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Epiphanies on Islamic Ethics

Muslim societies do not just breed violence and poverty, but also a dogmatic sense of superiority grounded on nothing but wishful thinking. However, some Islamic virtues should set Israelis thinking.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384327

Excerpt:

Most criticism of Islam focuses on violence sanctioned and promoted by Islamic teachings and on rampant disrespect and oppression of women, and sexual and religious minorities.

These attitudes, as hateful as they are, are not the real reasons hindering progress (other than military efforts) in the Islamic world. After all, Wilhelmine Germany and Meiji Japan also held power and military strength in high regard, relegated women to a secondary role and denied sexual and religious minorities equal rights.

Yet both Wilhelmine Germany and Meiji Japan developed rapidly and contributed important scientific and intellectual discoveries to mankind.

None of this applies to the Islamic world which in almost 1,000 years has achieved little worthy of respect without enormous natural resources and the toil or exploitation of religious minorities. Thus, Islamic societies not blessed by natural wealth or laborious non-Muslim minorities are invariably cesspits of strife, underdevelopment, and despotism.

I am not an anthropologist, nevertheless my years in East Jerusalem, knowledge of Arabic and Islam, in addition to daily interactions with Muslim pupils from many cultures, allow me to surmise why Islamic ethics do not promote progress.

As a teacher in Germany I quickly noticed that the worst insult tossed by Muslim pupils is the epithet “ehrenlos“ (lacking in honor). As a naive Western, I assumed that the concept of “Ehre“ or “honor“ was akin to that I am familiar with thanks to a 20th-century childhood.

Alas, my repeated attempts to label lying, deception and dishonesty as lacking in honor, repeatedly elicited nonplussed reactions of astonishment and incomprehension. It then dawned on me that the concept of “honor“ we know in the Western world is different to the concept of honor known in the Ummah.

Whereas a dishonorable person in the West is a person who is untrustworthy and unreliable, in the Islamic world to be dishonorable just means to lose face. And the reasons a Muslim loses face are rarely related to dishonesty or unreliability. A Muslim is seen as losing face if he is weak, effeminate, or if his womenfolk are not chaste.

The whole of Muslim morality orbits around proving oneself stronger, more virile, and bonded to women with chaste mores. All residual virtues are more or less irrelevant.

For example, if a Muslim academic invited to an academic conference in the Caribbean makes a big fuss about the fact that non-halal meats are served at an official banquet and yet, the same night, is sighted in a brothel, there is no inconsistency.

The halal banquet had nothing to do with religious piety. It was just a point of honor meant to demand official acknowledgement and respect for Islam. The same Muslim who at night slipped into a brothel would have never attended a striptease organized by the academic conference. The reason is that whereas patronizing prostitutes is a private affair, official involvement in Western debauchery would make him lose face as an ambassador of the Ummah.

.....Consciousness of heaven and hell plays a huge role in the worldview of Muslims. Despite this consciousness being stronger than among pious Christians, the end result does not appear to be a higher level of Muslim integrity and ethics. The reason may well be that for Muslims hell is just a temporary punishment. Any Muslim who dies professing faith in Allah and Mohammad will eventually enter heaven regardless of rotten earthly behavior. In other words, the believing Muslim has no real reason not to sin and follow the injunctions of his religion. Eventually, just by virtue of his doctrinal orthodoxy, he is rewarded with eternal bliss.

The sum of disregard for honesty, disdain for non-Muslims, and a sense of honor mainly concerned with not appearing weak, unmanly or related to unchaste women, renders Muslim societies inherently corrupt, oppressive and patriarchal. As a result, Muslim societies do not just breed violence and poverty, but also a dogmatic sense of superiority grounded on nothing but wishful thinking.

After residing almost 15 years in Berlin, I can confidently state that the primary factor restraining any outbreak of anti-Muslim bigotry and hatred of Islam, is the fact that almost all interactions with Muslims are more pleasant than analogous ones with ethnic Germans.

..... as long as one is not seen as a Zionist, one is very unlikely to experience unpleasant encounters with Arabs in East Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.

Capri, Italy

I talked to my parents preacher about Islam extensively. I was going to write a book, The Real Satanic Verses, about it but I chose not to for obvious reasons. We talked a lot about it and he agreed with me and said I should write it.

Any religion that promotes violence is fake. God nor the angel Gabriel would condone that crap nor instruct anyone to do so.

Could it be...Satan?

-SB

Good read. Thank you

S K M Thanks for posting this article. The writer does a good job explaining the Muslim mindset in this short article.