People love to point out all of the evils that have occurred in connection with religion in general throughout history. But they also often fail to point out that nearly every hospital and homeless shelter in their city is run by or was founded by a religious group. Organized religion certainly has its negative and its positives. But I personally tire of the old moral equivalent cliché’ that attempts to argue that because great evils that were carried out by Christians, one cannot commend Islam today. This is utter foolishness. One should condemn all of the above. Period.
However, as a Christian I will point out that there is a distinction between Christianity and Islam on this point. When Christianity was experiencing its darkest days, it was time when people had turned away from their Bibles. There was a reliance not on the book but rather on a magisterium that was out of control. With the reformation, people began to turn back to their Bibles and thus in time genuine “reformation” took place. But today the radicalization within Islam is occurring as Muslims are turning to their holy books, not away. Christianity is fundamentally a passive religion. Islam is fundamentally an active, often violent and imperialistic religion. The moral equivalent argument falls down when one actually compares the texts. There is no real comparison.
Fundamentalist believers of any religion will always go to extremes. Why did you think it necessary to attack Islam as a whole because of these fundamentalists?
See the above comments. Again, Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out is not first an attack against Islam. It is a defense of human rights and human freedoms. When a young women is stoned to death by her own family because she became pregnant and asked for permission to marry her beloved (see the story of Yagmur) then we should hear the phrase, “Where someone is not free, no one is free.” The West is at a very crucial time in its history. It needs to make some very important decisions: Which issues take a higher priority to us; tolerance, openness and multi-culturalism or human rights and human freedoms? Unfortunately, the endemic violation of the latter within Islam is forcing us to choose. For me, there is no question that as important as openness and tolerance are, there must be a limit. When human rights are violated, we must rise up. We must stand in solidarity with these very brave former Muslims. To not do so is to not only throw away the past fifty years of labor that has been poured into the civil rights movement but also the blood sweat and tears that were poured into the very founding of this country. This is an issue that both liberals and conservatives can fully agree on. If we fail to do so, it is because we no longer love or cherish human freedoms and human rights. This would be a tragedy of colossal proportions.
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