Headline: Morality police in Iran beat a 22 year old woman to death for not wearing the hijab correctly.
Situations like this happen on a daily basis all throughout the Muslim world. If you have ever espoused the idea of “Moral Relativism” look into the doctrine of "honour killings" and tell me again that there aren’t right and wrong answers on how to live a happy and fulfilling life.
Reading stories like this make me sick to my stomach. How can a piece of cloth be the reason you were murderer by the state you live in? How can an innate and biological phenomenon be the reason your own family murders you? How can your fathers first reaction when he learns that you have been raped is to murder you because you have defamed the family? Anyone with a little sense knows exactly why and it’s not because they are all psychopaths I can tell you that.
Incase anyone forgot, the Taliban still control Afghanistan. They are still forbidding women and girls to get a proper education. They are still slaughtering babies at maternity wards when they are just hours old. They are still drilling holes through the eye balls of citizens who are caught cooperating with westerners. Yet they still cannot find a single moral qualm with any of the above.
Osama Bin Laden was actually a pretty normal guy — psychologically speaking. He knew right from wrong. He did a lot of charity work. He helped many muslims who were in need of basic necessities i.e food, water, shelter etc. His mind was simply filled with some of the worst ideas humans have ever created. A psychological pathogen strong enough to morally rationalise the rape and murder of countless men and women.
What can we do to fix this? Is there anything we can do? I really don’t know if there is anything we can do short of going to war that will ameliorate these atrocities. Which is ironic because war would likely "sign and deliver" more suffering and death than what is going on in the Middle East right now anyway. The ideas I am talking about are as old and as powerful as any in human history. There are also millions of people around the world who subscribe to the religion that these ideas come from, who are at the same time some of the most caring and kind people on earth. Some of which are my friends.
I believe the bare minimum we can do looking from the outside in, is to not subscribe — or better yet flat out reject — anything relating to the specious doctrine of “Moral Relativism”. We should also really try to refrain from calling anyone who speaks up on these issues an “Islamophobe”. Doing this does not make you kind, good, or compassionate. You aren’t standing up for minorities and you aren't being brave. You are instead completely missing the point and turning a blind eye towards some of the most horrible injustices going on in our world today. All under the guise of pluralism and acceptance. This isn’t pluralism, this is pathology.
When people talk about these issues they aren’t talking about skin colour or ethnicity. If they are then these people are just as ignorant and mis-informed as the one's I spoke about above. They are instead talking about specific ideas written down in holy books, that claim to be moral and idealistic, yet in practise completely destroy the lives of millions of people. In spite of this, we in the West still decide to look the other way to try and protect those that hold these beliefs because they are minorities. Which in today's day and age means that you have been systemically oppressed by your ruling majority.
Now I shouldn't have to make this for-coming parenthesis, but such is the world we now live in. Whether someone is white, yellow, brown, or black is an uninteresting and meaningless to me as someone's hair colour. If a white muslim believes that gays should be thrown from rooftops, then I would feel the same distain for him as I would if he were yellow, brown, or black. It's not the immutable characteristics that matter. It is the beliefs held inside each of their minds that is causing the damage.
Nevertheless, this is why it is so hard for people to come to terms with the fact that all of these backwards and barbaric ideas come from these holy books. How can some people read them and turn out to be caring and compassionate, and others read them and turn out to be some of the worst rapists and murderers in the world? Surely it must just be some bad interpretations on behalf of a minority of muslim psychopaths and sadists?
Have you ever stopped and thought about why the atrocities you hear about online or in the news are always committed by "fundamentalists" or "extremists". It is because their interpretation of these doctrines are as literal and as rudimentary as they can possibly be. They don't throw gays off of the highest buildings in the land and then stone them to death because they have the creative minds of James Wan and Leigh Whannell. They do it because that it what is written in the texts. Plain and simple. There is a reason why you never hear of a Buddhist suicide bomber. Or a Jain female genital mutilation (FGM) procedure.
What is actually true is the opposite of what our intuitions tell us. Everyone alive today has been born in the age of modernity. We are all mostly surrounded and have been raised by kind hearted and caring people. These outside influences on people's lives makes it easy for them to skip over the passages on rape, slavery, and murder. It instead allows them to focus solely on the profundity, community, and Islamic call to prayer (Adhan). Which is a sound so beautiful that it will nearly make you cry every time you listen to it (link below).
The same can be said about Judaism and Christianity. There are horrendous passages in the Old and New Testaments as well. However the fundamentalist views in the Muslim world are still orders of magnitude larger than they are in the Jewish or Christian world. One reason may be because apostates of Christianity or Judaism are frowned upon by their brethren. Where as apostates in the Muslim world are beheaded. It is hard to live in a pluralistic society when the punishment for attempting to do so is to get your head cut off.
I don't have any real solutions here. I am just thinking out loud on what has been a hobby horse of mine for the past 3-4 years. I have had a huge few weeks at work. My plan was to come home, cook some dinner, and watch the countdown to ADCC (Jiu Jitsu World Cup). Then I saw a photo of a young girl who had been beaten to death for not wearing the hijab correctly. First sadness, then uncontrollable rage, then an even deeper sense of sadness.
I am now sitting here, many hours later, dinner no closer to being ready than it was when I got home, thinking about all of those who are currently living under fundamentalist totalitarian theocracies. Those wishing that they could escape to any of the countries the West has to offer. The most technologically advanced and egalitarian countries in the world. The countries in which its own citizens are so privileged, that they actually have to invent their own version of oppression — because the real McCoy is no where to be found. Maybe they should take a trip to Iran or Afghanistan and scream "fascists" in the faces of the Taliban or the Ayatollah and see if they make any inroads. Have any of these people actually read "The Doctrine of Fascism" by Benito Mussolini? I doubt it.
We must always remain scrupulously aware of our own internal biases and personality traits. Conversation is the only peaceful tool we have at our disposal before everything divulges into violent chaos. The mixture of different backgrounds, cultures, and sexuality preferences into a single society is one of the most beautiful and enriching parts about life itself. However if I tell you that 2+2=4 and then Terence Tao tells you that 2+2=4. Know that we are both equally correct. Just as if a secular white guy tells you that women are the property of men, and then a brown muslim Imam tells you that women are the property of men. Know that they are both equally wrong. This is what we call a universal moral truth.
Pin point and then attack specific ideas that you disagree with if you actually want to create positive change in the world. You first have to understand how their beliefs came about. Then you have to disarm them of those beliefs through dispassionate and rational arguments. This is how we move forward as a peaceful and productive society.
Moral Relativism is a bad philosophical concept. Religious fundamentalism has extremely deleterious effects on modernity. I hope I helped to convince you of that.
Now I better start cooking dinner.