Athée Canadien
Islam
What the fatwa?
Feb 4th
The other day in the pub…we were talking about cannibalism.
Now, I’m generally against eating the flesh of other human beings, mostly because there are so few volunteers… but also, given my own reluctance to be eaten, it seems like a good place to draw the line. From a strictly rational perspective, one source of sustenance is as good as another, but society needs rules, and I think many people would see eating any human flesh as either repugnant, largely due to cultural norms, or at least wrong due to that slippery slope… to carnage.
If we were starving in a life boat, and I died, eat me.
If we were starving in a life boat, and you died, I’m probably gonna eat you. Permission or not.
If we were starving in a life boat, and you were near death… hmmm …would I hasten your departure into the void? Well, that’s one of those questions I think can only be answered in a lifeboat.
Being in a lifeboat is important here, because when its just you, or you and me, we’re not really bound by the ‘what’s best for society in the long run’ talk, and we can get down to what we would do… without such constraints.
There are of course other ethical arguments… does respect for human dignity includes dead bodies? Most people won’t even send their pets to the landfill… let alone granny. That said, I can’t honestly care about what is done with my own corpse, apart from thinking it would be good if some nice doctor cut it up and used the pieces in a transplant.
Having said all that, I do live in a society where you have to treat corpses with respect. And although I can understand it on a emotional level, it still seems somewhat strange. We are social animals, societal norms are important, and even living in a democracy, we don’t always get to decide what those norms are. I’m a proud canadian citizen, but I don’t agree with every law, nor do I view my passport as a straightjacket when it comes to disagreeing with the status quo. Disagreement is good, it forces people to think.
This is why I don’t think we can hold every religious person responsible for the acts of every other religious person, or even those who claim the same affiliation.
I don’t hold all Muslims guilty for 9/11, nor do I think all Catholics are responsible for the child molesters in their midst. What I do is give credit, or discredit, where it is due.
And the following is worthy of recognition.
A Calgary imam will take the bold step of issuing a fatwa — an official religious edict pronounced by a scholar of the Muslim faith — against honour killings and domestic abuse on Saturday.Imam Syed Soharwardy, who is head imam at the Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre as well as the founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, will deliver the fatwa at a mosque in Mississauga, Ont. He will be backed by more than 30 imams and Muslim scholars from across North America who want to send a strong message to other members of their faith.
Honour killing is murder, and abusing a spouse, male or female, is a shitty thing to do, and we should punish the perpetrators of these crimes. We should also support those who stand up against such things.
Enablers
Jan 23rd
Doug Thomas, president of Secular Connexion Séculaire (SCS), asks the question, “Is There a Line to Draw,” as the Email Topic Discussion for January 23. Thomas’ question and answer,
So, is there a line to draw between those theists whom we can see are peace-loving individuals and the fanatics? There may be, but it must be a blurry and faded one and it’s time theists stepped up and helped us draw it more clearly.
echo Jerry Coynes’ statement in the concluding paragraph to his post, “A bad week for free speech”:
As usual, Muslims who claim not to be extremists stand by silently while their coreligionists try to dismantle freedom of speech via threats of death. The silent ones are enablers.
I reserve a special censure for men and women who attend Catholic services, or send their children to Catholic schools, public or private. They are enablers; they enable The Roman Catholic Church to continue its nefarious activities and spread its damaging propaganda.
How dare you let yourself get raped like that…
Dec 1st
As I think these words, even before my fingers strike the keys, I feel like I’ve said this before. I feel like I’ve felt this same frustration before. How is it possible that in 2011, nearly 2012, we have countries with laws that jail a woman for infidelity? To add the most reprehensible insult to injury I’ve ever heard of in my whole life, the “infidelity” is a result of being a rape victim. More >
Crossing the line from intolerance to assault
Nov 28th
We often hear people saying that moderate muslims should publicly stand up against the extremism that can be done in the name of Islam. I think this is fair request, although, it can also be dangerous to do so, depending where you live. The danger to secularists in Egypt right now with a military in charge and Islamists trying to gain power is also a good example.
But stupid dangerous stuff happens here too, stuff that I feel WE need to condemn, even though I don’t know the religion of the perpetrator.
Inas Kadri was shopping at a Mississauga mall with her two small children when a woman she had never seen before came “out of nowhere” and assaulted her, pulling off her niqab.“She was swearing at my religion, she was swearing at my (head) cover, she was swearing at my presence here in Canada,” Kadri says.
