Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, launched a trenchant attack on Islamic culture, saying it was authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving. The report was carried on the front page of the Daily Telegraph newspaper in the United Kingdom. [Read the article] . I was going to comment on Carey’s statement, but then I came across a response to the same article in the Muslims Under Progress blog. The section is entitled “Is Carey right?”. In fact all of the postings here are quite good except for the fact that the poster[?] seems to think that suicide bombers are martyrs if they are in a war morally justified. The problem is that any war can be morally justified. It depends what side you are on. Smart guy, good writer, some faulty justification.
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Say What?
CNN is reporting that al-Zarqawi has released an audio tape that justifies the killing of Muslim civilians based on the teachings of so-called Islamic scholars. Here is the intro from CNN: “A chilling, rambling audio file thought to be from the most-wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says religious doctrine justifies the killing of innocent Muslims by insurgents. On the audio, the speaker says in Arabic: ‘The shedding of Muslim blood … is allowed in order to avoid the greater evil of disrupting jihad.’ The speaker defends suicide attacks, saying, ‘killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom operations…
Photo: the eyes have it
the eyes have it Originally uploaded by mmbooklover.
A thought on a question
Jon from Dawnsinger posted a question about my posting on the Sadr situation in Iraq, regarding what I saw as a possible solution. My response ended up being lengthier than I thought it would be, and I’d be curious as to what other people think. Since I’m not sure everyone reads the comments, I’m posting separately.
3 thoughts on “The contributions of Muslim civilisations”
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Salaam!
“The problem is that any war can be morally justified.”
Do you believe that is really the case? Can _any_ war be morally justified? I’m not sure.
In any case, I would make a clear distinction as to who the targets of war. Pakistani soldiers reportedly throwing themselves at Indian tanks is not evil; I think that is a justified cause. Palestinians attacking a pizzaria full of children must be condemdned with no exceptions.
I do not think that War is morally justified, however, I do believe that any side in a given conflict can easily justify their participation in that conflict as moral. Again, it depends on what side you are on. Do you think that al-Qaeda does not feel justified in their crimes? Pol Pot and his followers most probably felt the same. There have been very few instances in history where the doers of bad deeds have said “I know this is wrong, but we are going to do this anyway”. I know of none. Do you?
Maybe we’re arguing over words?
Perhaps I should have phrased it better. But ‘war’, a physical struggle, can become morally justified. An example is fighting a hostile invader – that’s a ‘war’ in my eyes.
As to Pol Pot, al-Qa’ida et al.: sure in their eyes their actions are ‘moral’. But what is the justification? Power-grabbing? Ethnic hatred? A “holy” cause? A fuzzy feeling?
Unless we’re all Abraham’s with sacrificial sons, I don’t think _anything_ can be morally justified.