Category: Religion, Myth, and Theology

ON BEAUTY: A CRITIQUE OF ISLAM

(From a post elsewhere, where someone very gracious was criticized as being racist. When she is anything but.)

~Aphrodite,

You are one of the most tolerant people out there. Don’t sweat it.

Arguing against a religion is not arguing against a race. You cannot change your genes. You have the volition to change your ideas. If arguing against a religion is racism then arguing against Christianity is anti-white racism. This whole line of reasoning makes no sense.

Islam is not a religion. It is a political system structured as a religion. It is the highest evolution of monotheism, which successfully institutionalized mysticism as law. That we grant this political system the same status as religion out of tolerance is a convenient trick of marketing that we could call deceptive if it were applied to any other product or service. It is perfectly logical, and perfectly consistent with western secular tolerance to criticize a political system – even if it is structured as a religion. That is because the western concept of tolerance is predicated on the requirement that the purpose of any government is the production of prosperity for its people.

Islam reduces people to poverty. It always has. It always will. It must. It is intellectually closed. And the market economy which is what produces wealth, requires constant disruptive innovation through that process of competition. One cannot have prosperity and certainty. Islam promises certainty and delivers what certainty must: poverty.

Therefore we are perfectly legitimate in criticizing Islam as a political system whether or not people treat that political system as a religion. In the west, democratic secular socialist egalitarian humanism has risen to the status of unquestionable religion – an act of faith that is contrary to the evidence. Yet we allow ourselves to criticize it. We encourage ourselves to criticize it.

You are the author of an artistic sentimental publication stream. Whether consciously or not, the dominant properties of the beauty you admire and promote are a) ‘the presence of resources’, and b) ‘there is always plenty’, and c) ‘humans are capable of creating beauty and as such we should wonder at the marvel of it’. These are the conceptual concepts that you work with whether you articulate them rationally as I have just done, or whether you intuit these properties without being able to articulate them.

However, the underlying problem with beauty is that it may contain a false promise, just as do religions: the promise of the absence of scarcity. The absence of scarcity means we do not need to compete. It means we do not need to constantly calculate for the purpose of producing something which others will trade for us.

Islam makes a similar promise: that we can be seduced by certainty. That we can avoid the problem solving that science provides us with the tools to constantly bear. That innovation in thought thought he competition of ideas is not only unnecessary but undesirable.

It may be possible to tolerate the myth of the absence of scarcity, because that myth provides us with the desire to create beauty by creating plenty – prosperity. But it is not possible to tolerate the myth of certainty – because it produces poverty. It can only produce poverty.

It is certainly within our moral code to criticize Islam on political and material grounds. And whomever argues that Islam is a religion rather than a political system hiding under the cover of a religion, is either engaging in deception or error.

And whomever argues that stasis, certainty and poverty are preferable to innovation, uncertainty and prosperity.

Islam is institutionalized ignorance and poverty. It is a failed economic system. And there is nothing beautiful or plentiful about it.

That may be too deep a bit of philosophy for Facebook, but it is pretty solid logic all the way ’round. Maybe, it will help you assuage your conscience. You’re a wonderful person and I”m glad that you make the world a better place by reminding us how beauty makes it so.