We here at Meddling Kids have been a tad bit hard on the Muslims lately. I’ve been a tad concerned that this might come across the wrong way, and I wanted to set the record straight. We have issues with Islam. Huge issues. They are similar to the issues we have with Catholicism, Protestantism, and pretty much every faith and political system you can put a name to. We consider these all to be leashes that unfairly yoke the faithful into a corrupt servitude. The particulars of that servitude vary slightly between all of the faiths, but that’s really the to-MAY-to to-MAH-to conundrum.
People who worship these various faiths may well be intelligent people. They may not. They may be of any ethnicity. They may not. They may hold devoutly to the absolutes of their faith, or they may attempt to alter their faith to ensure that it coincides nicely with modern understanding of the world. It is not the people per se that we have a problem with, although admittedly we consider many of their personally held beliefs to be unfortunate. We hope that the faithful are able through education and understanding to see the glaring errors in their beliefs.
Racism is a belief structure we do not support. Speaking entirely for myself, I do not care if a person is a racist. Racists have the same rights and freedoms as I have to believe in what they like, but in this regard I take the stance that their belief structure is just as ridiculous as the faiths we so dislike. There is no scientific evidence in support of dysgenics, and, as this article discusses, it’s generally accepted by those in the social sciences that genetic differences between race are not significant. The article further disputes this claim, but again there is no present understanding of how significant differences between phenotypes are. However, I do not believe that there is sufficient argument to state that speciation has occurred. An example of remarkably different appearances in the same species can be found here.
To get righteous about the phenotypic diversity of the human species is as sensible as getting righteous about the smoothness and wrinkeledness of Mendle’s pea plants.
So yes, we have been critical of Islam of late, discussing the ludicrous desire for Mecca to replace GMT, the tackiness of building a mosque on Ground Zero, the legalized rape of women, female genital mutilation, clerical hit lists, and Shariah Law just to name a few. This is not us hating people, this is us exposing the dark side of a religious tradition that is very much a threat to the freedoms all people should enjoy the world over.
**note: I have revised this posting. I had not read the article from The Economist closely and upon doing so after the fact, noted that the comment I had made did not accurately reflect the article, thus the change**
Jim
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I was considering posting something in this vein this as well, Jim, so thank you.
Both of us have friends and family who subscribe to belief systems that we don’t particularly agree with. For me this includes people who believe in Christianity, Islam, mysticism, … hell, there are even some atheists and agnostics I disagree with.
I love and respect these people deeply. I would never wish harm on them or deny them their human rights. I just think some of the things they believe are crazy
If someone is harming others in the name of illogical or hateful ideologies, I believe we have every right to mock, criticize and even take action against those responsible. However, we should take care that our ranting and criticizing doesn’t cross the line into bigotry.
And if any of you feel I’ve personally crossed this line, I expect you to call me on it.
I don’t think there was a need to clarify. You gave up your own faith in support of free thinking. You are not playing “my religion is better than yours.” It would be have been ignorant of you if you had labeled one religion as “good” and another as “bad” Now Jim you know I’m the first person to try and hold the pendulum of understanding in the middle rather than one extreme to the other. Often we have not seen eye to eye but one of the things I have respected about you is that you see all religions as equal. Equally in the dislike but equal none the less. I would call your comments bold, clear, honest and fair.
Jim, I disagree with the premise of your article.Being a Muslim, or believing in Islam, is not a racial quality. There are African Muslims, Arab Muslims, Caucasian Muslims, Muslims of all types. There is absolutely no need to clarify that your attacks on a religious system, with followers whom happen to be of different races, is in any way racist.It would be like saying an attack on Catholics was an attack on white people, disregarding the Philippines, and it’s large catholic population. Religion can often be a result of race, but race does not determine religion.
Hey Shithead.
Good to see you on here, buddy!
I don’t make the mistake of thinking that Islam is associated with race. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. We received a couple of overtly nazi comments on some of our pieces in this vein supporting our hate for the enemies of America. Neither Boy Infidel nor myself in any way support naziism, eugenics, or any such similar ideology. These are unscientific beliefs every bit as laughable to us as religions. We may pick on the faithful from time to time, but that is for their ludicrous and detrimental practices and not because ZOMG TEHR NOT WITE LIKE US.
Call em as you see em pal – that’s what I say. I generally agree with most of what you write.Now…. just to stir up the Meddling Kids cauldron of ideas, I offer a different perspective. I grew up catholic, a devout child who prayed daily and felt her guardian angel close by. I didn’t learn this through the catholic machine of indoctrination that they call catechism. I had an illustrated catholic bible. The most beautiful paintings; the ascension of Mary, Jesus carrying the cross, saints in prayer among many others, photos of mass and baptisms, I was mesmerized by all of it. They were my first contact to the spiritual or what I encoded it to be through viewing visuals. I couldn’t read yet so I had to decide what the pictures meant, I don’t recall ever asking my mom and I don’t know if she even knew I had this book. But I know from understanding child development that this had a huge psychological impact on my world view, and for the most part it was very positive. I had faith and reverence for – something, even though I had no words for what that was. I felt it when I played in the trees and talked to them, I saw it in my Grandma’s alter to the Virgin Mary, I felt it during the big family dinners we had. I was raised in a spiritually animate world and I still relate to life that way.I had my first crisis of faith when I was 9. My cousin was missing in a northern plane crash. I prayed fervently for him and he died anyway. I did not turn away from believing in God, I realized that my understanding of what that is was incorrect. My questioning began then and never stopped. With research I found that the mystics seemed to make the most sense not the church dogma. I can’t abide by their bullshit, I doubt Jesus would have either.I love science passionately and I am lucky to have some gifted scientists as friends and they indulge me in conversation. I love faith and can feel the beauty of all the religions. Today they are mere caricatures of what the prophets like Jesus, Mohammed, and Krishna mean’t when they walked on earth and delivered their messages. I love mythology and wisdom and I am saddened by our drop in education and critical thinking skills – it’s appalling. The hindus tell us we started to loose our understanding of ourselves at the start of the Kali Yuga about 5000 yrs ago which always brings the darkness in large astrological epochs such as the procession of the equinox. Or we the same message form the Maya who write of much the same and in the same time frame. This is not new age airy fairy. This information comes concurrently from cultures who wove astronomy into their cosmological frame work. Many of them worked sophisticatedly with hallucinogenic to actively change consciousness and gain knowledge. Understanding the heavens in a practical manner was crucial to traveling, floods, farming and feeding the people. Understanding the inner world was just as important as they were always connected; gnosis and wisdom.The real kicker I find is that modern man with all our belief in technology, progress, capitalism, materialism etc etc continue to be the biggest assholes history has seen. Seriously, we really aren’t fit for anymore messages from the gods whether it be Allah, Brahman, or the Big Spaghetti Monster in the Sky. I can’t imagine us fucking up more with the poverty, injustice, domination and control we have. Its quite astounding that we have managed to create the hell that the prophets warned us about. We don’t have to die to find it, we’re already here.I believe in God but I can’t for the life of me figure out why it/he/she should believe in us.
