As a person whose faith is extremely important to him, I’m very careful about “faith bashing”. I don’t believe that people should be criticized, mocked, belittled, or attacked for what their spiritual beliefs are. I may not agree with your spiritual viewpoints, and you may not agree with mine, but so long as our respective faiths don’t impede the rights and freedoms of others, we should be allowed to hold them and express them however we wish.
Radical Islam, however, troubles me greatly – I believe it may be the single greatest challenge the world will face over the next 50 years. I loathe fear-mongering, but I really do think that as the power of radical Islamics grows, the Western world will have to respond – and I fear that the conflict will not be one easily resolved. The video above is an eye-opening opinion piece on the very real danger that radical Islam presents to the world. Note that I’ve used the word “radical” preceding “Islam” here, because the Islamic faith as I understand it – and I’m truly no expert – doesn’t promote the same types of things that the radical Islamic extremists do. If your faith means you’re going to wear a head scarf as a woman, that’s fine – but if your faith means you’re not going to treat patients as a dentist unless they’re wearing head scarves – even if they’re not Muslim – then you’re discriminating against that person.
I should note in closing that I’d never heard of this Pat Condell fellow before this video, and based on what I’ve seen of some of his other videos, I’d disagree with him quite severely (I think he’s the “attacking atheist” type), but in the video above, I think he has some very valid points.
Just radical Islam? I beg to differ. All radical forms of religion are scary; just because we have our crosshairs on Islam does not make others any less heinous.
For instance, I read http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/02/18/escape_orthodox_open2010/index.html yesterday. That is discrimination and intolerance on an otherworldly scale.
In my opinion, the biggest threat to world stability today is the alliance between neoconservatism and the extreme Christian right. Some of them believe the instability in the Middle East will hasten the coming of rapture. Now THAT scares me.
Janak,
I agree that over-the-top cult-like behaviour is dangerous coming from any faith, but while the story you linked to is tragic, it’s a small-scale problem. Radical Islam presents a much broader and more dangerous problem that will only intensify as they gain political power.
I don’t know if the statistics quoted in this video are accurate, but it does paint an interesting picture of what the world will be like 30 to 50 years from now: