Book Review: The Trouble with Islam Today

A few days ago, while in the grocery store checkout line, I found myself scanning the rack of idiot magazines and tabloids. Between the obligatory images of Angelina and the preternaturally beaming Rachel Ray, I saw this headline on the National Examiner’s cover: “Obama’s Top-Secret Meetings With Muslims: His Shocking Pact With The Enemy.”

This is moronic at several levels. What bothered me the most was not that some portion of the population might seriously believe President Obama to be involved in such a conspiracy, but rather, that their worldviews are so simplistic that they categorically see Muslims as “enemies” of the United States. And what’s more, I reckoned, the majority of such people are almost certainly a subset of those that assert “America is a Christian Nation.” I thought of that embarrassment to my home state of Minnesota, the unnamed woman at a John McCain town hall meeting from October of 2008, that suggested that Obama was “… an Arab!”

These instances are bona fide examples of what has been termed “Islamaphobia.” I’ve seen it firsthand, too, in the form a devout Catholic, conservative coworker of mine, that often voices a concern that will we all one day be forced to “wear a diaper on our head and bow to the east.”

It behooves us nontheists, then, when we take the occasion to put Islam in our sights, to do so with the clarity, even-handedness, and care that these fundamentalist Christians eschew. Pointing out that Islam, as a set of beliefs, is chock full of absurdities and dangerous notions is certainly not a form of prejudice. Just because some bigots continue to paint a huge swath of humanity with a very broad brush should not prevent us from denouncing the irrationalities and consequences of believing in nonsense, regardless of what corner of the globe the nonsense comes from.

In the way of offering an outstanding example of a blistering and fair attack on Islam that is not “Islamaphobic”, I recommend one that comes from a practitioner of the same faith: Irshad Manji. Her critique is in a book called The Trouble With Islam Today.

Manji calls herself a Muslim “Refusenik”: an openly lesbian, feminist, progressive Muslim whose religious views are so far removed from mainstream Islam that it is difficult, for me at least, to consider her an adherent to the same core faith as most Muslims. Her book is as fiercely critical of the problems with Islam as is Sam Harris’ The End of Faith. Where it differs is that, by mounting her assault on fundamentalism from within the tradition (as a Muslim championing change, as opposed to a non-Muslim calling for it), she is more likely to gain an audience among those that most need to hear the message. And this is nothing to sneeze at.

The book begins in the form of an open letter to all Muslims: a shockingly candid letter that has probably earned her a few death threats. “Islam is on very thin ice with me,” she begins, and then goes on to identify the unique features and problems endemic to the faith she was raised in: “The trouble with Islam today is that literalism is going mainstream, worldwide.” She even acknowledges that fact about the genealogical paths of belief that many others won’t admit: “Most of us Muslims aren’t Muslims because we think about it, but rather because we’re born that way.”

Manji looks at a number of issues with important ramifications: The preponderance of fundamentalism, tribalism, the mistreatment of women (”Those who wish to flog women on the flimsiest of charges can get the necessary backup from the Koran”), terror (”Being self-critical means coming clean about the nasty side of the Koran, and how it informs terrorism”), and the tension with the west (”We can’t pin our basest ills on America. The cancer begins with us.”) And while some of the book is aimed at Muslims, imploring them to take a very hard look at what they believe and how they behave, she is refreshing in her advocacy that Islam should be put under the microscope by the rest of us:

Note to non-Muslims: Dare to ruin the romance of the moment. Open societies remain open because people take the risk of asking questions–out loud. Questions like, “Why is it so easy to draw thousands of Muslims into the streets to denounce France’s ban on the hajib, but impossible to draw even a fraction of those demonstrators into the streets to protest Saudi Arabia’s imposition of the hijab? … Non-Muslims do the world no favors by pushing the moral mute button as soon as Muslims start speaking. Dare to ruin the moment.

It goes without saying that, as I am an atheist, I still regard the watered-down Islam that Manji practices to have features just as much at odds with reality as those in other, more traditional religions. But while progressive theists like her have worldviews dissimilar from our naturalistic one, they share with us much common ground, in that they too seek a world free of theocracy, religious intolerance, and fundamentalism. They are some of the best friends that the non-religious have. The Trouble With Islam Today is a good example of pushing for change from within–change that could lead to a more secular, humane, and peaceful version of a what is still a very immature religion. Will that ever happen with Islam? I’ve no idea, but I welcome Manji’s attempt to make it happen. As much as many of us would like to see religious belief simply jettisoned altogether, it isn’t realistic to expect that to happen anytime soon. I’ll gladly accept believers moving to a more progressive, liberal kind of religion as a second choice.

Book Review: Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth

While browsing on twitter today, I came across a popular new trending topic: #dontyouloveGod. This generally consists of inane babble along the lines of why believers are so personally thankful for their god, and all that he supposedly does for them. It is always startling to come across this kind of piffle; to realize that these people are sincere in these expressions. Here are some examples, verbatim, that I collected from this topic just now:

#dontyouloveGOD for his forgivness and never judging us!