Ah, my dear Lise! I’m happy you’re posting here, sweetie!
Hope you’re well…
As far as what you’re talking about, it reminds me of the Beautiful People myth, the notion that at some point we were really in touch, but things are just getting worse and worse. I don’t believe that. I believe very deeply that life is infinitely better today that it has been at any known point in human history.
We’ve seen some way bigger assholes than anyone on the planet today. Vlad The Impaler comes readily to mind, but there are literally billions of examples of horrible people from days gone by. We just document the depravities more now, and it sometimes seems like things must be worse. Jack The Ripper, Caligula, and Pol Pot were not characters in our ultramodern society, and people like them have always been.
It doesn’t concern me if the people in my world believe in a God, the Christian God or otherwise. The things that trigger my irate bits are the activities that so often come with that, like using the Bible or Koran or whatever book as a rulebook for life, and then ignoring (or worse, practicing) the horrible aspects of the book, or when people use their faith to get in the way of the advancement of understanding.
Big ugly Jim, here is a big sloppy kiss for you buddy!
I wonder if our time frame references are different. When I refer to us as the biggest assholes I mean within a couple thousand years, so like you mentioned lovely guys like Vlad the Impaler fits nicely as do the other prince charmings you mentioned. (suggestion for further rants, the merit of a matriarchal society to take over the fucked up mess the men have gotten us into…) But I understand your point even if I disagree. I don’t believe we are more humane today. I believe we have a much better understanding of the natural world and how it works, and we are certainly capable of applying this knowledge in a way that furthers our progress and well being – for some. But what of a global culture that now KNOWS it can eradicate Aids or starvation but doesn’t because there isn’t that much merit in saving a bunch of poor people who will use up the already dwindling resources – unless there is an economic reason… Like they live on land that contains fossil fuels or WATER (shit will hit the fan when we run out of that). If we are advancing morally and ethically why are we collectively allowing this to be manifested? Most of us don’t care enough as long as we are safe and well fed. Man I love ranting, thanks for the forum. I don’t believe humanity is interested in making decisions for the good of the whole rather than the limited self interest of a smaller group whether that is an economic group, national, tribal religious or other wise. The quintessential Us – Them conundrum. At least not yet. Lets see what happens after we get shook up with natural disasters, economic collapse, environmental degradation and plagues. Perhaps when we lose a large part of our population, arable land and we have to work cooperatively to ensure the survival of the species things will improve. Things are gonna get more interesting and we are going to live to see it. Fasten your seat belt kid….. 
I’m not saying we’re saints. The vast majority of our species is very socially unevolved, and those people do often make it to seats of power. In fact, if you look at the leadership in any country, the leaders who make up the power are generally classist and/or racist, almost homogenously rabid followers of whatever the local theology is, and totally hypocritical. The number of times the anti-drug candidate gets caught with a bag of blow or the anti-gay candidate gets caught mid-blow just staggers me. We’re really quite awful at picking our leaders. I am not a democrat in this regard, though I do believe it’s the best system we’ve enacted to date.
It is largely the religious who keep the largest chunks of the world sick with AIDS and starving. Everyone always blames Big Pharma for this, assuming that there’s a magical cure for AIDS that they won’t give out because they are motivated by money, but that’s wrong. The number of people who are working on the problem of AIDS and viruses in general is staggering, and we’re making huge leaps forward. But the biggest leap thusfar is the condom, and it’s good pal family planning. However, it’s the religious zealots and popes who keep convincing the poor to have gigantic families, and that condoms are more evil than murderers.
Frankly, when we *do* have natural disasters, I’m always amazed by the readiness of the world to assist. And it is this spirit that I hope we choose to nurture. Science already does it, with cooperative projects happening the world over to huge success. Could you imagine disparate religions working together to create something absolutely amazing like the scientists did with the international space station?
As far as the notion of our being more humane than those of more than 2000 years ago, that’s an impossible thing to assess. We have little more than oral history from that timeframe in a lot of cases, and that oral history is largely about wars and zealots. We may have some big scoundrels in the last 2000, but we don’t have a way of knowing about the scoundrels that existed previously. But certainly Caligula was a monster among men from a long line of creepy dastardly types, and he was born just slightly less than 2000 years ago. I’d say most of the humans today are far more humane than the ancient Romans or Greeks.