Mathurine has a great post about how to befriend ex-muslims. Here are her main points:
- If you have a website aimed at deconversion stories welcome Muslims as well as non-Christians.
- If you’re going to write about Islam, try to learn about it from a Muslim perspective.
- Leave off the “Muhammad was a pedophile” stuff.
- Remember that at the end of the day, we still have family and friends who are Muslim.
- Tone down the language you use: ”A lot of former Muslims are people who converted to the religion as teens and adults. Saying that only idiots can possibly be Muslims doesn’t help them.”
- Maintain a high standard of integrity and intellectual honesty when dealing with Islam, especially when criticizing it.
- Take the criticism of former Muslims seriously and with an open mind.
- Safety is a concern. Maintain your friends’ anonymity.
- Restrain your impulse to probe for the sensational unless the person offers it.
I think we would all do well to heed this advice.
Debbie: This world is too full of hate and that saddens me. Live and let live. Abortion is nobody’s... 
John C: Anti-no, “I” dont have any credibility either but the difference is that “I”m not... 
Custador: “Matt and Mark record “My God, My God, Why hast Thou forsaken me?”; John, “It is finished”; and Luke,... 
Daniel Florien: When you have indigestion when you’re reading it, you know it’s true! 
Mary Lynne: Hmm – I wonder what a “true fairy tale” would be. Is that like jumbo... 
Antiutopia: John C — Christ himself doesn’t have any credibility with these ignorant morons — do you... 
Uzza: Cool story. It reminds me of Confucius, meeting the mad hermit of Chu, who told him it was... 
23 Comments
I actually never heard that business about Muhammed supposedly being a pedophile until recently. Silly, of course. I’m not sure how young this girl was supposed to have been, but even in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, they were ready to marry off a 13-yr-old Juliet to the older dude, Paris. There was even the comment in the play that “Younger than she are happy mothers made.”
Why do we have to “tone down” our language? Do they tone down the throat slicing?
Why can you criticize a christian, jew, atheist etc but must respect muslims. Former or not you still have to answer for the actions of your people, your violent barbaric people.
@Shaw: Not all Muslims are “violent barbaric people.” Some are, but just because someone is a Muslim doesn’t mean they are associated with a violent sect. It’s like making a former Christian answer for Fred Phelps or abortion clinic bombers.
No one is saying you HAVE to town down your language. It’s for if you want to actually make friends with them. It doesn’t sound like you want to.
Digital Dame – Islamic tradition (from the hadiths) indicated that Muhammed married Ayesha at six and consummated the marriage at nine. Iran, until quite recently, used these guidelines as marriage law. Muslims will say, as you did, that the marriage age was much earlier way back when and that we can’t judge by our modern standards. IMO, nine is nine whatever century you’re in but I understand the author’s point in that it would be an insult to a Muslim to call Muhammed a pedophile and they would no longer listen to anything you had to say.
John Loftus uses a particular debating method which he defends as speaking to evangelical Christians that other atheists might not get. I think some of that logic is here. Not growing up in the Islamic tradition, we aren’t going to make the most persuasive arguments unless we can be as temperate as possible.
I spent quite a bit of time on Islamic boards after 9/11. The biggest concern I have about Islam is the same I have as with Christianity – the combining of church and state. I lose absolutely no sleep at night thinking a Muslim is going to become violent but the combination of church/state in traditional Islam is an even bigger force than it is in Christianity.
Those are all pretty good guidelines for making friends, which is the point. I tend to prefer the more stringent policies of engagement, but I understand that it will take both tactics to make progress. If we were all “baby-eating atheists” like Dawkins, we’d probably never reach large portions of people. But, if we were all “cuddly, feel-good atheists” like Eugenie Scott, there would be fights we simply would be strong-armed out of.
Also, am I the only one who finds #8 quite foreboding? Entirely true and practical, perhaps … but also entirely sad and scary that it needs to be included.
@cello:
The difference, I think, between the separation of the Christian church from the states in which it flourished and the integration of superstition into other governments (including England, for one) is primarily five hundred years, plus demography.
E.g. In England horrible penances were visited on Protestants or Catholics for worshipping wrongly, depending who was in charge in what era. The Tudor monarchs particularly had bloodthirsty histories.
Give it another five hundred years and I’ll bet Islam will have mellowed as much as Christianity has. The modern Islamic states (although none of them seem to agree on what that means) will probably look a lot like any other.
I mean, it’s not like the fringe radicals are a majority in any religion. Most people don’t actually let their faith get in the way of earning a living.
Thanks for posting this.
@shaw: The reason I advise people to tone down their language is that when you say things like that, to someone who wants to leave behind something their family has been a part of for hundreds of years, something intimately tied to their ethnic and cultural identity, sometimes you need a little softness. My advice is for people who *want* to welcome ex-Muslims, not folks whose only interest is to continue making sure we have the same antagonism now that we’re out that we faced when we were in.
