Idiot Christians compete with Idiot Muslims: it’s a tie!

The great clash of civilizations continues its moronic advance in the ideological battlefield of children’s toys. About a year ago, a British woman ran afoul of foolish “Islamic” sensitivities in Sudan when she let her class of children name a stuffed bear “Muhammad,” which scandalized local narrow-minded zealots to the point of imprisoning her, calling for her death, and eventually deporting her for “insulting Islam.” The outcry in the teacher’s home country and the rest of “the West” was predictably, and rightfully, indignant. We shook our heads at how stupid these people in Sudan must be to take such an innocent situation and try to depict it as evil… as an insult to their sensibilities and an assault on their society, culture and faith.

And now, groups of drooling mouth-breathers in the U.S. – well publicized by Fox News – are pulling a page from the Sudanese hardliners’ playbook, accusing a babbling plastic doll of mumbling “Islam is the Light” and Satanic phrases. I can picture sensible people the world over shaking their heads at how stupid these Americans must be to take such an innocent situation and try to depict it as evil… as an insult to their sensibilities and an assault on their society, culture and faith.

Muslims should welcome criticism

It’s an unfortunate sign of Islam’s stunted intellectual development that vast majorities of its adherents regard any questioning of the status quo as blasphemy, apostasy, hatred, or “Islamophobia,” and now are trying to characterize it as a human rights violation. The Forward has run an insightful story on this phenomenon in an article noting that the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is pushing the UN to recognize that freedom of speech ends where religious sensitivities begin.

Certainly there are cases in which criticism of Islam crosses the line into disrespectful, even hateful, discourse. But to categorize it as a violation of the rights of Muslims is so absurd as to be laughable.

If my religion is mocked by a cartoonist in Denmark, a novelist in London, or a blogger in Minnesota, how have my rights been affected? More importantly, how could those perceived insults possibly have any bearing on the life of one of the OIC’s citizens? Does a Bangladeshi farmer feel his human rights diminished by Salman Rushdie’s novels? If so, how?

What the OIC’s effort really targets is the preservation of the power of “Islamic scholars” (known as “Ulama” in the Muslim world) to dictate orthopraxy to hundreds of millions of people. If we, as Muslims and well-intentioned adherents to other faiths, are unable to critique Islam (as currently defined and practiced) without being branded rights-violators, then the status quo is maintained indefinitely, and the power of the Ulama continues to grow.

If I am unable to say what I believe about the Hadeeth and the Sunna (the alleged words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) for fear of being branded a hate monger, that’s one more pressure that reformers have to endure, on top of the charges of “apostasy” leveled by our co-religionists.

From my point of view, the Sunna and the Hadeeth are predominantly lies made up by people after the Prophet’s death in order to reinforce their own worldviews, which often were in direct conflict with the Qur’an. This is bolstered by the claims of some Ulama that not only do the Hadeeth and Sunna help explain the Qur’an, but that they can, at times, supplant it.

This, in my view, is heretical and designed strictly to put power in the hands of misogynists, bigots and power-hungry zealots. So I criticize it.

If the Ulama are correct in their interpretations, then they should have no fear of taking on such controversy. The Qur’an, in fact, admonishes us all to use our logic and to argue well with each other. The Ulama, on the other hand, respond to such criticism by calling for executions and saying that such things must not be said. And now they’re trying to get the UN to agree.

If they succeed, they will prolong their already-protracted death throes. But in the end, they cannot and will not win. They are on the losing end of history, and the rest of the world’s Muslims will leave them behind.

When authority substitutes for thought

Having spent considerable time in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the MIddle East, it was easy to discern the complete lack of understanding regarding freedom of speech. Obviously, most countries in the region do not enjoy the ability to engage in open discourse about their governments or about particular interpretations of Islam. If they question the legitimacy of either, they face dire legal consequences.

The results are easy to see. Islamic traditionalists and hardliners – embodied by the Ulama – have become so used to having their authority accepted without question that they are intellectually lazy. Their ideas are vapid, incoherent, and frequently at odds not just with the societies in which they live, but also with the explicit dictates of the Qur’an, which they allegedly serve to uphold.

