Reminder: "... Religion In General Is The Problem" Is An Excruciatingly Stupid Statement
One of the dumbest, least thought out, and most fetishistic excuses for excusing the barbarism of political Islam is that "Islam is not the problem, religious fundamentalism in general is the problem". Because apparently the Quakers have been really uppity lately, what with their global crusade of hijackings and subway bombings against non-believers. We used to think that nobody serious could actually believe that they were saying those words, but it turns out that a lot of people actually do. For instance - in his curmudgeonly attack on religion in The God Delusion, the not unintelligent Richard Dawkins makes that point again and again. The netroots, of course, love the spectacle - yet another seemingly intelligent, seemingly sophisticated scholar who's as hostile and uncivil to American Protestants as they are.
Of course, the argument is as bad on the facts as it is on its conclusions. Americans are much less religious than generally portrayed - and even fervent Americans do not believe in the same way that the adherents of political Islam do. Both of those points are made in this week's Times Literary Supplement by Noble Physics Prize recipient Steven Weinberg:
One finds in Islamic countries not only religious opposition to specific scientific theories, as occasionally in the West, but a widespread religious hostility to science itself. My late friend, the distinguished Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam, tried to convince the rulers of the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf to invest in scientific education and research, but he found that though they were enthusiastic about technology, they felt that pure science presented too great a challenge to faith. In 1981, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt called for an end to scientific education. In the areas of science I know best, though there are talented scientists of Muslim origin working productively in the West, for forty years I have not seen a single paper by a physicist or astronomer working in a Muslim country that was worth reading... Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God’s hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries...
The consequences are hideous. Whatever one thinks of the Muslims who blow themselves up in crowded cities in Europe or Israel or fly planes into buildings in the US, who could dispute that the certainty of their faith had something to do with it? Dawkins treats Islam as just another deplorable religion, but there is a difference. The difference lies in the extent to which religious certitude lingers in the Islamic world, and in the harm it does. Richard Dawkins’s even-handedness is well-intentioned, but it is misplaced. I share his lack of respect for all religions, but in our times it is folly to disrespect them all equally.
He also uses a couple of lines to mock the asinine statement that "Islam is a religion of peace", as if there was something meaningful about Islam outside of the way that actual Muslims, for good or for ill, choose to interpret it - we would have included it in the excerpt, but we've got to leave you with some motive for clicking through.
Previously: OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Mark Steyn, Ralph Nader and Bill Maher Impressive On Account of Their Nuance, Water On Mars!!!
