If Muslims can't be cremated, why do they blow themselves up?

Because you’re making huge sweeping generalizations thinking that people who follow terrorist methods are religious in any way that actually matters….

If Christians believe thou shall not kill why do they blow up abortion clinics?

@uberbatman I agree that that doesn’t make sense to me either.

Maybe cremation is OK so long as it’s near instantaneous.

According to them, if they kill enemies of faith while committing an act that would otherwise be a sin, they will get a free pass. Kind of the same thinking of the nobles buying indulgences during the middle ages and going out to rape and pillage a village.

Yes, blown to bits or ashes to ashes still would make it hard to effectively enjoy those 20,000 virgins. lol
I nominate this as Q. of the day. lol

@Coloma I know you are half joking, but I am not sure the Muslim religion requires the body be intact for the afterlife to go well. :). In Judaism the way I understand it our bodies are supposed to go back to the earth. Cycle of life and all that. Muslims might have a similar mindset? I don’t know.

What I wrote still does not answer the OP’s question though. Basically “religious” people rationalize whatever they are doing is for the greater good. I put religious in quotes, because one could argue those people are not religious, not doing as God would want. It’s all how you look at it.

No, they are not the same thing. Cremation is a specific ritual. It is not just any act that causes the body to be burned in some way. It is performed on an already dead body and comes with intentions regarding the remains—intentions that are seen as being at odds with the rites specified by Muslim tradition. In particular, spreading the ashes of a cremated body is seen as disrespectful to the person who once inhabited it. The intentions behind martyrdom are clearly much different. They involve sacrificing one’s own life for Allah, not burning the body of someone else who is already dead.

While we’re making light of religion, however, it is worth noting that the Quran is much kinder about women who remarry. Levirate marriage is explicitly forbidden (Quran 4:19), and women are allowed to go back into the dating pool after a mourning period of four months and ten days (Quran 2:234). Jesus, on the other hand, called women who seek divorce whores and adulterers (Mark 10:11–12) and refused to condemn the practice of forcing women to marry their deceased husband’s brother (Luke 19:27–38).

What’s that? I’m being completely unfair and leaving out quite a bit of context? Fancy that…

Coz it’s a blast…fuck the politics.

If you are killing in the name of Allah, a whole lot of lower level religious stuff is excused.

But who said religion was rational?

@SavoirFaire The way I understand it a Muslim woman cannot divorce without the express consent of her husband, no way around it. Also, men can divorce their wives practically at whim and leave her with nothing. I don’t mean only money nothing, I mean out on the street. Divorce and second marriages are two separate things.

Hahahah….That was funny.

I also have no idea, I assume because their book tells them to use violence to fight for their god.

Because they are dickheads

@JLeslie If you don’t pay attention the last sentence of what I wrote, you’re not going to get the message of my post. You’ll notice that I only cited passages about widows from the Quran, whereas I cited passages about both widows and divorced women from the Bible. That’s part of the purposeful unfairness of the post, which is meant to underline the problems with the question.

Regardless, your understanding is mistaken. What you are referring to are practices that have become the norm in many Muslim countries—as well as many non-Muslim countries, for what it’s worth—but which are not found in the Quran. This is not to say that the provisions for divorce given in the Quran are fully equitable. They most certainly are not. Divorce is far easier for a man to procure under Islamic law than it is for a woman. It is not the case, however, that divorce within Islam is dependent solely on the husband’s whim or will.

Interesting.

Blowing yourself up is against Islam, even in Jihad.

@mattbrowne – then why do they do it so often?

I guess I see a lot of duplicity in the way that Moslems deal with terrorism. On the one hand, there is the view (which you just said) that Islam does allow things like terrorism and suicide bombing – that it is against Islamic law, etc.

On the other side, there are the people that are actually themselves up, doing so while saying “Allahu Akbar” and praying for the return of the great Caliphate and a return to islamic law.

You don’t get it both ways.

Disavowing terrorist acts by saying that they are not “true Islam”, while the facts on the ground are exactly the opposite—that’s a problem for me.

