Islam is not all wrong

Submitted by Kurt Basking (United States), Jan 21, 2010 at 03:14

Dear Dr Pipes: In responding to your statement that you respect Islam the religion, reader David R Groesbeck says that he finds nothing good in Islam. If Islam were all wrong, the life would have been much easier -- we could just dismiss it like nazism. The truth is that Islam is a mixture of some very good things, some very bad things, and a stubborn insistence that everything must be strictly followed. In practice, the good of Islam --shared with most religion and thus not unique to Islam-- is not followed and the bad of Islam is applied by the followers as convenient. Thus, a theft is forgiven when the thief converts to Islam. Jews are hated but marrying a jewish women is accepted because convenient. Prayers are done or not done but lifes are given and taken for your right to pray at secular places and times. The net effect of all this is that the good of Islam is used by apologists to show how good Islam is and the bad of Islam is left unscrutinized because it hides under the religious umbrella.

A religion cannot be respected just because it contains some good ideas. To be respected, a religion should preach universal acceptance as in the Catholic religion, it should encourage humble inquiry into the nature of the devine as in the Hindu path of knowledge, it should open itself to criticism as in all modern religions, it should show fairness to all people as in Budddist insistence on right path, and it should encourage meditative inquiry into one's own self for penance and atonement as in Jewish atonement. A lot of these traits seem to be ostensibly missing in Islamist circles.

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