Thanks for the links. Let's be fair, there's a lot to 2,000 and 3,000 year old texts which inform the major religions and which fail current scrutiny. Recall that, at the time these texts were written, they were not simply religious texts but rather compendia of science and technology (Genesis, dietary restrictions), history, morality, philosophy, hygiene, marital counseling, etc. To put it another way, although they fail often in many of these areas by today's standards, judged by the standards and practices of the times by surrounding tribes, peoples, bandits and raiders, these were the best they could do.
For example, although some of my friends are strict constructionists of the Bible, 200 years ago that meant that you could go back the generations, counting, and determine that the cosmos was created on April 12, 4487 B.C. at 4:00 a.m. or something like that. And that Noah literally put two of every species onto a boat smaller than any of Donald Trump's yachts, when in fact there are about a gazillion unidentified insects in South America alone which would have swamped the ark even before stocking enough food for the 40 days and 40 nights. Today some people still cling to those as truth (the word of God) but most Christians believe that the story of Noah (or Job or Jonah) are to be taken as important illustrative stories about the relationship between man and his God. To the strict constructionist, all modern science is a conspiracy; to the rest, modern science doesn't touch the story of Noah or Jonah because its thrust and parameters have nothing to do with science.
Pointing out that a major religion grew up around a text which seems cruel and harsh today, extremely so, is not going to accomplish much. Recall, for example, that stealing a loaf of bread in England 300 years ago was a capital offense, and that criminals were routinely drawn and quartered or publicly vivisected for their crimes and we begin to get back to reality.
Most religions have tended to migrate toward the modern, with the ensuing hiccups and cries of hypocrisy (which, see, the Catholic Church finally apologizing to Galileo), and definitely very, very late.
Islam seems to have stayed in its time warp, perhaps because so many of its adherents still live a lifestyle not so different from when the religion was born. Drawing water from the well, subsistence farming, crushing poverty, political and social repression. Unfortunately it exists now at a time, in the delightful phrase of Andrew Lloyd Webber, of "mass communication." ("Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication!")
Which gets me to my point. In order to defeat this dark and nasty view of the world, we must embrace Islam, and encourage Islam to "evolve," to realize that the statements concerning wife beating, concubinage, beards, etc. (I believe there are Old Testament statements which are similarly uncomfortable for modern humans: Leviticus would be a starting place) are relics of the past, and not prescriptions for the future. Islam itself will need to take care of its own, after the modern world steps in and takes care of the terrorists.
JMVVHO.
Kb |
