Letters to the Editor
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Keep at 'em Golden Boy
Still on your side. Cheering you on. Fear not for I am with thoust.
Have any of you ever read Don Quioxte? There is a very autobiographical section in it where the writer, Migel De Cervantes, writes of his expreiences as a slave in hands of the Moors. He is, on the whole, treated well by his master. However, his master has a neighbor who impales one of his own Christian slaves every day (or maybe it was every week). It was often. Often enough.
Anyway, one of the things Cervantes remarks on is how a society could produce a kind man such as his master, and yet do nothing about a murderous fiend like his neighbor. The roots are both in the relegion and the culture.
The religion allows the cruel treatment of slaves and the culture honors the religion, so there is nowhere anyone (the man's slaves, even his neighbors who disapprove, even the officials who fear his behavior will incite the Christians to revolt) can go to try to coerce him to stop.
I am reminded of this story whenever I hear someone say something about how, on the whole, women are treated well in Islam, or minorities are tolerated, or whatever. What happens when a woman isn't treated so well anymore? The Koran says it is allowable somewhere (in the middle, I'd guess), so what's the problem?
It seems to me that you have to have to form secular law and morality systems to confront the barbarism of religious cults, plus you have to have a culture willing to enforce those laws. I have a feeling that most Muslim countries are not anywhere near this yet. Perhaps Mr. Ramadan's recommndations are an attempt to point them toward that direction: inform the masses that there are other passages in the Big Contradictory Book that we can emphasize as a kind of gateway drug to dropping the book and the cult that spawned it altogether?
Oh, speaking of Spain. Someone mentioned that there are numerious Imans who are practically illiterate quoting from memory or bribery. Did you know that the original incarnation of the Spanish Inquisition was an attempt to combat just such a situation in Christendom?
Yep, originally they were literate, well educated folks who could give an actual acurate reading of scripture in cases where a king or priest or whatever was just making shit up.