Today’s new Jesus and Mo strip, “policy,” is timely, and came with a note that “Moses is still hanging around.” And in this case he’s acting like a Regressive Leftist.
I’ll add one note: the Leftist claim that Islamist terrorism has very little to do with religion, and in fact is due far more to Western “colonialism” (as if the original Caliphates weren’t imperialist!), has puzzled me more than anything else in the last few years (Except, of course, the behavior of religious people who worry about whether or not dogs go to heaven.) The answer, which took me unconscionably long to realize, is that it’s a double form of racism against Muslims—who, of course, aren’t even a “race” in any sense of the word. First, because Muslims are, on average, browner than Europeans, they can be considered “oppressed”, and thus we have to give them a break, even when they toss gays off of buildings, kill atheist bloggers and Yazidis, and turn women into sex slaves or the contents of cloth sacks.
Second, because, on average, Muslims are browner than Europeans, we shouldn’t hold them to as high a standard of behavior as, say, those horrible white Israelis (many of whom are Arabs). Mix that in with excessive respect for the religion of people of color (but not so much for religions of people of no color, like Catholicism), and you get the toxic behavior that Moe discusses below.
One of the most distressing and hypocritical things I’ve seen in the online atheist and Leftist literature is how much of it has gone silent on bad behavior attached to Muslim doctrine. We see Western hijabis touted as heroes for flaunting a sign of a misogynistic religion that, a few years ago, was as mocked and derided for being more repressive, sexist, and homophobic than the oft-criticized Catholicism. (Far better to criticize those Islamic regimes that forbid women from taking part in sports.) Now we get silence, except from liberal or ex-Mulsims themselves—people like Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali—or those who speak the truth, like Dave Rubin, and are thus doomed to be Leftist Apostates. The Left itself has fallen victim to the pernicious fallacy that criticism of religious doctrine is equivalent to bigotry—but only when that doctrine is Islamic.
Of course the behavior of the West certainly destabilized the Middle East, as a piece in Sunday’s New York Times emphasizes, but that doesn’t excuse for a minute what Islamist terrorists are doing now. Not for a millisecond. We wouldn’t excuse blacks and Native Americans in America, historically our most oppressed groups, if all of a sudden they began stabbing civilians, murdering gays, or beheading civilian members of the groups that historically oppressed them.
Lets start a flame war: d*gs do go to heaven but cats don’t. Discuss.
The first dog in heaven:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika
No, no, that was a cat in dog’s fur.
Don’t believe me? What do you think CCCP stood for, if not the Ceiling Cat Cosmonaut Project!?
As a child in a Soviet bloc country, I had the story of Laika told in pictures from the viewpoint of a boy who befriended her while she was a stray. Saddened by her disappearance, the boy rejoiced when he heard she was flying in space. The story ended here. It took some 15 years for me to learn the true end, namely, that Laika didn’t return alive and was not meant to.
I am now reading with my son a children’s adaptation of Greek myths. There, the story of Jason and Medea ends with them becoming king and queen (and Medea’s brother an immigrant). It is not stated, “And they lived happily ever after”, but it is implied.
I beginning to think that the Regressive Left is where religious and racial bigots now go to hide out, being marginalized for their nasty worldview in many other forums.
Someone who thinks that it’s OK to call Prof. Coyne a “repulsive kike” or Maajid Nawaz a ‘porch monkey’ is no different from a cross burning member of the KKK and in fact too cowardly to just come out and admit that they are repulsive human beings.
I’m beginning to think that the word “left” is losing all meaning.
Sadly, yes. For the terms Left and Feminist, both.Inappropriate appropriations. Ah yes, another issue…appropriation.
How many people can you name, of whatever political stripe, who will admit to being a repulsive human being?
I have been so at times.
Before morning shower, certainly.
One day it may be discovered, by revelation no less, that religious fervency is what perpetuates social isolation while making all sustainable foreign policies impossible.
Most secular societies also have very poor foreign policies. E.g. why does Sweden support the Palestinians? (Rhetorical question.)
