslim countries not only did the Middle Ages in practice only end around late 1800s and early 1900s, virtually the entire postcolonial period has been spent under the 'benign' rule of dictatorships and other such nasties. But as even the worst tyrants tended to balk at the idea of crushing Islamist movements with the same brutal efficiency they used on other naysayers (rarely due to personal convictions, but simply because that'd most likely have pissed off most of their populace but good and no canny tyrant wants *that*); this left more-or-less radical Islamist movements as the main outlet of protest against almost anything, and this state of affairs persists to this day. Which is obviously a bit problematic given that such movements have been taking increasingly radical turns as of late.

Although they tended to be outlawed, back in the day Communist and/or Socialist movements (as about the only organized resistance around) tended to meet similar social demands in much of Asia and Latin America. This can be witnessed even today in the curious Maoist rebels of, whatwasit, Nepal ?

[rory_20_uk]

Islam itself has nothing that would make it unable to exist with Democracy, any more than christianity in (for example) 15th Century Spain did. But one more time: Christianity changed. It adapted. scriptures were re-examined.

The Islamic leaders should go back to basics and build a more tolerant code of practice for the 21st Century. It's been several centuries since the last one, it could do with an update. Of course I imagine they like things the way that they are: if Muslims feel "got at" by all these pictures etc etc, they are more likely to remain a power. To be all nice to people never gets the leaders ahead.

[Watchman]

Mind you, what "scriptures were re-examined" led to in practice was a century of wholesale slaughter and atrocities between Catholics and Protestants, and it took the apocalyptic ruin of the Thirty Years' War before folks decided enough was enough.

So it'd probably be safer to leave the Scriptures themselves alone and instead concentrate on people's attitudes to them.

What made Europe follow the path that skyrocketed it far ahead of everyone else, and the Muslim world to enter a long period of ossification around the same time, is something historians still break lances over. However, the earlier history of the Islamic world proves concretely enough the faith is not by itself in no ways hostile to learning, enlightement and general progress.

[Kommodus]

You're confusing religion and society now, although I'll give you te two can be hard to keep apart when discussing Muslim countries. Muslims aren't rioting (or whatever) because of Islam; they're rioting (or whatever) over a whole host of issues, for which Islam provides a socially acceptable and fairly safe front.

I certainly did not intend to; sorry if I gave anyone that idea. That's why I didn't say there was something wrong with Islam, but rather Islam as it is currently practiced. I was referring to the overall culture and attitude of the Muslim world, not the religion per se. Although you're right; it is a bit difficult to divide the two.

I'm fully aware that, at least in theory, there is a possibility for a Muslim "reformation" of sorts. I just hope it doesn't take anything like the religious wars of Europe to make it happen.

[Watchman]

Methinks it is already underway, through the inevitable filtration of what might be termed "modern" values, cultural icons (think McDo's and suchlike) and so on into the Islamic world.

Which is, obviously, among the causes for the anxiety now getting shouted out in the streets. It's my firm belief that worry about "cultural polution" of sorts, or at least "debasement of our traditional values", is among the prime motivators of most Muslim extremists.

Not that anyone ever had too easy a time accepting that sort of thing. We have had and have no shortage of reactionaries in the West either, after all. Heck, the damn Nazis were partly a reaction against modernity...