I know it is long and i tried hard to take only important parts..

We need to stop being such cowards about Islam

This is a column condemning cowardice including my own. It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read. The Jewel of Medina was written by a journalist called Sherry Jones. It recounts the life of Aisha, a girl who was married off at the age of six to a 50-year-old man called Mohamed ibn Abdallah. On her wedding day, Aisha was playing on a see-saw outside her home. Inside, she was being betrothed. The first she knew of it was when she was banned from playing out in the street with the other children. When she was nine, she was taken to live with her husband, now 53. He had sex with her. When she was 14, she was accused of adultery with a man closer to her own age. Not long after, Mohamed decreed that his wives must cover their faces and bodies, even though no other women in Arabia did.

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In Europe, we are finally abolishing the lingering blasphemy laws that hinder criticism of Christianity. But they are being succeeded by a new blasphemy law preventing criticism of Islam enforced not by the state, but by jihadis. I seriously considered not writing this column, but the right to criticise religion is as precious and hard-won as the right to criticise government. We have to use it or lose it.

Some people will instantly ask: why bother criticising religion if it causes so much hassle? The answer is: look back at our history. How did Christianity lose its ability to terrorise people with phantasms of sin and Hell? How did it stop spreading shame about natural urges pre-marital sex, masturbation or homosexuality? Because critics pored over the religion´s stories and found gaping holes of logic or morality in them.

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We need to acknowledge the double-standard and that it will cost Muslims in the end. Insulating a religion from criticism surrounding it with an electric fence called "respect" keeps it stunted at its most infantile and fundamentalist stage. .....
What would Christianity be like today if George Eliot, Mark Twain and Bertrand Russell had all been pulped? Take the most revolting rural Alabama church, and metastasise it.

Since Jones has brought it up, let us look at Mohamed´s marriage to Aisha as a model for how we can conduct this conversation. It is true those were different times, and it may have been normal for grown men to have sex with prepubescent girls. The sources are not clear on this point. But whatever culture you live in, having sex when your body is not physically developed can be an excruciatingly painful experience. Among Vikings, it was more normal than today to have your arm chopped off, but that didn´t mean it wasn´t agony. If anything, Jones´s book whitewashes this, suggesting that Mohamed´s "gentleness" meant Aisha enjoyed it.

The story of Aisha also prompts another fundamentalist-busting discussion. You cannot say that Mohamed´s decision to marry a young girl has to be judged by the standards of his time, and then demand that we follow his moral standards to the letter. Either we should follow his example literally, or we should critically evaluate it and choose for ourselves. Discussing this contradiction inevitably injects doubt the mortal enemy of fanaticism (on The Independent´s Open House blog later today, I´ll be discussing how Aisha has become the central issue in a debate in Yemen about children and forced marriage).

So why do many people who cheer The Life Of Brian and Jerry Springer: The Opera turn into clucking Mary Whitehouses when it comes to Islam? If a book about Christ was being dumped because fanatics in Mississippi might object, we would be enraged.
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The other reason is more honourable, if flawed. There is very real and rising prejudice against Muslims across the West. The BBC recently sent out identically-qualified CVs to hundreds of employers. Those with Muslim names were 50 per cent less likely to get interviews.
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But I live in the Muslim majority East End of London, and this isn´t Weimar Germany. Muslims are secure enough to deal with some tough questions. It is condescending to treat Muslims like excitable children who cannot cope with the probing, mocking treatment we hand out to Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism. It is perfectly consistent to protect Muslims from bigotry while challenging the bigotries and absurdities within their holy texts.
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When we pulp books out of fear of fundamentalism, we are decapitating the most precious freedom we have.

original article from the independent

I don´t want to be controversial or add to any controversy but.....

I am Christian and defend anybody´s right to criticise my religion - including my own right. I personally believe that if you are confident in your religion then debate about it can surely be healthy and not harmful. There is nothing in this world that is so perfect that there is nothing that can be questioned. Remember that all religions practised in this world are governed by man made rules and interpretations! (They may have been more perfect if the interpretations had been made by women!!!)

I think it is a good article and I also agree with tina, it is a person´s right to ask, probe, debate.

I find it curious that so many Christians are willing to point out splinters but miss the logs in their own eyes. Willing to cast the first stone, despite claiming they *do* have some blame.

