2010/03/28

Compatibility of Islam and Free Societies

My goal is to determine whether Islam is compatible with free societies such as the Western democracies.  As in every post I will make here, I am interested foremost in truth, and for that reason I am purposefully avoiding the conflicting influence of political correctness.  Those two masters are incompatible.  If you find something I write here offensive, then just leave.

It is conceivable that a specific current-day religion could be incompatible with modern day freedom and justice.  I.e., let's not pretend that every religion is good, and compatible with modern day freedom and justice just because it is a "religion".  If this allegation is inconceivable to you, then there is no point wasting your time here.

This entire post is about the religion of Islam, and Muslims, the adherents of Islam.  If you think something I say has racial implications, then you are mistaken.  If you are of the liberal opinion that arguments against the threat of Islam are generally racist, then please go away until you have learned that (a) Islam is a religion, not a race, (b) Only 20% of Muslims live in Arabic countries, (c) Arguments against the threat of Islam are just as much about the 80% non-Arabic Muslims as about the 20% Arabic Muslims.  I.e. all such arguments are about (precisely) Muslim adherents, regardless and totally independent of race.

My conclusion is that Islam is in fact incompatible with the most basic requirements of a free society, and I assert that the remainder of this post proves this conclusion.  If this conclusion is correct, then I further suggest that it is the duty of politicians-who-understand-the-truth of the conclusion, the current power of Ummah, and the trend of recent Islamic activities, to work against Islam, at least in their own political jurisdictions.  Insofar as any (as yet inconsequential) variant or successor to Islam does not fall to the argument presented, then it may well make sense to support such organization(s) to the great benefit of the adherents and the rest of the world.

Most terrorist actions perpetrated in the world in this century (so far) are, according to the perpetrators themselves, justified by and perpetrated for Islam (for the time being, without implication as to whether these attributions themselves are justified or not... that contention is taken up by following points).  If you have any doubt of this, watch several videos (which include an audio channel) of terrorist acts or terrorist rallies from this century.  Here's an example: 

I am only concerned with mainstream Muslim denominations and forms.  Whether there are other forms more conservative than the mainstream, or more liberal than the mainstream, does not concern me at the moment, because these other forms have so far had no significant effect on global politics.

Mainstream Islam has consensus on the following opinions.
  1. (Former) Muslims who change their mind and reject Islam deserve death 
  2. Non-Muslim people should be subjugated to Muslim people (i.e. the inferiority of non-Muslims should be clearly manifested to us in our day-to-day life) .  The Qur'an prescribes this by example and explicit instruction, is codified by all mainstream Islamic schools of thought, and is enforced by all Sharia authorities.  This respect for subjugation is entirely incompatible with the basic human instincts behind concepts such as equality before the law and civil rights movements.
From the following list of premises I conclude that the self-stated motivations and opinions of Muslim moderates should be scrutinized.  That is, instead of taking them at their word, we should see whether they actually advocate in any effective way for Muslims to be tolerant or to eschew violence.  For example, since they generally admit that too many Muslims are intolerant and violent (thereby allegedly giving Islam a bad name), and even terroristic, are these moderate Muslim leaders therefore educating their followers to avoid the intolerance and violence which they publicly abhor?  My understanding of what moderate Muslim leaders is not based on some counter-productive straw man, but based on what real-life moderate Muslim defenders such as the late Edward Said, Lord Ahmed, and Tarek Fatah say.
  1. There are allegations of a fifth column among moderate Muslim organizations in Western countries.  I am not asserting that this allegation is true or false (I honestly do not know), but that in light of the other evidence presented here, it should not be dismissed out-of-hand.
  2. There is proof (in the form of many examples) of Muslim moderates and Muslim deniers of intolerance actually either participate in or promote both violence and intolerance in the most explicit way when their immediate goal is not to elicit appeasement.
  3. Islamic terrorists are often recruited from moderate Muslim organizations.
  4. Lone wolf Islamic terrorists often hail from moderate Muslim organizations.
Muzzammil Hassan provides a recent dead-on example for at least 2 of these bullets:
 
Muslims are exceptional among current day popular religious adherents in that (a) they all agree that their primary holy book is inerrant + (b) the target holy book explicitly and directly commands them to subjugate all people who do not agree with them..  The hypothesis of this causal link is supported by much empirical and deductive evidence (including several of the preceding points).  I am no defender of any religion, but I assert that no other mainstream religion is so uniform in its uncritical literal acceptance of every word of its holy texts; and has a holy text which so unambiguously recommends violent subjugation of anybody who disagrees.  I know that Wahhabism and some other forms of Islam are considered the fundamentalist varieties, but in the case of Islam, all variants clearly and easily qualify as religiously fundamentalist.  Islamic apologists are fond of tu quoque arguments pointing out deficiencies of other religions in these same respects.  Right on!  Many religions are immoral and dangerous in direct proportion to how much they suffer from items (a) and (b) above, but Islam is the only mainstream religion that 100% completely incorporates both (a) and (b) and has a boat load of empirical evidence to show that millions of adherents purposefully dedicate their lives to the fulfullment of (b).  As both (a) and (b) require significant effort and space to adequately defend (because literary context, precedence, and other factors are critical here), I will leave a full defense to myself or others as blog comments require it.

Since I've run out of time, I hope the provided enthymemes are enough for an enlightened and honest reader to both reach my conclusion, and to defend it from the only serious objections which I can think of.