Here’s a brief video of Sam Harris appearing on Bill Maher’s show. I think he explains eloquently why Muslims, Christians and more broadly all who believe in evidence-free religions they use to order their life are so readily able to do illogical things. It is also why I feel so strongly that we need to challenge beliefs that are not supported by any evidence—why the social taboo against challenging them is so dangerous in a nuclear age.

That question made me laugh!

@mattbrowne No, it isn’t. Suicide is contrary to the teachings of Islam, but martyrdom is not. And while Americans may call the terrorists who die in their attacks “suicide bombers,” those who are perpetrating the acts would not agree.

@elbanditoroso For one thing, @mattbrowne is mistaken in his assertion. For another, they don’t do it very often. Take the number of Muslims who have engaged in terrorist acts that cost them their lives and divide it by the total number of Muslims in the world and you’ll see that it’s a fairly small percentage (just like the lunatic fringe of every movement). Just because the media puts a magnifying glass over it doesn’t mean it’s large.

I’m also not sure what your “you don’t get it both ways” comment means. Can you point to an individual person who believes both that terrorism is against Islamic law and who is blowing themselves up, or are you complaining about the fact that there is disagreement among Muslims about what the best interpretation of their religion is? Only the former would justify the “both ways” comment, as the latter is true of every belief set held by more than one person (and may even be true of some belief sets held by only a single individual).

@ETpro Leaving aside the fact that Sam Harris is a complete hack, is there a reason why we cannot distinguish Christians and Muslims who are concerned with evidence from those who are not? The fact that you don’t agree with someone about what the evidence shows does not itself prove that someone is unconcerned with evidence or is part of an “evidence-free” religion. I think that Christianity and Islam are both unconvincing, but I have no trouble distinguishing my colleague who teaches philosophy of religion from the guy on a New York City street corner who once screamed at me abou how God sent AIDS to kill “the gays.”

@SavoirFaire If you can provide me convincing evidence that any particular God is actually the creator of the universe and both worthy of and demanding of my worship, I will bow down and worship that deity. I see no such evidence for any god, be it Zeus, Odin, Quetzalcoatl, Amun, El, Yahweh or the Great FSM. That is why I call these religions evidence free.

@ETpro You know that I don’t believe in God, so you know that asking me for proof of God is just an empty rhetorical gesture. But you also know that there are many challenging philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Just because they haven’t convinced either of us does not mean they could not convince a reasonable person. And indeed, we need to keep our minds open to the possibility that we could be the ones who are wrong (otherwise, we become the ones who are blind to evidence).

Moreover, you have decided to move the goal posts. You started with “evidence-free,” but now you are asking for “convincing evidence.” And not just “convincing evidence,” but evidence that would convince you personally. One of the things that reasonable people have to accept is that uncovering the truth is a complicated process. There are very few instances where one side is definitely right and the other definitely wrong.

To call a religion “evidence-free,” if it’s not just a petty insult, is to strongly imply that members of said religion have nothing to say in defense of their worldview. That might be true for some, but it is patently false as a general claim about all Christians or all Muslims. Again, I agree with you that the evidence on offer is insufficient and unconvincing. But I see no reason to call it nonexistent. Honest debate begins with mutual respect, even in the face of disagreement.

@SavoirFaire – “don’t get it both ways” refers to the apologists who essentially redefine Islam to fit their purpose. After a terror attack, they disavow that Islam could possible have played any role in the attack “that is not Islam” – but then at the next moment give financial aid and support to the very people who made the attack.

One needs only to look at Saudi Arabia to see that sort of duplicity – practically every month.

The fact is that the terrorist blowing themselves up are doing so in the name of Islam, regardless of the “Islamic scholars’ who try and run away from them.

@SavoirFaire No, I don’t actually ”...know that there are many challenging philosophical arguments for the existence of God.” As to being open to entertaining such arguments, I am every bit as open to them as to evidence of the existence of a God or gods. It seems to me that very few atheists have closed minds unwilling to look at evidence. That is what I find in dedicated theists.

Here’s Christopher Hitchens giving an answer to a challenging question that an evangelical Christian broadcaster put to him. I mention it here because it speaks to at least one so-called philosophical argument theists advance for the existence of God, but which is clearly a false argument. It also speaks eloquently to the clearly existent fact of religiously motivated barbarism, which is what the OP was all about.

