Let's be honest, Islam has a problem right now

Please scroll down or Fareed Zakaria's latest Washington post Let's be honest, Islam has a problem right now By Fareed Zakaria, Thursday, October 9, 2014 The Washington Post

When television host Bill Maher declares on his weekly show that "th= Muslim world ... has too much in common with ISIS =9D and guest Sam Harris says that Islam is "the mother lode of bad i=eas," I understand why people are upset. Maher and Harris, an autho=, made crude simplifications and exaggerations. And yet, they were also tal=ing about something real.

I know the arguments against speaking of Islam as violent and reactionary. 1= has a following of 1.6 billion people. Places such as Indonesia and India h=ve hundreds of millions of Muslims who don't fit these caricatures.=That's why Maher and Harris are guilty of gross generalizations. Bu= let's be honest. Islam has a problem today. The places that have t=ouble accommodating themselves to the modern world are disproportionately M=slim.

In 2013, of the top 10 groups that perpetrated terrorist attacks, seven were=Muslim. Of the top 10 countries where terrorist attacks took place, seven w=re Muslim-majority. The Pew Research Center rates countries on the level of-restrictions that governments impose on the free exercise of religion. Of t=e 24 most restrictive countries, 19 are Muslim-majority. Of the 21countrie= that have laws against apostasy, all have Muslim majorities.

There is a cancer of extremism within Islam today. A small minority of Musli=s celebrates violence and intolerance and harbors deeply reactionary attitu=es toward women and minorities. While some confront these extremists, not e=ough do so, and the protests are not loud enough. How many mass rallies hav= been held against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in the Arab world=today?

The caveat, "Islam today," is important. The central problem=with Maher's and Harris's analyses are that they take a rea=ity — extremism in Islam — and describe it in ways that sug=est it is inherent in Islam. Maher says Islam is "the only religion=that acts like the Mafia, that will [expletive] kill you if you say the wro=g thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book." He'= right about the viciousness but wrong to link it to "Islam"=— instead of "some Muslims."

Harris prides himself on being highly analytical — with a PhD, no le=s. I learned in graduate school that you can never explain a variable pheno=enon with a fixed cause. So, if you are asserting that Islam is inherently v=olent and intolerant — "the mother lode of bad ideas"=— then, since Islam has been around for 14 centuries, we should hav= seen 14 centuries of this behavior.

Harris should read Zachary Karabell's book "Peace Be Upon Yo=: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Conflict and Cooperati=n." What he would discover is that there have been wars but also ma=y centuries of peace. Islam has at times been at the cutting edge of modern=ty, but like today, it has also been the great laggard. As Karabell explain=d to me, "If you exclude the last 70 years or so, in general the Is=amic world was more tolerant of minorities than the Christian world. That =80 s why there were more than a million Jews living in the Arab world unt=1 the early 1950s — nearly 200,000 in Iraq alone."

If there were periods when the Islamic world was open, modern, tolerant and p=aceful, this suggests that the problem is not in the religion's ess=nce and that things can change once more. So why is Maher making these comm=nts? I understand that as a public intellectual he feels the need to speak w=at he sees as the unvarnished truth (though his

"truth" is s=mplified and exaggerated). But surely there is another task for public inte=lectuals as well — to try to change the world for good.

Does he really think that comparing Islam to the Mafia will do this? Harris s=ys that he wants to encourage "nominal Muslims who don't ta=e the faith seriously" to reform the religion. So, the strategy to r=form Islam is to tell 1.6 billion Muslims, most of whom are pious and devou=, that their religion is evil and they should stop taking it seriously?

That is not how Christianity moved from its centuries-long embrace of violen=e, crusades, inquisitions, witch-burning and intolerance to its modern stat=. On the contrary, intellectuals and theologians celebrated the elements of=the religion that were tolerant, liberal and modern, and emphasized them, w=ile giving devout Christians reasons to take pride in their faith. A simila= approach — reform coupled with respect — will work with Is=am over time.

The stakes are high in this debate. You can try to make news or you can make=a difference. I hope Maher starts doing the latter.

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