On Friday, her attacker, Rosemarie Creswell, was sentenced by a Brampton judge for the assault, which occurred in August 2010 at the Sheridan Centre. Creswell, 66, pleaded guilty after seeing video evidence captured by a mall surveillance camera.
This is unacceptable. People should not have to fear being attacked simply for expressing themselves in public. Sadly, many do, and for good reason.
Where’s the honour?
Nov 24th
A father accused of the “honour killings” of four family members – including his three teenage daughters – was recorded on police wiretaps saying he was “happy” they were dead and that he would “do the same again”, a Canadian court has heard.
Mohammad Shafia, 58, his second wife Tooba Mahommad Yahya, 41, and their son Hamed, 20, are on trial for the first-degree murder of Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar Shafia, 17, Geeti Shafia, 13, and his first wife Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, in 2009.
Prosecutors told the Ontario court their deaths were “honour killings” committed to remove the perceived shame the women brought on their family, such as by having boyfriends.
via Honour killings: Mohammad Shafia says he would do it again: court.
Ok so normally I should write an introductory thought and lead into a quote that makes or reinforces a point I have made. Instead I am going to ask you to read that quote one more time. This time think very hard about what their father says, their Daddy. Then read the daughters names again. Think back to that age. What were you doing at those ages??? Were you running away? Were you appealing to your school or other officials to be removed from your home because you feared for your life??? Were you trying to find balance between being or dressing as the person you felt you were and trying not to enrage a hyper conservative father who you no doubt loved???
There have been 13 such killings in Canada since 2002, said Amin Muhammed, a psychiatry professor at Memorial University in Saint John’s, Newfoundland.
That is thirteen too many. Officials need to wake up and realize that we need new mechanisms in place to better react to and investigate complaints like this from females that come from traditionally hyper conservative cultural backgrounds. For my part I will be writing my MP.
A Muslim Halloween
Oct 27th
A Calgary girl asks her imam if she can go trick-or-treating.
Whether Christians accept it or not, we Muslims should not accept this holiday. It is meaningless. Wearing costumes, going tricking and treating and decorating houses with witches, spider nets and wasting so much pumpkins, etc., are all repugnant things. It is strange to see reasonable people acting as weirdo and doing foolish things. It is also becoming quite dangerous nowadays. Some people really act like monsters and witches. Muslims should not participate in this holiday.
Muslims don’t get to have any fun? Yet another reason why I’m glad to be an atheist.
Any Thoughts?
Aug 19th
On August 17, Jerry Coyne announced that the National Center for Translation in Cairo has just commissioned an Arabic translation of his book Why Evolution Is True. There were numerous comments congratulating Coyne, but a comment by Ben Goren prompted an irrational reply from dguller and resulted in a dialogue between Goren and dguller.
Ben Goren says
Woo-hoo! Conga rats!
The Arab world carried the torch of intellectualism while the West had its Dark Ages. It’s about time we returned the flavour (sic). Just imagine what we can do working together!
and dguller’s first reply to Ben Goren’s innocuous comment is off topic and irrational
Wait wait wait!
Don’t you know that in Islamic lands, non-Muslims, or dhimmis, were treated overall as second-class citizens, marked by signs to identify them (a la Nazi Germany), and generally considered inferior to Muslims?
Does this mean that you are an apologist for Islamic apartheid?
Or rather does it mean that a human civilization can have both positive and negative qualities, and that you are able to see the noble aspects of Islamic civilization without having to endorse all that such a civilization entails?
When asked for an explanation dguller replies
It’s simple, actually.
You refuse to allow the Church any possible positive effect upon individuals and history, and constantly describe it as an utterly malevolent entity that poisons and destroys everything it manages to touch, without exception. And you do this because it has done horrific things, and still does horrific things.
I just found it curious that you can be so casual with your praise of another faith-based civilization with its own share of injustice, e.g. its treatment of dhimmis, but seem completely unable to apply the same perspective to Christian civilization. . . .
Any thoughts?
The discussion continues, and I encourage you to read all of the dialogue.
However, I have a question:
Why does praise for a non-Christian person or country prompt apologists to defend Christianity and Christian countries?
Any thoughts?