But then, post-Christian Liberal Democratic Globalized Capitalism has removed all racism, sexism, poverty, unemployment, warfare, spiritual void, etc. from the Western World. We´ve got no problems here, so we might as well criticize and critique other backward-ass cultures, right?

Strangely enough the woman who wrote the article is Muslim. 

She has raised some very good points in a non-confrontational way.  Her writing is usually very well balanced and I for one am a fan of her articles. 

Strangely enough, the *MAN* (Johann Hari) who wrote the article is a self-described "anti-theist" (see http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=540 ).

The points raised are typical of Western critiques of Islam. We´ve heard them all before, and we will continue to hear them.

I support the right to publish clap-trap books and articles such as these, just as I support the right of Nazis and morons to publish their malignant and stupid hate-filled BS.

But that doesn´t mean I have to respect it.

 Ooops!  How to be deceived by a photo!  I have the Independent regularly and I always thought that he was a woman, purely by the photo and way "he" wrote, in a very feminine fashion.

haha

I was just about to say that actually..And he is a jew..

But a fantastic follow up in the blog from the same guy:

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/08/the-rebellion-o.html#more

Late last year, a tiny little ten year old girl turned up alone at the court in Sana, Yemen, and declared: "I have come to get a divorce." This hadn´t happened before. According to the Yemen Times, in some parts of the country the average marriage age is ten, and some 50 percent of marriages are to underage girls. But Nujood Ali was unique in escaping to a court door, pleading for help.

Nujood explained how her father had married her off to a thirtysomething motorcycle courier. On their wedding night, he ordered her to share a bed with him. She ran out of the room, so he dragged her back and raped her.

At first she was ashamed. "But I passed through that," she said recently. "All I want now is to finish my education. I want to be a lawyer… I want to defend oppressed people. I want to be an example for all the other girls." After saying this, she ran off to play hide-and-seek.

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The conservative Islamic mullahs have reacted by saying there is nothing wrong with child-marriage – because Mohammed did it. It is true Mohammed did this. If you are trapped in the fundamentalist mindset of Mohammed-is-our-moral-exemplar, you have no way to answer back. The debate is resolved; Nujood´s "husband" was in the right.

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But the fundamentalist literalist reading of Islam chokes their efforts. It will always tell the girls that child-marriage is acceptable, because Mohammed did it. If we can´t criticize and reinterpret Mohammed without being threatened, then we may be unable – in the end – to cut away the intellectual justification for abusing these girls.

Splinters? What a eufemism!

Besides I have heard many, many Christian people criticize their own religions, think of May-8 group in the Catholic church. And even if they didn´t, is that a reason to close your eyes for mistakes elsewhere?

See, the problem is that for ALL Muslims, Muhammad (sawas) is a moral exemplar, not just the ´fundamentalists´. By stating that Muhammad-as-moral-exemplar is a ´fundamentalist mindset´, you imply that anyone who believes this - all Muslims - is a fundamentalist.

Moreover, it is a testament to Hari´s complete ignorance as to Islamic law, which contrary to Western (and, incidentally, fundamentalist) opinion, is not some monolithic Napoleonic ´Code´ for all time, but more akin to Western English or American common law, that is, an ongoing legal debate utilizing legal tools and systems for determining not only the rights and responsibilities between human individuals, but between God and humans.

And one of the tools in the legal cabinet is defference to local custom and law. For example, Muhammad wore a beard. He spoke highly of wearing a beard. But this does not mean that it is a sin, or contrary to Shari´a, to shave, because wearing a beard was local custom in Arabia at that time.

But to actually learn something about Islam and Islamic culture would mean studying it or - Heaven forfend! - speaking to an actual Muslim and run the risk of their being a terrorist who will kill you!

And besides, here in the United States our economy is sound, our national infrastructure top notch, no one lacks for health care, racism has been solved and sexism eliminated, our children receive the world´s best education, the middle class is thriving, more and more people own their own homes and are able to pay off their debts, we´re in the midst of the longest patch of peace-time in our military´s history (and our soldiers are treated to only the best we have to offer), our jails are empty and jobs are plentiful, there´s an electric car in every driveway and a chicken in every pot...

... so it only makes sense to criticize other cultures, since we´re doing so well.