More on the fury at Maajid Nawaz.
There’s an exceedingly vivid and nasty threat, for one thing.
IMRAN @Abdul_al_Jame
@MaajidNawas
I would be glad to cut your neck off, so your kufr friends won’t be amused by your humour.In sha Allah may my dua get accepted
That account is now gone, so that’s something, but still – what a revolting sentiment.
Via Homo economicus’s blog, Nawaz’s response to all the shouting:
Shiraz Socialist has a post In defense of Maajid Nawaz.
5Pillarz, a blog written largely by and for British Muslims, has decided that Nawaz should be their top candidate for ‘Islamophobe of the Year’. The EDL is mentioned at the bottom of their list of suggestions, as a kind of afterthought.
As Maajid Nawaz says:
“Why are many on the “Left” largely silent on Muslim reformers. Want to defend minorities? Well, we’re a minority within a minority, defend us”
As someone from the ‘Left’ I’m happy to defend and support Maajid Nawaz – though I’d draw the line at voting for him.
All this, because a cartoon.
People really need to learn how to think outside of the box.
Oh. Cartoon, not carton. Nevermind, then.
Is Allah so petty he gets annoyed at a picture? Or are his followers that petty?
Obviously, Al Dente. He’s very, very sensitive. Very.
Very sensitive, but also must have humans to “defend” him. Can’t fight his own fights with lightning bolts or any other obvious signals of divine wrath (and existence…)
If the god in question is going to give you boils, kill your family and burn down your village if you fail to obey him,
you’d be a damn fool not to.
I want to point out Nawaz’s own comment “we’re a minority within a minority” in response to some people holding out hope that there is a silent majority behind him. Clearly he does not even think that.
I finally found a relevant poll on British Muslims regarding depictions of Mohammed dating back to the Danish cartoon affair: Many British Muslims Put Islam First.
Those questions are utterly damning as to any leftwing paternalistic hope that Muslims are really just as secular and tolerant as the population as a whole.
Hopefully this incident generates some new polling, and we can see how attitudes have changed since 2006, but they may have gotten even more conservative for all we know given the impact of fundamentaism in religions worldwide.
Merely obeying him isn’t enough, Chigau; you’ve got to obey him because you sincerely love him. The problem is that a god that is going to give you boils, kill your family and burn down your village if you fail to obey him is even harder to love…
sc_alphanumeric @7
Plus Allah loves you. He only gives you boils, kills your family and burns down your village because you made him do it. He’s an abuser but you’re still supposed to love him back.
The Dilbert cartoon today is on the topic of touchy gods.
Why worship a god who gets enraged at a cartoon?
Not a very intelligent question. Look up “power” and “fear” in a good dictionary and then apply Reason and Logic (Peace Be Upon Them) to the question of how one of them may help the exercise of the other. The organization that burnt Giordano Bruno alive for his ideas lasted quite a long time, if you recall. And Stalin didn’t do so badly either. And remember when James Watson raised the possibility that the human brain isn’t absolutely identical in all groups? He caused a bit of rage in some members of the free-thought community, devoted as they are to objective reason and free scientific enquiry.
As a Muslim I’m on Maajid’s side.
@ 10 – I disagree that it’s an unintelligent question. I think your reply is not all that clever, in that it omits so much. Power and fear are not the only relevant motivations. Yes, the church lasted for a long time, but powerful rivals grew up alongside it and its power now is of a very inferior kind. As for Stalin – well he personally did all right, but again, that’s not the only relevant question.
I do think it’s peculiar to worship a horrible nasty vain petty bullying god, when you could worship a kind benevolent loving one instead. It’s like choosing a spouse or a roommate. Who prefers a bad one to a good one?
Granted, if you worship a kind god you have the problem of evil to contend with, but I’m talking about the choice, not the justification. If you believe in a god who is fine with all the suffering, then it’s a big mistake to worship that god.
You’d think that if Allah was really pissed off with cartoons he’d send floods or something the way the Christian God doesn’t with gay marriage.
Some made up beings are obviously tougher than others.
Ophelia Benson (#12):
Isn’t worshiping any god peculiar? It’s one thing to believe that one is the lesser partner a grotesquely asymmetric power relationship, but actually celebrating it strikes me as being both perverse and dehumanising. And that holds whether the dominant partner is malevolent, benevolent or indifferent.
re: #14
“lesser partner in a grotesquely asymmetric power relationship”. D’oh.
