Friday, September 22, 2006

Religion and Reason

A Sunni sister talks at length about her frustration with fragmentation and division within the Ummah. Near the end she provides a link to this Q&A. An illuminating excerpt from the answer:

The Western culture has changed Muslims’ attitude towards any religious issues from adherence to rebelliousness, from obedience to challenge and from following authorities to questioning authorities. The result is that people now believe that every person must make his own judgment and form an opinion in a field of studies that would take a scholar twenty years to be able to tread in with cautiousness and humility. The Western culture is built on rejection of faith, irrelevance of revelation, glorification of the human and the human authority versus the Divine thus putting reason over text, which is the reason why we are witnessing this intellectual mess in the Islamic arena.

Isn't that cute. Of course, the Islamic "scholars" would prefer an army of zombies but they can't come out and just say that, so they deal in such ridiculous palaver.

Sleight of Hand #1: People can challenge a religion, like Islam (gasp!), in the West. Ergo, the West rejects faith per se.

Big bad counterexample: USA.

Sleight of Hand #2: The West rejects faith, blah blah blah, this has caused an intellectual mess for the Muslims.

Hunh!? That would be a religious or a theological problem. What does intellect have anything to do with Islam?

On that note, don't miss the rest of the Q&A. The level of stupidity on display is both comic and Olympian.

3 comments:

Pastorius said...

Well, at least they didn't blame it on the Jews this time.

Myrddin Wen said...

Ah, I see.

The fractioning of islamic intellectualism and religious authority is the fault of, er, western culture.

So, nothing to do with, oh say, infighting between imams trying to take over the world via jihad., then?

Anonymous said...

Sounds kind of like most TV pastors. Western culture ruining the world by discarding faith and encouraging rebelliousness. Pat Robertson, is that you?

Sure Pat's religion is not as blood thirsty (currently) as ROP but it is the same whine in a different bottle.