You'd have to say that the Victorians, the folks in the middle ages, and lots of other people (including, I think we'd have to say, the entire whole old testament and that God's fairly misogynistic view of women)- were "delusional". To want to subjugate women is, alas, not delusional, and is fairly common- and common to many religions. Oh sure- the religions say the same sorts of things in their defense- "we're really "elevating" the status of women by viewing them as worthy of protection/segregation/a pedestal/etc"- and the flip side of that is the anger directed at the "whores" who don't conform. I mean the Madonna/whore complex didn't start with the Muslims...I think we can tell that from its title.
Most religious people claim they'd die for their Gods, or their religion, or something or other. Isn't that the test of religious faith? If you aren't willing to die for your religion, can you honestly claim you are very religious? And much easier than dying for your religion, is killing someone else for it. So much simpler.
Seems to me what the extremists really are is very committed to a moral scheme which WE find has no relationship to the reality WE want to see embraced by everyone. This is basically the same fight extremist Christians have in this country. The extremist Christians see secularism as a "moral vacuum" and they are hop up and down mad that they can't inject their moral view and religion in to the public square. Oddly enough they fail to understand that what extremist Muslims want to do is pretty much the same thing- but the extremist Muslims are simply willing to be a little more deadly in the service of their God. Interestingly, in the movie Jesus Camp I saw one of the few examinations of this. The woman running the camp said something along the lines of "They're willing to be soldiers for their God. We need to have the same sort of soldiers for Christ". Once you get to that point, you see there's very little ideological difference between the "control" desire of either religion, and the difference at this point is simply one of means- and means can change pretty fast under pressure. |
