Cultural sensitivity is itself insensitive.
From The Pilgrimage chapter of the Koran:
Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians and those who associate (others with Allah)-- surely Allah will decide between them on the day of resurrection; surely Allah is a witness over all things. Do you not see that Allah is He, Whom obeys whoever is in the heavens and whoever is in the earth, and the sun and the moon and the stars, and the mountains and the trees, and the animals and many of the people; and many there are against whom chastisement has become necessary; and whomsoever Allah abases, there is none who can make him honorable; surely Allah does what He pleases. These are two adversaries who dispute about their Lord; then (as to) those who disbelieve, for them are cut out garments of fire, boiling water shall be poured over their heads. With it shall be melted what is in their bellies and (their) skins as well. And for them are whips of iron. Whenever they will desire to go forth from it, from grief, they shall be turned back into it, and taste the chastisement of burning.The Koran is nothing if not repetitive; such verses can be found in almost every chapter*. Imposing cultural sensitivity on true believers of the Koran is itself insensitive.
Surely Allah will make those who believe and do good deeds enter gardens beneath which rivers flow; they shall be adorned therein with bracelets of gold and (with) pearls, and their garments therein shall be of silk. And they are guided to goodly words and they are guided into the path of the Praised One.
As an aside, reading the Koran is the perfect antidote for multiculturalism and a complete explanation why Europe is in such trouble. The culturally sensitive are playing for a tie while the Islamofascists are playing for the win.
* - Yes, I know the Bible has such verses, too. Before you equate the two in any way, shape or form, read them both and then make your analysis. They are not equivalent at all and it's insulting to both sides to say so.
5 comments:
This is my summation of the relationship between multiculturalism and Islam:
Islam is the left's pet rattlesnake.
Jeff, sorry, but I misidentified you as ligneus. How rude of me! I just corrected it.
I like your analogy.
"Yes, I know the Bible has such verses, too. Before you equate the two in any way, shape or form, read them both and then make your analysis. They are not equivalent at all and it's insulting to both sides to say so"
I think you are missing the point of bringing up the fact that there are some objectionable verses in the bible. The point is this: most Christians and Jews are perfectly happy to ignore or explain away the Biblical verses in question. Why is it then so implausible that most Muslims would also be happy to ignore or explain away the (admittedly more numerous) such verses in the Koran?
I know a number of Muslims (or, at least, people of Muslim descent). They're just folks, you know? Granted, these are the ones who came to the US, and probably weren't the most devout in the first place, but still, there they are.
Tim, it's the themes that you want to pull out of the books, not individual sentences. Just as Robinson Crusoe is not a book about banking, the Bible is not a book about torture and oppression. I can't speak to the themes of the Old Testament (I would rely on a rabbi for that), but I can take a swing at the Gospels.
The theme of the Gospels is sacrifice, charity and love. The story is that God showed us, by personal, concrete example how to love each other despite the worst circumstances and how far he expects us to go in sacrificing ourselves for others. That's a lame summary, but maybe close enough.
The themes of the Koran, as best I can make out with 4 hours to go on the Audible version, are these:
-Allah is all-powerful and does what he wants. Things happen because He wills it. (repeated every chapter)
-You are not responsible for anyone but yourself when it comes to matters of faith. (repeated every third chapter)
-Unbelievers and infidels will be tortured. (repeated every chapter)
-Believers will be rewarded with paradise. (repeated every chapter)
-Warn the unbelievers, but don't sweat their fate. If Allah so desires it, they're screwed. (repeated every other chapter)
The Koran is incredibly repetitive. I mean incredibly repetitive. I think I've heard the story of Moses and the serpent staff six times now. You can't miss the messages it's trying to convey because they are repeated ad nauseum.
The difference between the implementation of the Koran and the Gospels (again, I'll leave Judaism out of this) is that hostility and aggression are clearly against Christ's teaching. The Koran is really muddy on that and I would say that the preponderance falls upon insensitivity at best and hostility at worst. That you can find peaceful Muslims is understandable, but that you can find warlike ones is even more understandable.
Like I said in the previous post on this topic, I would easily settle into the Jihadi camp on this one. For me, righteous living and fair dealing would be reserved for fellow Muslims and the infidels can be screwed with impunity.
Tim, going back to the point you made at the end of the trolltastic thread on the other Koran post, I found it instructive to engage in the debate because it provided more than just a straw man for the concept that all religions are the same. As you teased out the logical construct, you found that there was nothing there save for cherry-picked verses that ran counter to the accepted themes of the book. As I watched the conversation unfold, all I could think of was an experiment like the one I did with the Momma Daisy photo. Yes, the blue values in the pixels of the photo of an orange flower are nonzero, but the thing still isn't blue.
Seeing blue instead of orange is the essence of cultural and religious equivalence.
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