"New Atheists are Wrong about Islam-- Here's How Data Proves it"-- Elias Isquith, Salon

[carolinayellowdog]

I just noticed this article which appeared Thursday on Salon.com. The title is regrettable for an OP here, and I'd have preferred to call it "Muslims are not as distinctive as many think, a new study shows." But DU doesn't allow us to change article titles, so I'll just ask that people engage the content of the article and not the title. These paras summarize the research findings:

I found that Muslims in general are less distinctive than many of us think. In many ways there is really very little difference between Muslims and everybody else. Sometimes I use “everybody else” as the reference category, and sometimes I use Christians in particular, because Christianity and Islam are by far the world’s biggest faith traditions…

Even in some areas in which we expect … I didn’t find a great deal of difference. For example, many people think that Muslims are really intent on fusing religious and political authority, that there’s really no room in Islamic thinking for independent civic sphere that is not run by religious authorities, and in which religious authority and doctrine predominate, meaning there’s little room for an independent civil society and public sphere. Well, I found in this survey data that … Muslims and Christians don’t differ very much on this question, and that most Muslims, once one controls for everything that needs to be controlled for in these statistical analyses, actually do not want to fuse religious and political authority…

Some, of course, do. Some absolutely do. But some Christians do as well … There are many American Christians who are skeptical about dividing church and state rigorously. That’s true for many Muslims as well. But a majority of both Christians and Muslims seem to embrace at least some separation of sacred and secular in politics. That’s one finding that was perhaps surprising and also showed that Muslims are less distinctive than we might think.

[Starboard Tack]

1. Interesting piece.

I'm not sure why you find the title "unfortunate". It seems quite apt after listening to and reading what some of the NA blowhards have to say.

[carolinayellowdog]

3. It seemed like a troll magnet

The gist of the research is that a great many of us misunderstand the extent of difference between Muslims and "others"-- seems like Isquith has a particular issue with New Atheism, but Fish pays at least as much attention to Christian belief of vast differences. My own past biases haven't been either pro-Christian or pro-atheist, but I used to think Hinduism was more tolerant and peaceful than Islam. A long trip to India, encountering Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists as well as Muslims and Hindus, led to a questioning of that bias. So has a couple of decades of subsequent history. I'm curious to find out what Fish might have learned about Hindu levels of belief in church/state separation, as contrasted to Muslims. In India I'd assume the Muslims are more emphatic about it since a Hindu theocratic government would be against their interest.

[Starboard Tack]

4. I used to think Hinduism and Bhuddism were more tolerant too

I'm no longer so sure of that, especially when following current events in India and Burma. I also used to think atheism promoted the most tolerance, but movements such as the New Atheists give me serious pause, in that regard. I find it increasingly more difficult to listen to those who essentially share my beliefs, or lack thereof, concerning the existence of God and Creation, as they bluster on about the evils of Islam. Singling out one religion seems to be the theme. Muslims are the easy target right now.

Bottom line is, no belief system has a lock on tolerance. It is something we either aspire to as individuals, or something that we reject out of our fear of "the other".

[TM99]

7. Because my friend, it is not about belief or non-belief.

It is about flawed human beings promoting all sorts of screwed up ideologies from nationalism (which is what has made Buddhists and Hindu's in those regions act against their teachings) to religious justifications for bigotry to the very narcissistic and solipsistic certainty that all must think like me or they are ignorant 'others'.

Us versus them! Primate dominance games didn't stop just because we evolved a frontal cortex.

[Starboard Tack]

8. So true.

The need to be right, when we can learn so much from accepting that fact that we are so often wrong. Even when we are right, we are usually wrong to a degree. Dogma, be it religious or political, tends to exclude the grey areas, not to mention color.

So sorry to hear about your dad. My thoughts are with you. Sounds like you have a wonderful relationship with him.

[cbayer]

2. Actually the only place you can't change the title is LBN.

So if you wanted to post it in religion with a revised title, you can. I would probably add a note saying that I changed the title on purpose to be less inflammatory.

[carolinayellowdog]

6. subtitle is good: "New empirical evidence shows anti-Islam crusaders misunderstand Muslim countries"

but I prefer to instigate discussions here rather than places where argument is more typical than discussion. Thanks for the tip re OPs and LBN titles. Isquith's article title is click-bait, but I think a disservice to the researcher who doesn't seem to be focused much on New Atheists. The research isn't all that new, though-- the book Are Muslims Distinctive? was given a Choice award as an outstanding academic title in 2012 according to the author's webpage at Berkeley.

[okasha]

5. This seems to happen a lot with minority or foreign groups when they're looked at closely.

They turn out to be "just like everybody else" in every way that matters.

I remember an article--long enough ago that I think it was in Life, maybe about the time of the Anita Bryant pogroms--about a gay couple who had adopted ten or twelve special needs kids. When the writer asked what the men would like the reader's takeaway to be, one said, "We're just like any other parents. We have washing machines, too."

(Quote from memory. Not swearing to exact wording.)