#dontyouloveGOD when he gives us pretty rainbows?

#dontyouloveGOD because He only gives us what He feels we can handle?

#dontyouloveGOD when he saves a premature baby?

#dontyouloveGOD b/c He considered you worthy enough of a saviour?

#dontyouloveGOD for helping me realize that my circumstances could always be worse. I am so thankful

#dontyouloveGOD for always being there when you need Him. Amen he is a PRESENT HELP!!!!

#dontyouloveGOD LOVES you despite of your WRONGs!

#dontyouloveGOD is a Jealous God, remember to keep him 1st!

#dontyouloveGOD for being such an amazing provider! He gives us just what we need when we need it!

You get the idea. Someone needs to get these people a copy of Voltaire’s Candide. Or better yet, since they might not understand how that story relates to them, Mark Twain’s far more direct assault on the Christian version of the “Best Of All Possible Worlds” dementia: his little-known Letters from the Earth.

Letters from the Earth is a brief, witty, and remarkable funny series of reports from Satan about certain behaviors of man (and God) that he has been observing over time. Because it isn’t very long, it is generally published together with other short, irreverent writings from Twain (often including the equally hilarious Diaries of Adam and Eve). The version I own is part of a book entitled The Bible According To Mark Twain, edited by Howard G. Baetzhold and Joseph B. McCullough. I cannot recommend this volume highly enough.

Letters from the Earth begins with a short introduction of how the Creator fashioned the universe out of nothing. A conversation then follows between Michael, Gabriel, and (the then still heaven-dwelling and angelic) Satan, about what it all might mean; this new place where new living beings are being introduced. They have only been informed that it is meant to be some kind of experiment.

Satan shortly finds himself banished to the earth, as punishment for making snide remarks about the character and actions of the human race he has been watching with growing interest. He’s especially interested in how the Creator has instilled in them an entire spectrum of inconsistent traits. And once on earth, he begins to write letters back to his archangel friends, and these notes comprise the bulk of the book.

All throughout, Twain deftly satirizes both God and Man simultaneously, such as in this excerpt describing their dysfunctional relationship:

He requires his children to deal justly—and gently—with offenders, and forgive them seventy-and-seven times; whereas he deals neither justly nor gently with any one, and he did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense… He elected to punish their children, all through the ages to the end of time… He is punishing them yet. In mild ways? No, in atrocious ones. You would not suppose that this kind of Being gets many compliments. Undeceive yourself: the world calls him the All-Just, the All-Righteous, the All-Good, the All-Merciful, the All-Forgiving, the All-Truthful, the All-Loving, the Source of All Morality. These sarcasms are uttered daily, all over the world. But not as conscious sarcasms. No, they are meant seriously; they are uttered without a smile.

What I find so striking about the book is the clarity with which Twain seems to see the inhumanity and idiocy of Christian Bible, and the ease with which he exposes it. It is satire writ very large, lean, and focused.

A considerable portion of Letters from the Earth is devoted to details of the flood story that, not surprisingly, never found their way into scripture. Since every Christian, from childhood, has been immersed in images of pairs of giraffes, zebras, and lions striding majestically up the boarding plank, Satan narrates instead how special lodgings were arranged (within the bodies of the humans on board) to house the multitudes of sundry parasitic, microbial, and viral species: those essential organisms needed to propagate all the terrible diseases (that God so carefully created) into the post-diluvian world. Detailed arrangements were also made for flies, including one that was forgotten and required a voyage of sixteen days to retrieve. We learn that this vector of so many diseases is indeed God’s favorite pet; his darling.

The book builds to its final crescendo with a scathing attack on another portion of the old testament: specifically, the some of the horrific abuses recounted in the book of Numbers. His take on the story that begins Numbers 25:

“And Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel.”

Does that look fair to you? It does not appear that the “heads of the people” got any of the adultery, yet it is they that are hanged…

Very well then, we must believe that if the people of New York should begin to commit whoredom with the daughters of New Jersey, it would be fair and right to set up a gallows in front of city hall and hang the mayor and the sheriff and the judges… It does not look right to me.

From here Twain moves on to the infamous genocide of the Midianites from Numbers 31, and begins to work himself into a bit of a rage. The book ends suddenly and with little warning. One gets the impression that Twain is so angry at this point that he cannot stand to consider the matter any further. And that would certainly be understandable. Sometimes we seem to have grown so familiar with the stories, and numb to the nonsense, that it almost seems… normal. The gift that Letters from the Earth offers is that it so effortlessly exposes contradictions at the core of Christianity. The sudden ending is necessary, because any more would be redundant. But despite the fact that you can practically see the old master’s formidable eyebrows scrunching down in an ever fiercer scowl as you go on, what I always think of with this book is how much it made me laugh. Make room on your freethinking bookshelf for this one; you will enjoy many times. I promise.