A minor point
Aug 3rd
It never fails to baffle me when people jump on the ‘attack secularists’ bandwagon with such gusto. I usually just assume that whoever is making this argument doesn’t really understand what secularism is. At its simplest, secularism means that laws will be completely neutral to the religious beliefs of those who seek legal remedy. It does not mean that hordes of secularist zealots are going to go around smashing manger scenes on people’s front lawns, or that people will have to have secret church in the basement of their local Darwin Temple, and yet that seems to be the recurring myth that gets tossed around.
We are a bit spoiled here in Canada, where our biggest religious/secular fights have to do with stuff like whether or not Sikhs are allowed to carry kirpans into court. We’re lucky not to live in a religious-majority country (at least in the political sense), where our church/state skirmishes are usually small and don’t result in major harm. We are lucky, indeed, that we don’t live in Indonesia:
An Indonesian court sent a “chilling message” Thursday by giving Muslim extremists light sentences for a vicious mob attack in which three sect members died, rights activists said. Twelve people stood trial but none faced murder charges in what human rights campaigners said was a travesty of justice in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. The sentences ranged from between three and six months’ jail — less than prosecutors had sought and well below the maximum penalty of 12 years.
Anyone who thinks that this is me trying to make a Dawkins-style “Dear Muslimah” point about Canadian problems not being worth discussion is profoundly mistaken. Those that know me well know that I am game for pretty much any fight that I get get my blog-teeth into. I am not trying to minimize the problems that we have here, nor am I really seeking to ‘put them into perspective’. There are a lot of things to care about, and if we start ‘triaging’ the suffering of our fellow creatures, we’ll be so paralyzed with bickering that nothing will get done. There are, however, two points that I am trying to make with this news item.
Islam is pure evil?
Aug 2nd
A few days ago I wrote about Sam Harris’ take on the Norway tragedy. Naturally, it elicited some responses, the most interesting to me were the ones that focussed on the necessity to take on the apparent evils of Islam.
First, it’s always interesting to see atheists use such moralistic absolute phrases as “pure evil.” While I don’t believe atheism necessitates a nihilistic moral relativism, and that objective morality can exist (when words like morality are defined in meaningful ways), absolutist language is still discomforting to me. I’d even go as far as to say that I somewhat see absolutism as part of the root cause of this atrocity, and something we ought to be very wary of.
This absolutism also neglects the large diversity in Islamic theology. It is true that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many other regimes are tremendously abhorrent, and I won’t for a second attempt to justify their actions. But what I will point to is the fact that not all Muslims are the same.
Case in point, this past Sunday, I marched in the Vancouver Pride Parade with the BC Humanists and CFI Vancouver. Directly behind our group was a queer Muslim group, including the (almost radically) liberal Ismaili Muslims. Perhaps the most famous Ismaili Muslim in Canada today is Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi who likely has more in common with Barack Obama then Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Further, we ought to recognize that Christianity is still dangerous across the USA and world.
I believe that Humanism and the positive atheism espoused best by PZ Myers teaches us not to see the world in simple black and white terms. Islam, like all religions, is bad, but there are worse aspects and less bad aspects. All are religions are based on unsubstantiated myths and promote uncritical thinking, but some are far more harmful than others.
Focussing on any specific religion can easily turn from critical analysis and consciousness raising to racist xenophobia. At the very least, focussing on the irrationality of the minority can miss the far greater threats posed by the irrationality in the majority. Just by a purely statistical argument, we ought to fear the latter more.
You probably have far more to worry about from your racist neighbour (or even the cops) than your new Iranian co-worker.
And I don’t just say that because most Iranians that I’ve met are atheist physics/engineering graduate students happy to have escaped.
Cartoons
Jul 29th
The Cape Breton Post is under fire for publishing a cartoon critical of Islam.
From the CBC, (who republished the cartoon shown above):
The man behind the drawing is Sean Casey, who says he is surprised that people are upset. He believes it makes the political point he wanted to get across — that extremists are alike regardless of doctrine.
He also believes it is his job to create controversy.
“If there is a venue for an image that might be despicable or insensitive, that’s the editorial cartoon. You can’t do that in a regular newspaper. You can’t be an essayist or columnist and write stuff like that,” said Casey. “A responsible journalism editorial cartoonist is supposed to be like a jester in the king’s court who gets away with saying things … where a regular person would have their head cut off by the king.”
It doesn’t matter if you think the cartoons are stupid, offensive, promotes racism, or encourage stereotypes. By the fact that people think cartoons should be banned is reason enough to publish them and to keep publishing them until they grow up. Debate the ideas presented in editorials, not their existence. It’s amazing how many people still don’t get it.
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