I thought this might be interesting, in an FYI kind of way. It's a complaint from Umar Lee's blog--a meat-eating Muslim-convert taxidriver, from St. Louis, I think:
From the time I took shahadah I never knew any Muslim men who were openly soft and “in touch with their feminine side”. I never knew a Muslim, not a single one, who believed homosexuality was not haram. From time to time I would go to masjids and Muslim events and there would be women who did not cover and there was free-mixing; but this was rare and almost all of the masjids I went to the men and women were separated and the women were covered and as I told my sister-in-law I do not know the names of many of my good friends wives and I would not recognize them if I saw them in the street and I have dined in their homes many a time.
I lived all over the country and I never attended a masjid were the ideas many Muslim bloggers espouse were the norm. When I started blogging I started to encounter Muslims for the first time who praised the feminization of Muslim men, vilified jihad, praised feminism, looked the other way on homosexuality, tried to separate Islam and politics, and showed a general weakness on many Islamic issues. These are Muslims who scorn Muslims and praise un-Islamic ideas such as anarchism, vegetarianism, humanism and the like. These were ideas I had not run into in my visits to hundreds of masjids in dozens of cities.
After I started blogging I felt the need to talk about these issues and then after I saw these problems online I then began to see them in the community mostly amongst the young second-generation Muslims of Desi and Arab backgrounds, white Muslims, and what Tariq Nelson refers to as the “Mulatto Mafia”.
In my day to day life outside of the blog I seldom if ever discuss any of these issues with brothers I know or at the masjid. The reason for that is I do not have to. There is no discussion; because everyone agrees with me and this does not matter if I am in St. Louis, New York, or Virginia. At TalkIslam my ideas may be controversial, and may cause someone like Johnpi to have paranoid thoughts about me, but at most American masjids my ideas are nowhere near as controversial and can find far more in agreement with than the far-left ideas of the progressives, Quransits and others discussed there and that is why they are relegated to online activity for the most part ( this is not to say that maybe some of my political views are not outside the mainstream but on religious issues my views are far more closer to the norm than those you will see discussed at forums such as TI and on many blogs).
Online there becomes a culture clash between those who come from the grassroots such as myself and the bloggers and online Muslims who tend to represent the crowd I previously referred to. This also happens to be a crowd that tends to be upscale financially, suburban, and ready to accommodate the greater-society. Their cultural background often means they are interested in inter-faith whereas the brothers I know are interested in giving dawah (even if we don’t do it like we should). Our outlook towards the greater society tends to be oppositional (even if we are not physically opposing and are productive members of the society) as Yusuf Smith pointed out and theirs tend to be accommodating, non-threatening, and filtered through secular educations and ideologies.
The divide is between a tiny amount of westernized Muslims who believe Islam kind of how DCP describes it and then there is the vast majority of the the Islamic world, the moderates of which accept enslaving nonbelievers as enough and the extremists who accept nothing but death to the infidel.
Have you noticed that the internet version of religions tends to be much softer and more tolerant that the real life version, but the internet version of atheism tends to be harsher than in real life? Religious posters like to cover for the fact that a core number of believers are hostile towards the outside world. Atheists have to cover for the fact that they are everyday people just trying to get along.
The reality is, you can best judge what people believe by how they live their lives--particularly by how they treat others they do not agree with. Not just in blogs and whiny boards, but how they treat their neighbors.
I think it was Sam Harris that pointed out that religious "extremists" really aren't extreme, they just interpret their religions literally. What moderates and liberals are trying to do is push a non-standard view of religion as the main line. But extremists really aren't that extreme, when it comes to taking religious tenants at face value.
John Larsen wrote:Have you noticed that the internet version of religions tends to be much softer and more tolerant that the real life version, but the internet version of atheism tends to be harsher than in real life?
Nope, I find that the members I interact with regularly are softer and more tolerant then LDS apologists on the Internet. Then again, I find the average non-LDS person in real life to be softer and more tolerant then the internet critic. At least there is symmetry.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics "I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
John Larsen wrote:Have you noticed that the internet version of religions tends to be much softer and more tolerant that the real life version, but the internet version of atheism tends to be harsher than in real life?
Nope, I find that the members I interact with regularly are softer and more tolerant then LDS apologists on the Internet. Then again, I find the average non-LDS person in real life to be softer and more tolerant then the internet critic. At least there is symmetry.
You should try leaving the Church sometime and then see how they interact. They are tolerant to you, why would they not be?
John Larsen wrote:You should try leaving the Church sometime and then see how they interact. They are tolerant to you, why would they not be?
Would be an interesting experiment but I like God too much to try it. Oh well. I'll look at the results in the afterlife and see how the members did.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics "I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
John Larsen wrote:I like God all right, but he never returns my calls.
I wouldn't know, I've never gotten the answering machine.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics "I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