@elbanditoroso – Political Islam (often called Islamism), which contains the Sharia, allows violence and killings, but not suicide bombings. Martyrdom plays an important role. We need to distinguish between non-militant Islamists (a significant worldwide movement) and militant Islamists (a tiny minority). I wrote this in some of the other threads:

At its core, the Islamic faith is very tolerant of other faiths and beliefs when it is based on particular interpretations of the Quran and the Sunnah. The Islamic faith can be very intolerant of other faiths and beliefs when it is based on a different set of interpretations of the Quran and the Sunnah. Within the Muslim world we see a struggle between these two kinds of interpretations. Ignoring the troubling interpretations would be irresponsible. Their existence is a fact. They sincerely believe that Islamic law supersedes laws created by elected representatives. They believe in the superiority of Islam and endorse the idea that non-Muslims are disbelievers. They believe that people who print the Danish cartoons should be killed. The only difference: These non-militant Islamists are not capable of inflicting violence. A lot of effort is required to turn these people into militant Islamists. Western politicians focus on militant Islamists, overlooking the problem of non-militant Islamists.

Muslims need to acknowledge that mainstream Islam is in urgent need of reform. It is not just a problem of a tiny violent minority. The Quran needs an interpretation that works in the 21st century. Islam has to go through the same painful process as Christianity did, going from burning witches and scientists to supporting the declaration of universal human rights.

People who criticize Christianity don’t need police protection. People who criticize Islam do. Christianity experienced a reformation. Judaism experienced a reformation. Islam didn’t, at least so far. But there are a lot of good proposals out there how to reform Islam. But people who make these proposals or support these proposals are threatened by violence.

The change has to come from Muslims, from people like Irshad Manji. It’s a good thing that most Islamists are not aware how influential she already is. Her two books written in English are available as free pdf downloads in other languages such as Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Malay and Indonesian languages and there are already more than half a million downloads for Arabic alone.

But as non-Muslims we can still do two things:

1) Encourage and support the Muslims who demand reform
2) Adopt a zero tolerance attitude for non-militant Islamists

In Germany it is a crime to form groups that want to abolish democracy and our constitution, which gives us a legal basis to persecute non-militant Islamists. In the meantime almost all larger mosques are being observed by an undercover agents. The trigger was the Hamburg Al-Qaeda cell in 2001 preparing for 911 going unnoticed. Non-militant Islamism breeds militant Islamism. One out of 100 to 500 Islamists eventually becomes violent. Most mosques spread peaceful messages, but every now and then some don’t and we need to know.

We need to focus on the first step of radicalization, when a mainstream Muslim becomes a non-militant Islamist. Any religious talk that contradicts our Western values must be met with fierce opposition from our side. Any belittling of the Sharia (‘we just use it as family law to settle disputes’) must be met with fierce opposition from our side. Our countries must be completely Sharia free. There is only one institution allowed to make laws: we the people when we elect our representatives. The Sharia was invented 1000 years ago and it violates everything we hold dear in the West. It is cruel. It discriminates people. It is actually the Sharia which contains a law that says criticizing Islam is a crime.

Reform of Islam according to Irshad Manji is important because:
– in mainstream Islam peace has to replace conformity as priority number one
– the Muslim world needs education, not indoctrination
– only free societies allow for the reinvention of the self and the evolution of faiths
– we need pluralism of nonviolent ideas everywhere
– introspection is necessary when things go wrong
– most mainstream Muslims don’t dare to differ with their theocrats
– peace-loving mainstream Muslims have to snap out of denial and find the courage to speak out
– peace-loving mainstream Muslims must demand a sharia-free and fatwa-free world
– most mainstream Muslims were more offended by the Danish cartoons than by the riots and killings that occurred afterwards, and this should be seen as a scandal
– the perceived consistency of holy texts is an illusion
– there is no such thing as perfect scripture
– the stubborn streak of anti-Semitism in Islam is a fact that has to be acknowledged
– the Quran needs an interpretation that works in the 21st century
– men don’t have a monopoly of interpreting the Quran
– the Quran has three times as many verses urging Muslims to think than verses promoting blind worship
– tribal customs should not be confused with faith
– Islam has not conquered Arab culture, Arab culture has conquered Islam
– cultures are man-made and there is nothing sacred about culture; only good cultural practices should survive

Correction:

… which gives us a legal basis to prosecute non-militant Islamists…

@mattbrowne

While I appreciate the time that you spent writing that essay above, my comment is that an academic treatise like that simply doesn’t matter.

