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 Topic: Islam and Compassion

 (Read 3824 times)
  • 1« Previous thread | Next thread »
  • Islam and Compassion
     OP - April 19, 2013, 03:21 PM
    I wonder if anyone else sees what I see: Islam (and possibly other religions) negatively affecting people's compassion. I know Islam has some positive teachings regarding compassion, but the general feel of Islam seems to do more harm to it than good. I gave it some thought, and here are some of the reasons I came up with:

    1) Being good to living things is only secondary to being good to Allah. You can rape and kill and still have hope that you will be forgiven if you're doing your worshipping. Similarly, if you're not doing your prayers for example, rape is an insignificant sin in comparison, so in the back of your mind, you'll think: What's the point of doing nice things to people, or refraining from doing bad things to them?
    2) It teaches that people deserve an eternity of unimaginable torture just for not sharing your faith, setting such a low standard for mercy.
    3) It teaches mechanical thinking by making right and wrong all about reward and punishment, so if you can do something really bad to someone and be able to justify it in terms of halal and haram, then do so without remorse.
    4) It teaches that animals are created for us humans, so our convenience is a much higher priority than anything related to animals.
    5) It teaches us to kill certain animals, like black dogs. One scholar actually gave out a fatwa allowing people to kill a black cat that was supposedly terrorizing a certain neighbourhood.
    6) It teaches us to sacrifice animals in God's name.
    7) It sets no law against abuse, yet prohibits the modification of Islamic law. I know it's not technically "haram" for a ruler to set a law to punish someone for abusing an animal for instance, but since Islam is so deeply embedded in a muslim's ethics, they seem to think like this: If Islam doesn't tell us what to do about it, then it's not a big deal. The results speak for themselves. Let the man do whatever he likes to his women as long as he doesn't kill them.

    Obviously each Muslim receives the teachings with a different attitude, and a lot of them benefit from them, but I'm talking about the trends I'm noticing in Islamic societies, especially regarding abuse. I'm also speaking from personal experience, as I find my compassion increasing the less religious I become.

    Here's hoping I'm posting in the right section.
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #1 - April 19, 2013, 04:11 PM
    Sounds about right to me.
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #2 - April 19, 2013, 05:52 PM
    OK, but why is it like that?  Qui bono?
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #3 - April 19, 2013, 07:12 PM
    When the collective is privileged over the individual compassion is weakness.

    When the honour of the faith is prioritised over all else and doubt and critique are viewed as treachery then compassion is weakness.

    But anyway, a belief system that promotes the concept of Hell, punishment and fear is from its basics at odds with any modern definition of compassion
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #4 - April 19, 2013, 07:45 PM
    This is precisely why progressive Muslims confuse me, arguing that the immemorial Islamic moral code has to be challenged  to allow the modern Muslim to conform to the more globalized world. They are going as far as to believe in evolution, argue for complete gender equality and freedom of expression, coming out as Muslim LGBTQ members or in defense of the LGBTQ community...  

    Which is all great actually, but it's mind fucking to have many progressive Muslims who reduce their beloved stories of Nuh, Lut and Adam to just fables to gain "moral" reinforcement from, go on to treat them like mere analogies and allusions  to real occurrences, and then have the same folks come back to you 3 days later, preaching the unadulterated word of god, and the flawlessness of the Qur'an and all its absolute truth...
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #5 - April 19, 2013, 08:39 PM
    Cognitive dissonance at it's height, that and the fact that they feel like they must belong to the tribe and back this up by saying the more standard rhetoric so they are backed up in the community of still being a Muslim, if anyone suspects they are not.
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #6 - April 19, 2013, 09:17 PM
    I think it does come down to *identity*
    "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Viktor E. Frankl

    'Life is just the extreme expression of complex chemistry' - Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #7 - April 19, 2013, 10:00 PM
    Wish we could gear people to identifying as urmm, I dunno, being a Human?
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #8 - April 19, 2013, 10:04 PM
    That's a pretty low standard. Cheesy
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #9 - April 20, 2013, 07:58 AM
    Is it?

