Re: Islam and Muslims (was Doug and Islam)
On Mar 16, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
What makes you think that understanding other people’s faiths and recognizing that some of them are full of great virtues must lead to adopting one or many of them as one’s own?
Unlike you, I’ve actually spent some time as a believer - in
Catholicism, one of the more baroque and demanding forms of
Christianity. I appreciate the lovely art that it inspired, and the
traditional mass has moments of great beauty, but it’s essentially a
bucketload of mumbojumbo. As for the virtues, I’m coming to doubt
that religion has much of an independent influence on people’s
political views; they have the politics dictated by their interests
and temperament, and mold their interpretations of religion
accordingly. Christianity has been a religion of left, right, center,
and the apolitical.
I will say, though, that the prominence of religion has had an
unfortunate influence on the American left - religious leftists here
are way too likely to presume the good intentions of their enemies,
and believe that appeals to their conscience will work. The
bourgeoisie will jail and kill people if they feel their power and
wealth are threatened, but all those people singing Kumbaya act
otherwise.
Doug