Yes, that is of course what I think. But others don’t, and if you are going to worship a god – it seems even more perverse to worship a deeply nasty one.
@Ophelia — thanx for reply, but I still think you’re letting yourself down.
Yes, the church lasted for a long time, but powerful rivals grew up alongside it and its power now is of a very inferior kind.
Exactly. As long as it had the power to crush its rivals and its ridiculers, it flourished. Nowadays, it’s safe to ridicule the church and its power is, as you say, of “a very inferior kind”. But, thanx to mass immigration, the power of Islam is now replacing it. Muslims react violently to ridicule. It is an excellent way of instilling fear and consolidating power.
As for Stalin – well he personally did all right, but again, that’s not the only relevant question.
Of course it’s relevant. A joke about Stalin would have landed you in the Gulag. Humour is a weapon and people who want absolute power do not permit it. Free speech is anthema to totalitarians. We don’t have it in the UK any more on certain topics.
I do think it’s peculiar to worship a horrible nasty vain petty bullying god, when you could worship a kind benevolent loving one instead.
Dear me, you’re naive. Yes, it would be nice to live in a world full of fluffy bunnies and Morrissey fans. But we don’t: read some history and you’ll see for yourself. (Actually, it wouldn’t be nice: it would be boring. But the UK — thanx to mass immigration — is getting rather too interesting for my tastes.)
It’s like choosing a spouse or a roommate. Who prefers a bad one to a good one?
Who prefers a gun to a flower? People who want power. There are lot of them in the world. There are a lot of them in the “free-thought community”. Among other things, they use fatuous labels like “racist” and “sexist” to shut down free scientific enquiry. In the old days, we had Galileo and Bruno. Nowadays we have Watson and Richwine.
Best – I’m really not as naive as you seem to be assuming. I’m not blithely unaware of the connections between religion and power. I’m not entirely unacquainted with history. But this particular post is simply about the quite limited point that it’s perverse to worship a loathsome god. That’s all. It’s not a comprehensive claim about religion, it’s an observation about one small aspect of one type of religion.
…it’s perverse to worship a loathsome god.
It’s perverse to eat loathsome foods like cheese, which is rotten milk. It’s perverse to smoke.
But some people like cheese and some people like smoking. It is ludicrous to tell people that they should abide by your subjective tastes. A God who needs protecting with violence might be “loathsome” to you, but lots of people like that kind of God. That kind of God is a route to power.
It’s not a comprehensive claim about religion, it’s an observation about one small aspect of one type of religion.
IMO, your observation reveals that you are solipsistic. And free speech is not a small aspect of religion. A cartoon is a trivial thing, like a joke about Stalin. That the consequences of the cartoon or the joke are not trivial says something very important about the ideology in question.
Cheese doesn’t impose rules on people. Cheese doesn’t justify and rationalize the subordination of women or homophobia or brutal punishment of children. Cheese doesn’t picket abortion clinics.
Smoking is not comparable to cheese, so already you’re confusing what you’re trying to say.
It’s not ludicrous for me to say what I think about worshiping a loathsome god, any more than it’s perverse for anyone else to say such things. I’m aware that lots of people like that kind of god; I’m aware that it has to do with power.
Maybe you should delay commenting for awhile and just read, because you don’t seem to understand the nature of this blog.
Cheese doesn’t impose rules on people. Cheese doesn’t justify and rationalize the subordination of women or homophobia or brutal punishment of children. Cheese doesn’t picket abortion clinics.
Yes, some very good points — on my side. You argue against yourself without even realizing it. Telling people not to eat cheese because you personally find it loathsome is trivially solipsistic. Telling people not to believe in an ideology for the same reason is solipsistic in an important — and dangerous — way. If you don’t want problems with Muslims, don’t invite them into your society by the million. Very simple and sensible advice that sophisticated atheists failed to grasp. Trying to tell Muslims what to believe once they’re actually in your society is not going to work.
Maybe you should delay commenting for awhile and just read, because you don’t seem to understand the nature of this blog.
I think I understand the nature of the blog better than you do.
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
More good sense from Rabbie Burns.
BestovSest,
The point is flying over your head so far it’s almost in orbit. What Ophelia and other people are saying is that if you feel the need to worship a god then don’t worship a hateful bully. Find a pleasant, kind god to worship instead of one who’ll punish you for trivial reasons. In other words, just as you shouldn’t get into a marital relationship with an abuser, don’t get into a worship relationship with an abuser.