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I've had a recent rebirth of interest in studying Islam. This happened to overlap with the time of year that is 9/11. Now, I was mainly reading ancient thinkers and I didn't think that 9/11 would become relevant to my efforts.
Alas, I was also listening to podcasts on the side. From Talking with Teachers (at 39:50):
After parsing this as charitably and carefully as I could, it does not seem to me that he is directly claiming either that Muslims weren't on the plane, or that the plane didn't cause the building to fall. I believe that his basic claim is that one way to avoid the single-minded conclusion that Muslims are evil is to note that "Islamic terrorism" is not the only story that people have alleged here.
Ironically, this was spoken by the host, and not the guest Imam Farhan Siddiqi, who as far as I can tell appears to be the same Imam of the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque who claimed that he didn't condemn Hamas because he he had seen no proof of Hamas atrocities. He then said (in this video, not the podcast):
I'm beginning to wonder if the basic drive behind these startlingly alien statements is a kind of negative pluralism: take or promote any other perspectives than the allegedly thought-stopping truth of violence committed in the name of Islam. Why? Because those perspectives exist (People believe them! It's not just Muslims!), and because the central story that Muslims are just must be upheld.
Personally, I do not think that the tactics these two have chosen to deal with controversies will work in the long term, though in times of widespread distrust, it may appear to be effective.
This post doesn't really have a point. I've found that podcasts are the greatest gift that the internet has given us. I listen to people who I never would read. Reading them makes me feel dirty. But when there's a voice, they're people, even if they're bad people, or people who I tentatively want to see burn in hell for at least a few seconds and maybe even a little longer. I had no expectation that either of these two would make me do a double take when I started listening. I was there to learn about a community which I know little about, and to seek knowledge, as the Muslims say.
This episode began by talking about their experiences of studying Islam in majority-Arabic areas and continued with the experience of leading a flock. The discussion of different perspectives of faith, of avoiding partisanship in matters of faith, and of being tolerant of what people need in order to continue in their faith, even with doubts, was genuinely humanistic and worthwhile. It was what I came for, and I can't deny that to a certain extent I sought knowledge and I found it.
After the rather "wait, what" 9/11 part, the conversation continues to talk about how (apparently) Muslim clergy (I'm assuming this is in America) is mostly left-leaning, that MLFA and CAIR are left-leaning, that the host and guest are among the few right leaning in their circles. They talk about racism and discrimination towards whites, and appear to criticize Muslims who think that racism happens to everyone except whites. They talk about how some in the America First movement are talking about Zionists and mass immigration, but they don't necessarily care for the Palestinians either, as both are seen as foreign concerns. They talk about libertarianism and the virtues of Austrian economics (highly praised). At one point a story is told about how people confided in Siddiqi that they voted for Trump, and his response was "vote whoever." Dr. Abdullah reflects on pushback he got for promoting vaccine freedom during the pandemic.
I don't think they're making it up. There's a lot to ponder here about the possibilities and perils of Muslim integration in the West.
To quote Sam Harris: "Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas."
Obviously every religion has its fringe elements of crazy extremists, so I won't condemn them for that. But in Islam, even the mainstream central religion just seems bad in a way I don't see in other religions.
It starts with Mohammed himself. This isn't some ancient figure who's life is shrouded in mystery, he's pretty well documented. He was a warlord who led his tribe to conquer the Arabian peninsula, by a combination of cunning tactics, charisma, and ruthlessness. He frequently executed captives and allowed his men to take sex slaves. This was brutal even by the standards of his time, so he made up his own religion to justify it.
He was also illiterate. In Islam, this is considered a miracle, for how could an illiterate man produce a book like the Quran? Except... when you read it, it's just not a very good book. It's mostly vague references to the bible, with a lot of aimless repition. It's almost like a family guy joke: "hey, remember that time when Jonah got swallowed by a whale? Huh? Wasn't that a good story?" It doesn't have any of the interesting insights or metaphors that other famous holy books have. In other words, it's exactly the kind of thing screed I'd expect from a charismatic, but illiterate leader. This is why the Quran is usually not actually read, but simply chanted, mindlessly, five times a day, as a form of brainwashing.
In older times, Europeans called Muslims "Mohammedans". That's now considered outdated, but I think they were onto something there. The real, central core of Islam is a cult of personality, centered on that one man. That's why so many of them name their kids after him, that's why there's so many fanatics who kill anyone who even draws a picture of him, and that's why the entire religion still seems weirdly stuck in the past, in a way that even the much older religions like Hindu or Buddhism are not. The modern Muslim-American clergy who are trying to whitewash or modernise are having to struggly, mightily, against the core problems.