No one in my family went around slashing people’s throats or thinking that was cool or Islamic. Most Muslims don’t, and this goes back to being *intellectually honest.* When you say stuff like that, I feel like, “Why bother?” The difference is that I’m already out – and happy to be. Friends of mine who are struggling with that family and identity vs. being free of belief – they read comments like yours and they tend to think that “Well, they hate in their own way.” I know – I used to be there. It’s hard enough to leave Islam – you can lose your family and your life – I just hope that atheists and others can make it a little less difficult.
I don’t think Muslims should be respected any more than other skygod believers. It is high time that Islam is questioned and criticised, and that is starting to happen with the growing numbers of former Muslims and non Muslims who are educated about Islam from Islamic sources. The difference is that atheists and freethinkers and critics should be *honest* and have the best integrity when criticising Islam. The reason? If you do this, and it’s difficult sometimes, believe me, then it becomes more difficult, or downright impossible for you to be dismissed as a hateful racist. Eventually, Muslims will have to confront the questions and challenges of ex-Muslims and others.
@Baka: #8 is a source of never ending and personal grief for me. I am ANGRY that I have to include it and the reason I’m angry is because it is true, no matter how Muslims will try to deny and prevaricate. It only takes one or two crazies, and if you read even American Muslim blogs long enough you will find people who believe things like this – that people like me deserve to die, and that the only thing holding them back is that this isn’t an Islamic state. However, as we know, the absence of an Islamic state hasn’t stopped other Western Muslims who have decided to get violent or plan violence in the name of Big Al the Sky Guy. So we remain anonymous and I wonder if I will be looking over my shoulder for decades to come.
Wow, yeah, nine is pretty damn young even back then when lifespans were typically much shorter than they are today.
I have heard (probably some program on the History Channel) that Islam, back when the Moors were in Spain in the 9th century (or thereabouts, don’t quote me on the date) they were far more tolerant of other religions than the Islam we know today. They were vastly more interested in education, and actually brought the concept of “0″ (zero) to the West.
It doesn’t seem like they’re in the process of mellowing out now though, quite the opposite these days. There was a huge flap awhile back about Muslim cab drivers in (was it Chicago?) some city refusing to pick up fares who either had been drinking, or were carrying bottles of wine, or something, and the cab company wanted to fire them so sometimes they do let their faith get in the way of earning a living.
Hey, I just wanted to say thanks to the people here and I’ve added some new elements and thoughts to the post based on the feedback here. Like the idea that Islam is somehow untouchable – a nefarious idea put forth in the mainstream and alternative media by these umbrella “Islamic” organisations.
@DD -
Moorish Spain is considered one of the high-water marks in religious tolerance. Jews, Muslims and Christians managed to function in a prosperous country for quite some time. Moorish Spain, like much of Dar al-Islam in the middle ages, was at the cutting edge of science, art, technology and commerce. James Carroll writes about it glowingly in “Constantine’s Sword”.
Digital Dame – As someone else has informed you, Aisha was six when she married Muhammad and nine when she was taken into his household. You give the example of Romeo & Juliet to argue (sort of) that people just did that back then, but I think there’s a very big difference. No one reads Shakespeare as a guide on how to live our lives. On the other hand, Muslims DO read the Quran and the Hadiths as a manual for a righteous life. When Romeo marries Juliet, that’s one individual doing something, an individual who is clearly presented as a hot-head who should be pitied and not emulated. When Muhammad marries Aisha, he does so as the Prophet of a religion, with the responsibility that his actions would become the justification for child-rape right into the modern era.
As for not saying that Muhammad was a pedophile, why should we lie (or omit the truth)? It was against his own law to marry her (because he’d declared her father to be his brother, making it incest as well). When her father refused the marriage because of this relationship, Muhammad quickly invented a special religious exception. He wanted her, he was turned on by a six-year-old child. He bent the rules so that he could have her.
When a doctor rapes his patient it is considered more heinous than when an average person rapes another average person. This is because a doctor is in a position of trust. How can we believe any consent Aisha might have given when the 50+ year old man in her bed is claiming to be the prophet sent by God? This is more than just pedophilia. This is a powerful man abusing the trust his followers have placed in him to excuse his lust for a 6-year-old child.
I think that calling Muhammad a pedophile absolutely needs to be done – whether it offends or not. He is placed on a pedestal as a role-model, a guide by which we should all live our lives. When he acts in a way that any decent person would find repulsive, his pedestal needs to be destroyed. How can we do this if we keep silent about his immoral behaviour just because we don’t wish to offend or drive away potential allies? While keeping silent may help in the short term, it will only work against us in the long term by implicitly condoning such behaviour.