One unfortunate result of this mindset is the appalling lack of intellectual development in the Arab World, especially when it comes to Islam. Witness this story from the Arab Times of Kuwait, quoting Dr. Adel Al-Damkhi, a professor of Islamic studies. In it, he calls for Kuwaiti authorities to take legal action against YouTube until it removes all derogatory statements about Islam and Muslims. His rationale is telling:

“…uttering profanities against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is the worst form of human rights violation in the world. Attacks on the values and tenets of Islam are extremely dangerous and unacceptable.”

Dr. Al-Damkhi’s gift for hyperbole is a sad statement on his morality. Governments in the region torture prisoners, deny citizens the right to speak out against wrongs, punish discussion of whether Islam can be interpreted in more than one way, and yet YouTube is the worst rights violation he can think of? I hate to think what was involved in his earning a PhD.

Fashion reveals an incremental reformation in Arabia and Islam

While living in Saudi Arabia (I lived there for about 20 years), it was interesting to watch the slow change in fashions that has taken place, representing a slow move away from the backward, restrictive “moral” code of the Mutawa’een – the self-appointed morality police who enforce their own interpretation of Islamic law on the masses. While there, I noted that women’s abayas (the long black cloak that is supposed to hide their feminine curves from men’s gazes) were becoming less like tarps and more like clothing, with decorative flourishes. I remember thinking that it was nice to see that people were becoming less austere and more willing to maintain modest dress while expressing individual tastes.

But I should have known that this would not be a society-wide movement. This story notes that abayas with little decorations like a fringe of lace or some glitter or sequins around the cuffs are in fact a form of “illegal” abaya, even if they cover the woman from head to toe. Here’s a quote from the always-enlightening Mutawa’een:

“You look around you and you find abayas that are embroidered, fitted or with wide sleeves. Most abayas now need abayas to cover them,” says a religious pamphlet available at malls in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. “When some girls go out they (look) like prostitutes who invite people to carry out lewd acts. How else can you explain how some women adorn themselves with their abayas … ?”

The Mutawa’een and like-minded supporters believe that abayas should completely obscure a woman’s outline, cover her face, and some even believe that no skin – even on the hands – should be exposed. I encountered more than a few women in Saudi Arabia who wore black gloves in addition to their abayas.

“This is our way,” said more than one Saudi I talked to about the tradition. But it’s certainly not the Islamic way, and has nothing to do with the Qur’an. It’s simply another made-up rule by the so-called “Ulama” – the “learned ones” of Islamic scholarship – based on willful misinterpretation.

Women in the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s life were relegated to the role of chattel – bought, traded, abused, and even inherited by a deceased husband’s brothers, if they wanted her. Islam gave women the right to own property that could not be touched by their husbands, gave them the right to refuse marriage to someone they didn’t want to marry and to divorce their husbands, allowed them to give testimony, inherit property, and generally allowed them to participate fully in society. This was no small change in Hejazi society at the time; it was cause for some followers of the prophet to dump the new religion and return to the backward ways of their forefathers. But the rules stood firm, even in the face of tremendous internal and external pressures.

Almost as soon as the Prophet had died, however, these rules were rolled back, despite the clear words of the Qur’an, and Hadeeth – alleged “sayings” of the Prophet – were used to justify these clear contradictions of God’s word. Combined with obvious misinterpretation of Qur’anic passages, the Ulama put their collective foot back on the necks of women, and there it has remained ever since.

Now, however, things are moving away from their narrow, unrealistic, and un-Islamic worldview. I can only hope they continue to lose ground, and that the globalization of the idea of women’s rights will continue to re-awaken Muslims to the remarkably forward-looking feminism in the Qur’an. If one thinks about Islam logically – which we are constantly reminded to do by the Qur’an – then it becomes clear that Islam is meant to be a progressive religion. Women were liberated by Islam centuries ago, so its prescriptions should be examined in that context. Until the Ulama concede that the Qur’an was revealed in and for a specific cultural milieu, their views will always be centuries outmoded.