Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by echelon_musk 110 days ago
I can't recommend Heretic by Ayaan Hirsi Ali enough.
2 comments

I don't think doctrinal reformation is possible with Islam.

The Qur'an is totally prescriptive. It contains direct legal commands, judicial rules and explicit government principles which are all binding and considered as direct divine speech.

I think Westernisation and an increase in the number of "casual" muslims is and will continue to be the moderating effect.

Think of what is happening in Europe (as the clearest example) with the influx of Muslim immigrants who raise increasingly more assimilated children as the blueprint.

The cultural gulf between left and right in the US is expanding rather than being assimilated or adapting. There is nothing stopping the same thing from happening between immigrants and natives in the EU. Both cases involve fundamentaly irecconcilable values, and it just depends on which values prove more viral.
I'm not sure the left/right cultural gulf will last beyond Trump. I'm not even sure it's still alive now, with Trump's approval ratings in the toilet. The US political system takes time to cycle and isn't on the same schedule as the political pendulum.
For those of us who haven't read it, could you explain why it's salient on this topic?
It's an English language book aimed for Westerner readers. It purports to argue that the core strategy for spreading Islam - terror - is not compatible with Western values. It also states that other features of Islam are incompatible with Western values, such as repression of women. The book argues that since these ideologies are incompatible with Western values, they must be abandoned.

However, the abandonment argument is only valid if one already accepts Western values as an axiom - which being an English-language book most of the readers would agree with. These readers will perceive the book to promote the reform of Islam into a religion that resembles a modern Christian denomination, just with different idols and prayers and holidays.

However those who do not come from the perspective of modern Christian values and as axiomic, will reject the argument outright. This is the Muslim population who might read it.

To be totally frank, Islam is the odd one out.

You can call it 'Western' values or 'Christian' values or whatever in order to make it seem chauvinistic all you want, but the simple truth is that these values are often shared by many other religions and places. As an example, look at the success of the Indian Hindus and the Chinese / East Asian Buddhists in the United States and across the globe. For a reverse example, contrary to popular belief, Christians, Sikhs, and Jains in Hindu-majority India are actually richer and more educated on average.

Time and time again, if you go look at the data, you'll find that Islam is almost always the odd one out.

The Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, etc can all be made to get along with Christians or 'the West'. There is really only one pretty much universally problematic religion, and that's Islam. You can argue this point all you want, but the entirety of Islamic history shows it to be true. You can again (correctly, in some cases) point out various bad actions from Christians (or Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, etc), but the simple truth is this: it's pretty easy today, in 2025, to imagine how to get along with these people. In places with diverse populations and migrants from these places, there is barely any violent religious conflict. At most you get some fundies in a tizzy over someone else doing their thing.

The only one that consistently performs violence is Islam. And that's something Muslims need to figure out. They don't need to abandon their religion. And they certainly do not need to be harmed for their beliefs. But, they do need to figure out how to integrate with the rest of the world in 2025 in a pluralistic global society.

You seem to be mixing up "Western values" and "Christian values" whereas Christian values are very much against the accumulation of wealth, whereas "Western values" seem to be all about worshipping wealth to the exclusion of all other considerations and even worshipping those who deliberately exploit others to amass an ungodly amount of wealth.
If you think that small difference means that Western values are not Christian values, then you have no idea how large the gulf between your values and Islamic values are.

Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?

Most of these arguments on the effect of different religions tend to be a bit silly. Islam is much more related to Christianity and Judaism than either of those two are to each other.

Language, cultural history, and geography tend to play a bigger role on society than the monotheistic religions do.

As neither a Muslim nor a Christian, but have lived among both, the dismissive argument "A is more similar to B than C" should not mean "I don't need to be concerned about A or B or C".
Those values seem to be exactly the ones being discarded by the Christo-fascists of the USA.

My point is that the so-called Christian values are nothing to do with the reported teachings of Jesus and instead are used to justify the exact opposite.

The ACTUAL teachings by Supreme Leader Khamenei (remember, the HIGHEST Shia authority according to some) include that school girls who are to be killed for not wearing hats should be raped, because the Muslim God judges children based on if they have been raped. With teachings like this, I'm OK with muslims not following the teachings.
I did not realize that the point of discussion had changed to specifically Christo-fascists of the USA. My point still stands in regard to the vast majority of Christians you will meet.

One thing that I can not stand about some modern fanatics is the representation of 1% of a population as if they represent the whole. Don't bring up Christo-fascists of the USA as representative of Christian values. That's highjacking the subject to your pet cause.