The first couple of paragraphs give a more-or-less encyclopedic definition of what Islam is or isn’t. But I would argue that, at best, it is dated, and at worst, simply does not reflect the way that Islam exists today. It’s fine to say that “Islam is a tolerant religion” in an academic sense, but if this were actually true, then – Where is the tolerance? I see building being bombed because of cartoons in a Danish newspaper. Is that tolerance?

The second set of paragraphs – well, you’re preaching to the wrong congregation. External pressure on Islam is not going to cause it to reform. External pressure NEVER succeeds. If there will be change to Islam, it will be over generations and it will HAVE TO BE internally motivated. Right now there is no progressive wing of Islam that has any support – anyone who goes against the far right wing of Islam is silenced, one way or another.

So again, I respect the time you took writing the response above, but it is far more theoretical and idealistic than it is actual or practical.

@elbanditoroso – The “academic treatise” does matter, because in my experience the vast majority of people in the West have trouble understanding the differences between the terms I outlined above. At some point, this can lead to equating Islam with “people blowing themselves up” which is unfair and dangerous and ignorant.

I quoted Irshad Manji with “at its core Islam is a tolerant religion”, because this is significant. Otherwise we have to ship 1.5 billion people to some other planet, or live with 1.5 billion people following a violent religion. Is this what you want?

I wasn’t talking about external pressure. I wrote “the change has to come from Muslims, from people like Irshad Manji.” In her two books, she asks for non-Muslim support. So it’s about Muslims pressuring Muslims. And non-Muslims supporting those Muslims who pressure Muslims. The progressive wing does exist and it’s growing. It’s real. It’s practical.

You sound as if you have given up. In my opinion, resignation is not the answer.

@mattbrowne – Given up? Possibly. Put it this way: after having been around for 50+ years, I have no reason for confidence that Moslems (or Islam) will change.

@elbanditoroso Regarding this post: thank you for the clarification, but do you realize that what you originally said is completely the opposite of what you are now saying? Maybe it was just bad syntax in the original, especially since I don’t know anyone who would deny the existence of the sort of duplicity you mention in your clarification.

@ETpro Okay, perhaps I was giving you too much credit. My apologies. The Hitchens video, for instance, does not involve a challenging question at all. Nor does it present a philosophical argument. It is a rhetorical device that is easily answered—as Hitchens does quite adeptly.

In any case, here’s one argument that actual religious philosophers use. It is called “the modal argument for the existence of God.”

Where ♒ stands for the necessity operator, v stands for inclusive disjunction, → stands for material implication, ¬ stands for negation, and letting “g = God exists”:

1. g → ♒(g)
2. ♒(g) v ¬♒(g)
3. ¬♒(g) → ♒(¬♒(g))
4. ♒(g) v ♒(¬♒(g))
5. ♒(¬♒(g)) → ♒(¬g)
6. ♒(g) v ♒(¬g)
7. ¬♒(¬g)
8. ♒(g)
9. ♒(g) → g
10. g

The argument does not convince me, and I have criticized it in papers I’ve written. Still, it seems to me that a reasonable person who understands the argument might be convinced by it. Since you are convinced that theism is evidence free across the board, however, I look forward to your demonstration that this argument is not just mistaken, but throughly irrational.

@elbanditoroso – In the early 1960s, a lot of African Americans, who had been around 50+ years, distrusted Martin Luther King, and had no reason to believe that segregation would ever go away.

Here’s a short description of Irshad Manji’s second book. I highlighted one question, because it seems to relate to our dialog here.

“Since publishing The Trouble with Islam Today, Manji has taken an aspirational approach to issues of reform. In her 2011 book Allah, Liberty and Love, she invites Muslims and non-Muslims to transcend the fears that stop many from living with integrity: the fear of offending others in a multicultural world as well as the fear of questioning their own communities. Although Manji asserts that change must start from within, she emphasizes that all human beings have the right to contribute to reform in any community. Among the questions Manji asks are: What prevents young Muslims, even in the West, from going public with their need for religious interpretation? What scares non-Muslims about openly supporting liberal voices within Islam? How can people abandon dogma while keeping faith? Allah, Liberty and Love has been endorsed by Muslims such as Time Magazine’s Fareed Zakaria and Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S Congress.”