    Quote
    The original position is a central feature of John Rawls's social contract account of justice, “justice as fairness,” set forth in A Theory of Justice (TJ).

    It is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice.

     In taking up this point of view, we are to imagine ourselves in the position of free and equal persons who jointly agree upon and commit themselves to principles of social and political justice.

     The main distinguishing feature of the original position is “the veil of ignorance”: to insure impartiality of judgment, the parties are deprived of all knowledge of their personal characteristics and social and historical circumstances.

    They do know of certain fundamental interests they all have, plus general facts about psychology, economics, biology, and other social and natural sciences.

     The parties in the original position are presented with a list of the main conceptions of justice drawn from the tradition of social and political philosophy, and are assigned the task of choosing from among these alternatives the conception of justice that best advances their interests in establishing conditions that enable them to effectively pursue their final ends and fundamental interests.

    Rawls contends that the most rational choice for the parties in the original position are the two principles of justice.

     The first principle guarantees the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of the good.

    The second principle provides fair equality of educational and employment opportunities enabling all to fairly compete for powers and prerogatives of office; and it secures for all a guaranteed minimum of the all-purpose means (including income and wealth) that individuals need to pursue their interests and to maintain their self-respect as free and equal persons.





    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #10 - April 20, 2013, 08:00 AM
    What am I on about?  Islam cannot be compassionate because it does not promote equality and justice.
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #11 - April 21, 2013, 05:02 PM
    Quote from: Stardust on April 19, 2013, 09:17 PM
    I think it does come down to *identity*


    Yes, so much defending of the indefensible in religion is often down to identity, people afraid to challenge something which is at the core of their identity in society. Which is why religions so often try to brain wash their followers into believing that without their religion they have no identity.
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #12 - August 14, 2013, 08:59 PM
    Yup. Other people see what you see.
    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • Re: Islam and Compassion
     Reply #13 - August 15, 2013, 03:41 AM
    Quote from: Lilyesque on April 19, 2013, 10:00 PM
    Wish we could gear people to identifying as urmm, I dunno, being a Human?


    Communist praxis.

    Although, symptomatic of the bourgeois left.
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #14 - August 15, 2013, 04:57 AM
    Islam prides itself on obedience first, not kindness. Nothing else to say here.
    ***~Church is where bad people go to hide~***
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #15 - August 15, 2013, 05:38 AM
    Quote from: billy on April 19, 2013, 07:12 PM
    When the collective is privileged over the individual compassion is weakness.


    As is the reverse. Ayn Rand privileged the individual above the collective and most definitely regarded compassion as weakness. Same could be said for many others who exalt the individual above the collective and the attendant ideologies.

    You can blame almost any ideology that has become dominant in a society for a lack of compassion, but the problem is the lack of compassion that allows for such an ideology to become dominant in the first place. Take your pick. Problem is that people will subordinate compassion to many things, ideology being one of them, and if they already want to suppress it and ideology provides a method of doing so people will take it.

    Islam may be unique in many aspects, some negative, but this ain't one of them.
    fuck you
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #16 - August 15, 2013, 07:32 AM
    I have to agree with Q here. A lack of compassion within a dominating ideology is hardly unique to Islam.
    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #17 - August 15, 2013, 08:17 AM
    Quote from: z10 on August 15, 2013, 07:32 AM
    I have to agree with Q here. A lack of compassion within a dominating ideology is hardly unique to Islam.

    I was thinking about how it is in third world countries. Personally I've never been in a non-Islamic country, so I couldn't tell you how it is. I know there are people of all sorts everywhere, but it's clear to me that there are some issues unique to Islamic societies. I can't imagine a Christian community as whole cheering when an Earthquake hits Iran for instance, and wishing the victims a painful eternity in hell.
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #18 - August 15, 2013, 08:24 AM
    What sort of casuistic response is that?
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #19 - August 15, 2013, 09:35 AM
    Quote from: Colonel Q-Daffi on August 15, 2013, 05:38 AM
    Islam may be unique in many aspects, some negative, but this ain't one of them.


