"The left is wrong on Islam. The right is wrong on Muslims." - Ali Rizvi

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Spoiler

Sean Illing
Trump and Trumpism adds a whole other layer of urgency to this conversation. I think we have to find a way to talk about these problems in honest and productive ways, and that is all the more difficult against the backdrop of an explicitly anti-Muslim administration.

Ali Rizvi
That's what the book is about. The book is my answer to that question. How do we have an honest conversation about this without descending into bigotry, and how do we do it in a morally responsible way? I won't completely blame liberals for the rise of Trump — I think the far right owns a lot of that. But liberals aren’t blame-free. They left a vacuum.

The failure of liberals to address Islamism from an honest and moral position left a void that allowed the Trumpian right to opportunistically address it from a position of xenophobia and bigotry.

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Spoiler

Ali Rizvi
I say that the first step to reform in Islam is rejection of infallibility. This seems outrageous to some. They say it’ll never happen. But it has happened in the past. Reform Jews today make up a majority of American Jews. None of them believe the Torah is the literal word of God anymore. But for a long time, that was the deal — the Torah was revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai and the Tabernacle like the Quran was to Muhammad starting in the Cave of Hira at Mecca. It was error-free. Suggesting otherwise was blasphemy — and look up Leviticus 24:16 to learn the consequences of that.

Amazingly, in the last 10 or 15 years, I've started seeing younger Muslims start to doubt the absolute infallibility of the Quran. They say, you know, it was compiled so long after the prophet’s death by his companions, pieced together from their collective memories, something could’ve been left out or added in, and you can only say it’s divinely inspired, not purely divine. Now, that seems like a small demotion — but it's actually huge.

This is why I say I believe in Muslim reform, not Islamic reform. I don’t think using mental gymnastics to reinterpret scripture is convincing. You can’t keep saying “kill” actually means “love,” or “beat your wife” is misinterpreted and actually means “kiss your wife,” and stay credible. In the internet age, everything is exposed. It's online, you can look it up in a dozen languages, multiple translations, the context and syntax and etymology of every word — any 12-year-old can dig that up today.

But when you look at the entire book as a whole and you say, "Well, is this divine or is this just divinely inspired? What is the likelihood that God really said this? If God created binary pulsars and time dilation and tectonic plate shifts, all these amazing things, why would he care if I eat pork or who I have sex with?” That you can work with. Don’t change the way Islam reads, but try and change the way young Muslims think, how they approach and process information. Skepticism, empirical analysis, critical thinking.

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diablofdb wrote:

Religion are bad.... the second you put them in charge or in power, you get people slaughtered.

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Necromael wrote:

edited. not even worth

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soneka101 wrote:

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Necromael wrote:

edited. not even worth

Haha... that was an embarrassing question indeed...

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Necromael wrote:

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soneka101 wrote:

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Necromael wrote:

edited. not even worth

Haha... that was an embarrassing question indeed...

More like history of politics and religion in its wholeness is an embarrasment to the humankind. Even though humans arent worth any better than these primitive systems. Thats why I chose not even to comment further than that one edited line.

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Manocean wrote:

I would not support a Muslim ban if one ever existed. That's too far.

People are wild hypocritical when they go insane over a Christian baker not wanting to be forced to bake a cake and then they are oddly quiet when anything having to do with Islam happens that is negative.

They act like an Islamic bakery would never refuse to bake a cake for a gay transgender LGBTBBQ+ wedding, or a Islamic butcher would never say they aren't going to cook a pork dish for a gay wedding.


Vans Warped Tour has bands each year that are anti-christian, have anti-christian lyrics, etc. Then they turn around and say people shouldn't speak negatively on islam and it's like there's a double standard. If a band came out that had anti-islam lyrics in a song, that band would be labeled all kinds of horrible things, but if a band has anti-christian lyrics in a song they are seen as rebellious and people that are left leaning don't see the irony when they are enjoying the edgy lyrics.

I'm not religious, never have been, but I wish the focus was equally applied.


To quote the above post:


* death penalty for apostasy / leaving islam / blasphemy
* death penalty / corporal punishment for adultery
* legalized discrimination against non-muslims

If you had a sign and it said "I disagree with these Islamic beliefs:" and then put that text, you would be labeled the most disgusting bigoted racist and probably be beaten in the streets for it. But if you had a protest sign with Jesus Christ having buttsex with a goat graphically, people would laugh and cheer you on and give you high fives.


And don't even think about putting a cartoon picture of Mohammad on a sign and walking around in any large western European city, you would be decapitated by the end of the day.