Islam & The Future of Tolerance

Key Takeaways

Kyle, in 2017 in Books: Similar to how I feel about China, and the importance of understanding China’s role in the world as a culture and economic power, I feel similarly about Islam, if for no other reason, than that most people aren’t trying very hard to understand much of anything about the world’s second largest religion.

Conversation is something that doesn’t happen enough. Regardless of your beliefs or opinions regarding any certain group of people, treating other humans with dignity is important. There was a video a while back where homophobic and gay people were put together and asked to hug. You watched them come to grips with each other. The point of interactions like that shouldn’t be to force one group to unconditionally accept everything about the other. But regardless of differences, we should be able to treat each other like human beings.

That’s what I appreciated about this book. No matter their differences, they did their level best to actually have an understanding dialogue. Many thanks to the Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle for exposing me to it.

• The book hunts for common ground in “the universality of human, democratic, and secular values” rather than in theology.
• Nawaz’s core move is interpretive: scripture “has no voice of its own,” so Islam in practice is whatever its adherents read it to be — which makes Islamism and jihadism politicized contemporary readings, not Islam and jihad as such.
• It rejects the naïve “jihad just means inner struggle” line while insisting armed struggle in any tradition can be just or unjust, defensive or offensive — and that religiously-motivated warfare is not unique to Islam.
• Harris’s recurring complaint: that “Islamophobia” gets treated as a bigger problem than literalist Islam, and that critiquing an idea is conflated with bigotry.

Connections

People: Sam Harris — one of the two interlocutors; presses the case that critiquing Islam is not bigotry. Maajid Nawaz — former Islamist; argues Islam is what its adherents interpret it to be.

Concepts: Free Speech — “Critiquing Islam, critiquing any idea, is not bigotry.” Religious Intellectualism — the interpretive theory of scripture (no text “has its own voice”).

Highlights

• “By focusing on the universality of human, democratic, and secular (in the British and American sense of this word) values, we can arrive at some common ground.”
• “Religion doesn’t inherently speak for itself; no scripture, no book, no piece of writing has its own voice. I subscribe to this view whether I’m interpreting Shakespeare or interpreting religious scripture.”
• “If it holds that Islam is only what its adherents interpret it to be, then it is currently a religion of peace.”
• “Islamism and jihadism are politicized, contemporary readings of Islam and jihad; they are not Islam and jihad per se.”
• “It is true that no traditional reading of jihad can ignore the idea of armed struggle, and it is incredibly naive to insist that Muslims ever held jihad to mean an inner struggle only. However, any and all armed struggles, in any or no religious contexts, can be defensive or offensive, just or unjust, reactive or preemptive, and terroristic or conventionally militaristic.”

  Kyle: And I would add, Islam is not alone in having a concept of religiously-motivated warfare. The Old Testament is replete with the same.

• “Most traditional Muslims consider Islamism an errant politicization of their religion.”
• “If we are truly concerned about human rights and injustice, we would be moved equally by all human rights crimes, and would act in a systematic way to deal with them as best we can.”
• “I’m well aware that millions of nominally Muslim freethinkers are in hiding out of necessity. This is one of the things I find so insufferable about the liberal backlash against critics of Islam — especially the pernicious meme ‘Islamophobia,’ by which anyone who thinks Islam merits special concern at this moment in history is branded a bigot. What worries me is that so many moderate Muslims believe that ‘Islamophobia’ is a bigger problem than literalist Islam is. They seem more outraged that someone like me would equate jihad with holy war than that millions of their co-religionists do this and commit atrocities as a result.”
• “Critiquing Islam, critiquing any idea, is not bigotry.”
• “It is the nature of many people that they tend to hear only what they already expect to hear from any given speaker. They cease listening to the words of the speaker and instead react to what they have been expecting the speaker to say.”