Maya, my background is very different from yours, and often I tend to disagree with you, but I came to value your posts highly. Not this post in particular, but you have this unnerving capability to make me think about my preconceptions, more than anyone else.
Thanks for that.
I guess there is no end to the number of labels given to the various groups. Leftist Apostates is a new one to me. Does not apply to this atheist because one cannot abandon what was never there.
Did not read the whole article over at Time but it does explain at the end that ISIS is on the decline so speculate on what comes next. Something more like the same or something better. Who knows but one thing for sure, the west will get the blame for sure if it is bad, because religion has nothing to do with it.
I’ll support the opinions of those who celebrate the ‘freedom’ of right of women in western countries to wear hijabs when those same women also have the freedom NOT to wear them in Muslim countries, and when those countries stop employing morality police.
Or take any prayer meeting of modern day, decent, moderate Muslims….and ask them where the women are. Check how many hands are raised in agreement when you suggest women be allowed in. Ask how many think some form of Shariah law be allowed them. Then think some more about your point of view.
To be fair, these days there are some mosques where women and people who are openly gay all worship together. There’s even a mosque in the Netherlands (or maybe Denmark) where the imam is a woman and which is entirely run by women. These mosques also usually support the separation of mosque and state and other Enlightenment values. We’re not going to get rid of religion, but imo this is a good compromise.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
Heather, is that really true? Female imams and gays in a mosque? I would really *love* to believe it, it would be so wonderful. Please, pretty please, some references?
Most run by women: http://says.com/my/news/sherin-khankan-s-mariam-mosque-in-denmark?utm_source=says_mobile&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=mobile_share
Gay imam: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/06/19/south-africa-gay-imam-spreads-message-of-empowerment-when-it-comes-to-homosexuality-and-islam/
Gay-friendly, gender-equal mosque: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/09/16/south-africa-death-threats-as-gay-mosque-opens/
(I did a post about the last one, which disappeared from my site in a hacker attack. I didn’t keep a copy so couldn’t reproduce it unfortunately.)
Reform is possibly the only reasonable solution. The problem of not knowing what people really mean becomes irrelevant as the actions deemed justifiable by religion become less over time. This is a solution by attrition: enough people simple leave or secularize the religion.
It is depressing to me to see how many people buy into the characterization of Islam as a religion of peace. At least modern liberal Christians who delude themselves into believing that Christianity is a religion of peace have the excuse that in most (though not all) of the cultures in which Christianity is the majority religion life is relatively (compared to Christianity’s past and especially to Islam’s present) peaceful.
The regressive left’s behavior in these matters goes beyond merely inaccurately assessing the available evidence, to me anyway. They aren’t just wrong in a technical sense, they are also being egregiously unethical. In my opinion. Their belief in belief, belief in religion, belief in the evils of the West, their contradictory SJW beliefs and whatever other sanctimonious beliefs they build their self images on do not justify and are not worth the servitude, persecution, misery and death that their behavior supports.
Shadi Hamid is a Muslim political scientist who writes for the Atlantic and the Brookings Institution. He has written a book that deals with the relationship between Islam and secularism. He is skeptical that secularism will win over religious influences in Islamic society, and he doesn’t necessarily think that is a bad thing. Of course, we can differ with that belief. For our purposes, however, this comment he made to Emma Green in an interview on the Atlantic site is interesting.
Hamid: As political scientists, when we try to understand why someone joins an Islamist party, we tend to think of it as, “Is this person interested in power or community or belonging?” But sometimes it’s even simpler than that. It [can be] about a desire for eternal salvation. It’s about a desire to enter paradise. In the bastions of Northeastern, liberal, elite thought, that sounds bizarre. Political scientists don’t use that kind of language because, first of all, how do you measure that? But I think we should take seriously what people say they believe in.
In other words, Hamid clearly states that many adherent to Islamic political movements, presumably including ISIS, join them out of religious motivations.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/the-meaningless-politics-of-liberal-democracies/486089/
Important article.
Just finished reading the linked-to article in the The New York Times Sunday magazine on the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS. What a remarkable piece of journalism! Reminds one why the Gray Lady is still the nation’s newspaper of record.