Self-Criticism by Muslims

Submitted by Chris G. (United States), Jul 24, 2007 at 15:41

Actually the majority of my Muslim friends are Turkish and they do not deny that many Armenians were killed, however they disagree on the exact numbers. These are very devout Turkish Muslims by the way. Recently a group of them actually participated in a conference between Turks and Armenians about the genocide. Sadly the majority of the Armenian academics invited either boycotted the conference or they were threatened not to attend by their local Armenian communities.

Oh yeah there are a fair number of self-examining books and films by Muslim authors and producers. A really good one is "Closed Doors" written and directed by Atef Hetata. It's a great critique about poverty and the dangers of fundamentalism in Egypt. Its also quite funny in parts. I highly recommend it.

Historically one of the most famous Muslim critics of Islam itself was the great philosopher Ibn Rushd, otherwise knows as Averroes who lived between 1126-1198 CE. I recommend reading some of his writings. They are quite good. A good site about him can be found here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ibnrushd.htm

For a modern critique here's a great one: http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles_501_550/self_criticism.htm

If you look you'll find them. Also within debates between historic scholars I have seen self-criticisms often mentioned about the way their communities were going. But I'm not going to spend more time digging those up as I have a ton of other posts to answer on this forum and others including Islamic forums. Still I do agree in part is that they definitely lack the amount of self-criticism that we see in Western cultures. There is no doubt that there is a much greater freedom of thought and speech available here in the West.

Some Muslims realize this and love living in the West because of it, while others don't. That is in fact a big part of my arguement towards fundamentalists who seem to argue for moving back 1,000 years but who at the same time, really enjoy their cell phones, big screen LCD TV's, and Mercedes Benz cars.

Believe it or not, its quite easy to reason with these people and get them thinking in more realistic terms. These are the types that yell "SHARIAT SHARIAT SHARIAT OR DEATH!" and then when you ask them what a modern Shariat based government would look like and how its economic system would function, they can't tell you. With them its all about getting them to become more self-reflective in ways they are not used to thinking. Once you get them thinking in that manner, there is no turning back for them. You have put a lethal wound into their extremist thinking. The trick is gettng that knife in. It takes patience and actually showing these extremists respect while agreeing with them on some issues where their beliefs are more moderate. Its a delicate psychological game in earning their trust. But it is possible.

Chris G.

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