Welcoming ex-Muslims is one thing, and I can certainly see where Mathurine is coming from with her other points, but this is one that I don’t think we can afford to just let go of in the interest of diplomacy. At the risk of trespassing into Godwin’s territory, it’s like saying that we should make ex-neo-nazis feel more welcome by not mentioning the holocaust. (note: I am not comparing Muslims to nazis. I am comparing the despicable actions of one man who is seen as a prophet by some to the despicable actions of another man who is also seen as a prophet by some.) It’s crazy.
To those talking about the Muslim Golden Age, it’s mostly true (of course, non-Muslims didn’t have the same rights as Muslims, even in the most tolerant societies – but it was still much better than most of the rest of the world was doing). But does that really matter? The Muslims in my family often bring this up as a way to deflect any criticism of Islam (”while Europe was in the dark ages, we were leading the world in science, technology, and tolerance! Therefore, Islam is a religion of peace, goodness, tolerance, and scientific advancement!”). It’s the worst case of resting on one’s laurels that I’ve ever seen. Whatever greatness the Muslim empire may have achieved in the past (through the sword, I might add – Spain never asked to join the empire!), it has absolutely no bearing on where Islam is now. Right now, Islam is centuries behind the West. I sincerely hope that they catch up. I sincerely hope that all the violence and intolerance currently taking over the Muslim world is causing a movement of insider resentment that will become apparent as time goes on.
Great entry, Daniel! I enjoyed reading both your entry and the original blog by Mathurine. I would agree this is wise advice, not just for welcoming ex-Muslims into atheist communities, but also for just being a kind fellow human being to friends and colleagues, Muslim or ex-Muslim. A good friend of mine came to the States as a young adult, and although she considers herself “thoroughly Westernized” I’ve sensed how much it pains her at times to hear broad generalizations condemning her homeland and the culture in which her parents still live. Thank you for sharing this.
Mathurine: I’ve read the original context/explanation of your point on the pedophilia thing, and I think that we’re actually talking about the same thing (just with different words). If I’ve interpreted your blog post correctly, what you mean is that we shouldn’t just state “Muhammad was a pedophile” and leave it at that, using this to wave away the whole religion. Or, at the very least, we ought to focus more on the implications of Muhammad’s marriage to a child, rather than what people in the modern era would call him for it.
In which case, I mostly agree. The reason why Muhammad’s marriage to a child is important (while we rarely ever bother talking about other historical figures who married children) is because he claimed to be a prophet, because he claimed to speak for God, and because people look to his life as a guide for how we ought to live our own. In other words, it’s his status that makes his act important.
And maybe I agree with you that our focus should be on the relationship between his status and his actions, and how condemning one of his actions because “times have changed” calls into questions everything else he may have done.
I have nothing to say on the “Mohammed was a pedo” matter, at least not to the detriment of Islam – the practise of marrying young girls was endemic throughout the western world also; if there is a problem it is a systematic one that mediaeval cultural mores are not appropriate in a modern world.
DD – the pedant in me has to point out that the “we lived shorter lives back then” argument is a fallacy; low life expectancy is skewed by infant mortality, and if you reach your 20’s you were more or less as likely to see your sixties as today. Also, onset of puberty was probably later then than it is now (it’s based on proportion of body fat, so it gets earlier with improvements in nutrition), so there’s an argument to say that taking younger brides was less acceptable back then.
Both DD and Vorjack – My understanding was that Moorish Spain was slightly past the tipping point of religious equality; and that the churches-and-mosques-in-the-same-building phase was slightly earlier (and in North Africa, unless I’m remembering wrong). By Moorish Spain, Christians and Jews were tolerated and even respected, but also heavily discriminated against; their rights and what we would today regard as “civil liberties” were systematically infringed and denied by the Muslim government. Of course, against the rest of Christian Europe – which was systematically infringing and denying Jews the right to, y’know, breathing and being alive and stuff at that time – they were positively magnanimous.
All this has no bearing on the debate at hand of course.
I’ve always understood that Aisha married at 9 or 10, and the marriage was consummated at 19.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2404356/Age-of-Aishaha and http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/history/biographies/sahaabah/bio.AISHAH_BINT_ABI_BAKR.html both support this view. But, even if this one wife was married young (as part of a political alliance, the fact that all of Mohammed’s other twelve wives were all over 30 (and most of them were widows) makes it pretty obvious that he wasn’t actually a paedophile.
Menarche was later in the 19th century as you say, due to poor diet, but before that all evidence seems to suggest that it came on at about the same age it does today. Generally, nutrition was pretty good before the Industrial Revolution.
But (in Europe, at least – I don’t know much about the rest of the world) marriages have always been very rare before the age of 15 or so, the few exceptions being those marriages that secured political marriages.
wintermute,
There are a lot of Islamic apologetics. I would always go to the actual source – either the Quran or hadith for verification one way or another.