1. g → ♒(g)
2. ♒(g) v ¬♒(g)
3. ¬♒(g) → ♒(¬♒(g))
4. ♒(g) v ♒(¬♒(g))
5. ♒(¬♒(g)) → ♒(¬g)
6. ♒(g) v ♒(¬g)
7. ¬♒(¬g)
8. ♒(g)
9. ♒(g) → g
10. g

(WTH???)

@Dutchess_III It’s modal logic, which is a way of symbolically and unambiguously representing arguments that include modal operators (that is, arguments that include talk about necessity and possibility). Take the first line, for example. Since it was stipulated that ♒ stands for the necessity operator, → stands for material implication, and “g = God exists,” that premise reads “if God exists, then He necessarily exists.” This is supposed to follow from the definition of God: He doesn’t just exist contingently like His creations do, but rather exists necessarily (i.e., He could not have failed to exist).

Since @ETpro has confidently declared that theism is evidence-free, I am looking forward to his explanation of why this argument does not count as evidence at all (rather than just counting as evidence that does not convince him personally). In his response, I expect him to avoid such common errors as conflating evidence with proof or failing to recognize that there can be evidence for false theses.

@matt, you asked: What scares non-Muslims about openly supporting liberal voices within Islam?

The answer, at least for me, is that I (a non-Muslim – actually of a background that the Muslims would like to eradicate) could/would easily be a target of those less-than-liberal voices in the Islamic world that are not tolerant (that word again) of liberal voices in the Islamic world.

There are a few things in the world that I am willing to take physical and mortal risks for. My family is one of those things. The liberal islamic movement is not.

@elbanditoroso I had no idea that the state of Georgia had become a conservative Muslim stronghold. You must be at so much risk. ~

The modal ontological argument that God exists works only so long as God is what theistic man defines him to be, which includes his being a necessity. That argument works just as well for the Flying Spaghetti Monster; Invisible Pink Unicorns that are defined as omniscient, omnipotent and necessary; or any of the other 3000 supreme deities man has invented. There is no need to attack premise 1. It stands. But God being a necessity does not. That is where proof is required. And simply stating that it is the case is not proof, it’s argument by assertion. God being a necessity is where proof is entirely lacking.

@ETpro So then which premise are you rejecting?

@SavoirFaire The premise of necessity. The entire argument revolves around the definition of God. Yet we have no idea how God or gods, should one or more exist, ought to be defined. God, as posited by theists, lies outside space/time and causality. Asking a human who cannot reach beyond space/time and causality to define something lying outside of space/time and causality is like asking a scientist to define what came before the big bang. We can’t look there to see. So the definition is entirely artificial. It has no merit. It is a logical absurdity just as certainly as asking if an omnipotent God can create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it is a logical absurdity.

@ETpro There is no premise of necessity. Give me a number. And in any case, the definition is a stipulation: the arguer says “this is the sort of God I believe exists,” and then they give you an argument for it. You don’t get to tell them what sort of thing they can or cannot argue for.

And the stone example doesn’t work well. There are two possible ways of understanding omnipotence. The first says that to be omnipotent is to be able to do anything that is possible. Since the stone example does not describe anything possible (contradictions being necessarily false), it is not a problem for this understanding. The second says that to be omnipotent is to be able to do literally anything, including making contradictions true. Thus the stone example is again unproblematic because it rests on the assumption that an omnipotent being could not make contradictions true.

Finally, you still haven’t given me an argument for why we should think that the argument failing to convince you proves that it cannot convince any reasonable person and should not be considered evidence at all (as opposed to merely unconvincing evidence). That is, it seems you are falling into the trap of conflating evidence with proof.

@SavoirFaire – that’s not the point and you know it. That comment was low, even for you.

@SavoirFaire You know that if I am allowed to set up a definition of a thing, any thing, in such a manner that it must exist; then I can prove anything is true.