    No doubt. We can see it across all religions and orthodoxies. But it is a feature of the experiences of ex-Muslims.


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #20 - August 15, 2013, 07:45 PM
    Quote from: Toona on August 15, 2013, 08:17 AM
    I can't imagine a Christian community as whole cheering when an Earthquake hits Iran for instance, and wishing the victims a painful eternity in hell.


    Well, I dunno about "Christian community as a whole", but...

    I'd bet there are some Lebanese Christians who are quite pleased when earthquakes hit Iran.

    -and-

    check out this prominent Christian leader's comments regarding 9/11, Haiti, and Hurricane Katrina

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson_controversies

    That being said it's possible you're correct but when I see how Protestant Loyalists in Northern Ireland behave/d, what the Christian militias in Lebanon did, and the nasty shit Jewish settlers in Palestine and their supporters do, and what the capitalist class and nation-states (including atheist or secular regimes) do to millions of people every day, it's kinda hard for me to think this lack of compassion of which you speak is in any way unique to Islam. What's unique about Islam I think is the particular historical period and contemporary geo-political circumstances it has found itself in and has resulted in some very nasty shit being done by its followers on a global basis.
    fuck you
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #21 - August 15, 2013, 08:58 PM
    Quote from: Colonel Q-Daffi on August 15, 2013, 07:45 PM
    What's unique about Islam I think is the particular historical period and contemporary geo-political circumstances it has found itself in and has resulted in some very nasty shit being done by its followers on a global basis.


    Good thoughts upthread Q. But couldn't it also be said What's unique about Islam I think is the particular historical period and contemporary geo-political circumstances it has found itself in and has resulted in some very nasty shit being done to its followers (Though might want to say countries rather than followers) on a global basis.




    Isn't it just true that take any two individuals reading the Quran/Hadith, one could be the most compassionate and another could be the most (cant think of adjective) zalam (Urdu word fits better). But both take their cues from the same scriptures.


    I am my own worst enemy and best friend, itsa bit of a squeeze in a three-quarter bed, tho. Unhinged!? If I was a dog I would be having kittens, that is unhinged. Footloose n fancy free, forced to fit, fated to fly. One or 2 words, 3 and 3/thirds, looking comely but lonely, till I made them homely.D
  • Islam and Compassion
     Reply #22 - August 15, 2013, 09:11 PM
    Quote from: devilsadvokat on August 15, 2013, 08:58 PM
    Good thoughts upthread Q. But couldn't it also be said What's unique about Islam I think is the particular historical period and contemporary geo-political circumstances it has found itself in and has resulted in some very nasty shit being done to its followers (Though might want to say countries rather than followers) on a global basis.


    Yes it's a pretty nasty cycle the Muslim world is locked in and sadly I don't see any end in sight. Of course it will end eventually, every historical cycle does-- but this one really only started in the late 20th century (with its roots in the early 20th century, post-WWI breakup of the Ottoman Empire in particular), and we might have to wait a generation or two before it ends. If the US empire and Western capitalism falls it will accelerate things but who knows how long that will take (we're definitely in the decline, but it could drag out for a very long time if history is any guide).


    Quote
    Isn't it just true that take any two individuals reading the Quran/Hadith, one could be the most compassionate and another could be the most (cant think of adjective) zalam (Urdu word fits better). But both take their cues from the same scriptures.


    Yes, which is why I think community pressure and larger objective conditions has as much or more to do with it than the scriptures themselves. Judaism's basic texts are arguably more intolerant than Islam's but outside of Israel and a few isolated pockets of ultraorthodox it doesn't seem to be a major problem within their community.
    fuck you
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