Thomas II

What is the UNDERLYING psychological problem with Islam?
Any of you see disfunctional (negative) patterns at work among the followers of this religion?
Is it the religion itself, its scripture?
Is it their clergy?
Is it their society?
All of the above?

ZouPrime

None. The problem is with fanaticism. Islam is just an excuse.

Doron Shadmi

Any method that allows the "development" of one-track minds is dangerous
for life progress, no matter if it is a religion, community of scientists, ... etc.

Sigma

Just what I was going to say.

It basicially holds the dogmatism of Christianity but with the added extremism, that, as we have seen, is fatal.

fadeaway humper

Maybe it has something to do with the cultist, supremacist mindset, which they overtly proclaim in their "sahih" (solid) hadith collections. A revealing sample from Bukhari:

Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386:
Narrated Jubair bin Haiya:

'Umar sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. When Al-Hurmuzan embraced Islam, 'Umar said to him. "I would like to consult you regarding these countries which I intend to invade." Al-Hurmuzan said, "Yes, the example of these countries and their inhabitants who are the enemies. of the Muslims, is like a bird with a head, two wings and two legs; If one of its wings got broken, it would get up over its two legs, with one wing and the head; and if the other wing got broken, it would get up with two legs and a head, but if its head got destroyed, then the two legs, two wings and the head would become useless. The head stands for Khosrau, and one wing stands for Caesar and the other wing stands for Faris. So, order the Muslims to go towards Khosrau." So, 'Umar sent us (to Khosrau) appointing An-Numan bin Muqrin as our commander. When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, "Let one of you talk to me!" Al-Mughira replied, "Ask whatever you wish." The other asked, "Who are you?" Al-Mughira replied, "We are some people from the Arabs; we led a hard, miserable, disastrous life: we used to suck the hides and the date stones from hunger; we used to wear clothes made up of fur of camels and hair of goats, and to worship trees and stones. While we were in this state, the Lord of the Heavens and the Earths, Elevated is His Remembrance and Majestic is His Highness, sent to us from among ourselves a Prophet whose father and mother are known to us. Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says:-- "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master." (Al-Mughira, then blamed An-Numan for delaying the attack and) An-Nu' man said to Al-Mughira, "If you had participated in a similar battle, in the company of Allah's Apostle he would not have blamed you for waiting, nor would he have disgraced you. But I accompanied Allah's Apostle in many battles and it was his custom that if he did not fight early by daytime, he would wait till the wind had started blowing and the time for the prayer was due (i.e. after midday)."

There you have it: Islam has to rule, because Mo said so. End of story. Also, the puzzled "Who are you?" of the Koshrauan guy is priceless. Kind of endearing, in a sad way.

IsItJustMe

This is quite a strange question, to me. I'm not sure I agree with the implicit premise, that there IS something wrong with Islam, at least any more than with Christianity, Hinduism, or even Buddhism.

Christianity is less of a problem in the world today since there are very few countries where it enjoys such overwhelming support as Islam does in, say, Saudi Arabia. Even in the countries where most people are, on paper, Christians, the degree of adherence to the faith is quite limited. The struggle between Atheism and Christianity is farther along, with Atheism having gained considerable ground. As a consequence Christianity cannot easily impose its laws on the public. But in the past of course things were very different.

If you were a Jew living in Southern Spain in 1493, you might well find yourself asking "What is the problem with Christianity?" It might be that your family had been in the south of Spain for centuries living harmoniously with the Islamic government there. But now that the reconquest was done, the Christian government would give you three choices: Convert (and God help you if you backslide), leave, or die.

The conflict between what may loosely be called the Islamic world and what may even more loosely be called the West is also, it seems clear to me, not entirely the doing of the Islamic world. Leaving all else aside, how could you expect the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel by people from Europe not to provoke resentment from the locals who were inevitably displaced? And how many exceptions does the general principle that the U.S. is a peace loving nation get before we consider the principle to be bunk? The major component of the struggle is the tail end of the anti-colonial struggle of the past.

