[lbo-talk] Islam and Muslims (was Doug and Islam)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 3/16/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 16, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > What makes you think that understanding other people's faiths and
> > recognizing that some of them are full of great virtues must lead to
> > adopting one or many of them as one's own?
>
> Unlike you, I've actually spent some time as a believer - in
> Catholicism, one of the more baroque and demanding forms of
> Christianity. I appreciate the lovely art that it inspired, and the
> traditional mass has moments of great beauty, but it's essentially a
> bucketload of mumbojumbo. As for the virtues, I'm coming to doubt
> that religion has much of an independent influence on people's
> political views; they have the politics dictated by their interests
> and temperament, and mold their interpretations of religion
> accordingly. Christianity has been a religion of left, right, center,
> and the apolitical.

Yes, just as Marxism has been a religion of left, right, center, and
the apolitical.


> religious leftists here
> are way too likely to presume the good intentions of their enemies,
> and believe that appeals to their conscience will work.

That depends on levels of political knowledge and experience, not
being a line between religion and irreligion.

Many faiths have their just war doctrines and martyrs, some of them
who died together with godless Marxists for the same cause.  The
religious, including religious leftists, are not necessarily
pacifists, nor are atheists necessarily non-pacifists.
-- 
Yoshie