I feel like I'd also apply this criticism to Mormons: the origin story is, to put it kindly, a bit hokey. That said, the organization as a whole seems to produce members that are, at least when I've crossed paths with them, consistently reasonable people. Clearly it's at least possible for an organized group to transcend the "quality" of its founding documents, even though I think they still believe them earnestly.
Mormons do not believe the same things as Joseph Smith.
As very much an outsider, would you be willing to elaborate? Do you mean the ways, as the musical put it, "That the current President of the church, Thomas Monson [not the current President anymore], speaks directly to God", or something else?
The early mormon church believed in a kind of communal ownership(to fund its scams), polygamy, had a racial dynamic the quorum and president try to downplay, claimed its scriptures were actually the ancient egyptian for mormon stories, etc. Early mormonism was much weirder than today's version.
It remains LDS dogma that the accounts of pre-Colombian white-looking Christians in America in the Book of Mormon are a historically accurate account of events that happened somewhere in the Americas (LDS archaeologists think that Central America is the best candidate, and Google AI suggests that Joseph Smith came to this conclusion himself as soon as he bothered to read up on pre-Colombian America) in the 1st millenium AD, and that Joseph Smith translated the book from the plates. One minor change is that the LDS Church is now willing to be explicit that the English-language Book of Mormon was an inspired translation made with the aid of seer stones, rather than the result of careful academic study of the inscriptions on the plates, but this isn't a change in dogma - just putting a stop to a bad practice of the early Church endorsing children's picture books which showed Joseph Smith working by candlelight with the plates and a notebook.
There appears to be an active programme of LDS-funded archaeology looking for evidence of Nephite and Lamanite settlements in Central America, which (depending on how serious and well-funded it is) implies that true believing Mormons actually believe this stuff.
I don't think Mormonism needs a historically accurate Book of Mormon - in the same way that Christianity doesn't need a historically accurate Old Testament. The power of mainstream Christianity comes from the Cross and Resurrection, and the distinctive power of Mormonism comes from the restored Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods conferred on Joseph Smith by angels claiming to be John the Baptist and various Biblical apostles respectively. Whether the prequel material is historically accurate or divinely-inspired myth doesn't affect the end result.
It would not be particularly surprising (although I wouldn't bet on it at evens) that after another 100 years of archaeologists not finding the Nephites and Lamanites that LDS Church abandons the literal truth of the Book of Mormon via progressive revelation.
Mormonism doesn't actually need the plates - given that they now openly admit that Joseph Smith didn't rely on the Egyptian text on the plates to prepare his translation, they could pivot to "the Book of Mormon is a modern divinely inspired account of (real or mythological) events in pre-Colombian America that God gave to Joseph Smith through the medium of the seer stones". But I would eat my hat with a seer stone in it if the LDS authorities ever accepted that.
White is not used as a physical descriptor anywhere in the Book of Mormon.
At most 3% of ancient Mayan civillization has been unearthed by archeologists to date. There have been roughly 200 alleged anachronisms in the Book of Mormon since its publication in 1830, with 70% having been corroborated today. Anthropologist John Sorenson wrote a book named Mormon's Codex which explores the authentic Mesoamerican correspondences in detail.
There have been 11 witnesses of the golden plates who have maintained their accounts to be true even after personal rifts have led to some of them no longer affirming Joseph Smith's legitimacy as a prophet, believing that he has lost his divine providence.
The Mesoamerican model is in fact the one that is nearly universally accepted by serious scholars for several reasons.
The Book of Mormon described Captain Moroni using his "coat" as the "Title of Liberty" rather than a document, ring, necklace, or tattoo that would indicate his title. Title and status being denoted one's cloak/cape that they wore is unique to Mesoamerican cultures to my knowledge. When Cortes first arrived in Tenochtitlan and met emissaries on one of the causeways to the city, one of the first things he was given was a cloak denoting his status as a diplomat, in recognition of him being the King of Spain.
Teancum assassinated Amalickiah on New Year's Eve. The Mayans expect the head of state, as the representative of his subjects to the gods, to resist and battle the underworld deities, as they were believed to be at their strongest at the turn of a calendar year. The Lamanites awake to their protector being deceased, and enter a state of profuse panic due to the cosmological significance,
The huge uptick in brutal warfare towards the closing chapters of the BoM is in line with the late Mayan preclassic period where Teotihuacan sought to establish influence and dominance over the entire Mayan region (who were at their strongest at around 450AD, roughly when the Book of Mormon ends). Hagoth's expedition, which abruptly interrupts the narrative in Moroni's writings, is likely describing Teotihuacan, indicating the Nephites turning to Teotihuacan.
And none of those accounts establish a causal link between the inscriptions on the plates and the English urtext of the Book of Mormon revealed to Joseph Smith through the use of the seer stones. That is what I mean by Mormonism not needing the plates.
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My understanding is that cloaks were used as status symbols in Masonry during Smith's time.
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