The United States, let us keep in mind, did recently seize Iraq on a very flimsy pretext and in fact because it wanted Iraqi oil, and shows no signs of loosening its grip anytime soon. This could least of all be considered part of the war against Muslim fanaticism because of all the countries in the region except Israel Iraq may have been the least Islamic.

I also think that we should be very careful of having this discussion among a large group of people who seem not to have been reared in the Islamic tradition. Christian scripture has many, many nasty bits, but it would be wrong to conclude from this that most Christians believe babies should have their heads smashed on rocks in some circumstances, because Christians, in an inconsistent but nevertheless undoubtedly salutary practice, ignore many parts of the Bible. I imagine that Muslims ignore many hadith as well, and perhaps also parts of the Qu'ran. In fact I cannot see how it could be otherwise, since the hadith are notoriously contradictory.

There is a practice on the Christian right of picking parts of the Qu'ran which illustrate their point and often quoting them so out of context that they stand for something very different than they really did. All of this is done to illustrate the evilness of Islam, etc. I hope we will all be careful not to make the same mistake.

radagast

I don't mean to derail this thread, but this is one area I have a hard time letting pass.

I agree that the US used a very flimsy pretext for invasion.

IMO, saying it was for oil is highly simplistic. We could have gotten the oil, much, much, much, much cheaper just by dropping sanctions against Saddam. Even though we are in there now, we still have to pay for it, so it seems we are paying for the invasion AND for the oil, when just dropping the sanctions would have gotten the oil at a much cheaper price.

My feelings are that emperor Bush was pissed off that Saddam tried to kill his daddy, Bush senior. The general feeling of the conservatives was that we should have taken him out in '91 (which would have forced Bush senior to break promises to all the coalition member). Those two reasons allowed the decision makers to rationalize the lack of evidence for WMD, and allow us to rush to invade. It also diverted attention from the fact we had made little progress finding Bin Laden.

Sorry for the thread derail,
Glenn

IsItJustMe

Glenn:

I'm not going to argue it, though I disagree somewhat I guess, but I don't think it takes away from my point, which is that the West in general and the U.S. in particular have for a couple of centuries mainly interracted with the Islamic world as aggressors and that this is mostly to blame for the hostility people in that area hold towards us, more than a problem with their religion.

During the Haitian revolution, the French used to torture rebels to death in the most horrible and imaginative ways. Then after the French violated a flag of truce to capture and murder Toussant L'Overture, who until then had been the Haitian leader and was quite an admirable fellow, others took over the leadership of the Haitian forces who were not quite as well balanced as Toussant. One of them used to shoot one or two of his own soldiers at mass rallies just to keep them on their toes, for instance. A Frenchman might look at this situation and say, "That's why the Haitians fight us. They are nuts." But even though there were many armed nuts in Haiti by that time, that was not the cause of the conflict.

IsItJustMe

In speaking of "what is wrong" with Islam and seeking it in writings put to paper centuries ago, I think we commit two errors which usually belong to believers:

1) The assumption that the beliefs and practices of believers of a particular religion are closely related to the official scriptures of that religion.

2) The view that the beliefs of any religion are unchanging.

Kosh3

Islam has a problem in its extreme deference to god. Literally everything is gods will. Even, one could argue, the US invasion of Iraq. One wonders why they fight it then, except they could argue that to fight is gods will as well. There is no room for independent thought - god is so fundamentally central to everything and anything. He is a constant thought in their lives, unlike modern christians, who think about god on sundays for an hour. The Koran (or Quran) is the literal, and unaltered, word of god. There is no room to believe outside of it.

Muslim scholars spend a great deal of time arguing about whether Muslim males have constant erections in paradise, or merely the capacity to have an erection for as long as you want, and discuss the nature of the harems that they will control. That is quite telling about the nature of Islam I think. Its paradise is male-centered, and to die in the name of Islam is glorified and special. Leaving this earth has great insentive, as does living like a zombie to the accord of the scripture.

Add these factors together and Islam really, is the perfect religion. The problem of Islam is many-fold.