28th November 2010
“If you measure Islam by the intensity of its followers' convictions, by its importance in political debates, by the privileges it enjoys under the laws of many European countries, or by its capacity to intimidate potential detractors, then Islam is not the second religion of Europe, but its first.”
November 28th, 2010 at 8:50
On the other hand, the privilege enjoyed by the Catholic church, and the rough and tumble of observable reality.
Honestly, stop posting these terrible orientalist quotes, it’s so embarrassing to see atheists picking sides, as though any religion is somehow more reasonable than any other simply by virtue of being more familiar to us.
November 28th, 2010 at 9:38
Are you arguing that all religious belief systems are equally unreasonable?
Detractors of the catholic church don’t usually receive death threats, not any more, that’s because it has been forced to adapt to our Western standards of humanistic society (viz the recent change in stance on contraception in Africa).
Islam is still barbaric, it is unwilling to change and is almost certainly more worthy of our criticism.
I do, however, agree that Christianity is the dominant faith in Europe.
November 28th, 2010 at 9:44
reetBob,
For me, and I think SMM, the point is that Islam’s barbarism is more of a criticism of the cultural baggage that comes with Islam, than a criticism of Islam itself. If you leave those cultural surroundings and just look at the beliefs, Catholicism is just as backwards and archaic as Islam.
But I suppose you’d point out that it’s impossible, practically speaking, to disentangle a religion from its cultural surroundings…
November 28th, 2010 at 12:38
Islam is the more robust belief system, not in the philosophical reality-based sense, I mean it protects its followers from evidence and reality much better than the contradictory beliefs and woolly-thinking of Christianity.
I don’t mind people having unverifiable beliefs. I do mind people issuing death threats in the defense of them.
And you’re right, how do you separate religion from culture with Islam, whose holy book demands a unified political, cultural and religious package?