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what about Islam? what do you think of the religion? is it just as bad, worse, or much better?

At risk of being labeled an Islamophobic, it’s easy for me to admit that Islam is the single most dangerous religion in the modern day. For all the atrocities Christians committed and were complicit to in the past, even Christians aren’t committing violent acts on the scale that Muslim extremists are. Yet when a Muslim steps into a crowded train, I don’t discriminate; I don’t feel the need to leave the train car or sit elsewhere because s/he sat next to me. Recently two teenaged Muslim girls came onto the train with rolling book bags; the bags looked more like luggage, but were likely filled with weighty textbooks they have to bring back and forth between the classroom and home. I watched as people moved out of the train car; I counted about six people who did that. I felt completely unthreatened because clearly, all Muslims aren’t to blame for Islamic extremism. Then there’s the fact that they’re two young girls empowered enough to do what many girls in Muslim countries can’t do: pursue an education. That’s not something I fear; that’s something I applaud.

That said, it’s definitely not better than Christianity. In fact, Christianity is to blame for Islam because if it weren’t for dogmatic Orthodox Christians in the early centuries, Unitarian Christians would not have fled to the East. These Christians who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity were highly likely the first Muslims; they eventually dispensed with the need for Jesus and invented or euhemerized a prominent figure of their own, Muhammad. If Orthodox Christians were more tolerant and far less violent toward so-called heretics, Unitarian Christians would have never separated themselves to the point of forming an entirely different and new religion. So when Muslim extremists go after Christians, like we’re seeing now in Marawi city, it can be seen as Christians reaping what they sowed; that’s unfortunate but no less true. It’s not like Christians didn’t do this to Muslims and Jews first; the Inquisition is a prime example of Christian extremism and intolerance toward Muslims, Jews, and pagans. 

In any case, which is better or worse can’t even be applied to Islam and Christianity. They are interchangeably the most influential religions of our time and both are equally worthy of censure and strident opposition. Christians have had to adjust to increasingly secular societies, but in the days of Christianized empires and theocracies, the level of violence towards non-Christians is analogous to the violence carried out by today’s Muslim extremists in Muslim theocracies and outside of them. Increasingly secular societies will eventually temper Islam and even Muslims with internally extremist bents will have to adjust their behavior. Christians in the US have unabashedly threatened to shoot me should I ever step foot in their state. What stops them from doing that to atheists in already residing in their states is a legal system that won’t condone such intolerant violence. Given the tacit extremism in Christians–which isn’t so hidden if they’re brought to anger (Joshua Feuerstein anyone?)–non-Christians would still be attacked and murdered if there were a Christian theocracy in the US. There are of course other problems.

Look at Betsy DeVos and how she thinks schools should “advance god’s kingdom.” If it were up to her, schools would be nothing more than an annex of the church, indoctrinating children rather than educating them. Then look at Trump’s religious liberty executive order, which allows for churches to openly endorse or assail candidates. As if they didn’t already have enough influence. Despite being trampled underfoot by secularization, Christians still find a way to push their agenda. 

Regardless, history has showed us time and again what Christians do with power. Want to know the true measure of a person or group? Give them power. Christians, like today’s Muslims, are cruel, merciless, vindictive, and inhumane when given power. Better or worse simply don’t apply to these religions. They are both enemies of progress; they are both enemies of scientific, technological, medical, philosophical, legal, and moral progress, and any contribution a Muslim or Christian has made to any human enterprise is not because of their religion but in spite of it; they are both responsible for slowing down an international response to the greatest problem facing humanity: climate change. Both religions should have a place in museums and in the annals of history, as a sobering reminder to disavow allegiance to any religion that would have us commit heinous acts against other people. They don’t belong in the public sphere; they have no place in politics, in education, in academia, in philosophy, and most certainly not in science. 

Ultimately, Islam is clearly the more dangerous of the two–at least with respect to obvious crimes. The Muslim moderates, in not demonstrating exactly how extremists are wrong, are inadvertently endorsing them. 

Is Jihad not true to Islam? Does Allah not call for the murder of infidels? If not, where’s the textual proof? If so, does that apply to modern Muslims? If Jihad meant violence against infidels or something else entirely, why not explain that? If it did mean violence, why does it no longer apply? All this is to set aside non-terroristic extremism. There’s still the issue of acid bathing girls seeking an education, honor killing, and genital mutilation; there’s still the issue of abuse in Muslim marriages; there’s still the issue of male favoritism, misogyny, and masochism in Islamic cultures; there’s still the issue of rampant xenophobia that prohibits strict Muslims from marrying non-Muslims or requiring that the non-Muslim convert before marriage. 

In the end, deciding between which is worse is a waste of time; it’s like deciding between a psychopath and a sadist. Both are on the Dark Tetrad; both will cause one a great deal of pain and derive satisfaction from causing one pain and suffering; both lack empathy and can’t be reached; both have no moral inclination or compass; both may go as far as murdering you and grinning while sitting in a pool of your blood.

I have two questions, What do you think about Unitarian Universalism and do you think special needs people and children should stay away from religion?

With respect to tolerance and religious freedom, I’ve no problem with Unitarian Universalism (UU). With respect to epistemology, I have a major problem with UU. UU allows people adhering to different religions or no religion at all to occupy a space peacefully and respect the place and importance of religious or non-religious views in other people’s lives. However, this notion of everyone being entitled to seek their own personal truth simply doesn’t appeal to me because truth simply doesn’t work that way. There’s no such thing as my truth, yours, his, hers, and the next individual’s. There is, in every respect, a truth or truths or matters of fact pertinent to the object in question, and our perspectives don’t change that. Even Nietzsche’s perspectivism doesn’t argue that.

Briefly, his perspectivism argues that different perspectives are required to apprehend the full truth about something. Look at physics, for instance. Einstein, with his relativity paradigm, nailed the macro-level universe. The Copenhagen school, Bohr and Heisenberg, obviously didn’t nail down quantum mechanics, but made important discoveries in quantum mechanics. Both the macro perspective offered by Einstein and later, Levitt and Hubble, and the micro perspective offered by the Copenhagen school and expounded on by Schrödinger and Everett are both necessary to acquire a full understanding of the universe. Hence our attempt to unify both paradigms. 

The history and progress of science is a confirmation of Nietzsche’s view of perspectivism and far from an endorsement of epistemic relativism. Perhaps if UU did away with that philosophically dubious idea, it would fair better in my view, but doing so would threaten the tolerance it looks to harbor, for the second any member of the UU congregation begins to seek an objective truth, s/he is threatening to lay siege to the personal beliefs of most of the congregants, indeed even his/her own beliefs.

Special needs children should definitely stay away from organized religion, but the fact is that the more cognizant among them already do. High functioning autistics, for instance, tend to be non-religious (see here). The fact that religions like Christianity and Islam tend to see people with special needs as “possessed” or as a “curse,” should give any self-aware individual with special needs pause. Some religious people aren’t even willing to understand what’s really going on in their unique genetics and neuroanatomy; they’re quite satisfied with the notions that the special needs individual is either possessed by a malevolent spirit or a curse on a parent who led a mostly irreverent and rebellious lifestyle. Muslims tend to view mental illness, learning disability, and cognitive disorders as expiation for sins. There’s even precedence for this in the texts. Epilepsy and even paralysis are due to demonic possession or oppression in the Bible and demonic possession or possession by jinn in the Qur’an; in fact, epilepsy was once so poorly understood that it was mistaken for possession and Muslims view possession as a form of insanity. That’s setting aside that autistics have been killed during exorcisms. Organized religion doesn’t cater to people with special needs and as such, they should steer clear of it.