The original source, the hadith itself notes (authored by Aisha herself):
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/058.sbt.html
QUOTE:
The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became Allright, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age.
Sahih Bukhari V5 B58 #234
Also see reference here:
http://www.answering-christianity.com/sami_zaatri/aisha_and_prophet_muhammad.htm
Also, wintermute, you may have a point that he did habitually have sex with nine year olds thus he was not an official pedophile. But there is certainly evidence to the contrary that this was not a political alliance from the Islamic sources themselves. e.g. he did not have to consummate the marriage at nine. He could have left her in her parents house until she was older.
the above should say he did not habitually have sex with….
wintermute – The idea that Aisha was married much later is nothing short of apologists trying to make Islam more palatable to a modern audience. Most sources that I’ve seen trying to place the marriage later go on about calculations based on the age of her sister and records of how many years after the Hijra*, etc. But as someone else pointed out, the texts themselves are incredibly specific about her age (the only variation being whether she was 6 or 7 when the marriage took place). All agree that she was 9 when it was consummated, and that she was still playing with dolls with her girlfriends (something which would have been unthinkable in an adult, given Islam’s emphasis on idolatry). She was a child, and the fact that she was allowed to continue playing with dolls after her marriage strongly suggests that even those around her (Muhammad included) still thought of her as a child.
You mention the idea that this was a political marriage – it wasn’t. As I stated in one of my earlier comments, Abu Bakr was Muhammad’s adopted brother, making Muhammad’s relationship with Aisha incestuous and against the law! Abu Bakr even refused the marriage because of this, but Muhammad insisted, later stating that he had received a dream from Allah commanding him to take her (whether he was just lying for justification or if he was misrepresenting a wet dream is unclear). This was NOT a political marriage. This was a marriage of lust – one that shocked people at the time. Had Muhammad not claimed to speak for Allah, it would never have been accepted.
And finally, on the point of menstruation: ultimately, it doesn’t really matter when Aisha started her period. At nine-years-old, a girl’s vagina is usually not large enough for a full grown man’s penis. There would have been substantial pain involved in sex. Not to mention that, in the event of pregnancy, this would have posed considerable risk because her body would not yet be fully formed. Even in the case of political marriages, there is some evidence that kings might abstain from sex with their wives until they reached more appropriate ages. Edward II is a great example – his wife going so far as to complain that he refused to enter her bed. Isabella was 12 when she married Edward II and did not produce any children until a full 4 years later, making her around 16. After that, they had at least 4 children together, so we can’t just say that he refused her company because he was gay (which I’m sure someone will bring up).
The point is that sexual relations that young would have probably caused Aisha a whole lot of pain and put her life in serious danger. This was not a political marriage which, it is true, were made young. Even if it was a political marriage, Muhammad did not have to come for her so early.
And, finally, there’s the fact that Muhammad sets the example for the entire Muslim world. Whether he realized it at the time (surely he must have?), his words and actions were to become blueprints for billions of people for the next millennia and a half. We cannot justify what he did just because “this is what people did back then.” We don’t necessarily have to say that he was a bad person, but we DO have to say that he was a man of his time and that we cannot justify ANY actions based on his example. Once we can say that we are beyond one of his actions, we can no longer trust any of them. He must be abandoned as a role-model altogether. If he did anything positive, we can say “this was something positive,” but we cannot say “this was positive because he did it” or “because he did this positive thing, his other actions must also be worthwhile and, even if we disagree, should be given the benefit of doubt.”
*That being said, even the text for that argument (Tabari VII:7) emphasises the point that she was 6-years-old. Apologists simply cut off the second half of the sentence to make their argument.
I just wanted to say I find this entire comment thread fascinating. Thank you to everyone who has contributed.
I tend to find myself agreeing most with Grimalkin’s opinions, but you have all given me much more insight into specifically the pedophilia charge, and more broadly, the various nuances of welcoming the deconverted.
Schacht asserts that hadiths, particularly from Muhammad, did not form, together with the Qur’an, the original bases of Islamic law and jurisprudence as is traditionally assumed. Rather, hadiths were an innovation begun after some of the legal foundation had already been built. “The ancient schools of law shared the old concept of sunna or ‘living tradition’ as the ideal practice of the community, expressed in the accepted doctrine of the school.” And this ideal practice was embodied in various forms, but certainly not exclusively in the hadiths from the Prophet. Schacht argues that it was not until al-Shafi`i that ‘sunna’ was exclusively identified with the contents of hadiths from the Prophet to which he gave, not for the first time, but for the first time consistently, overriding authority. Al-Shafi`i argued that even a single, isolated hadith going back to Muhammad, assuming its isnad is not suspect, takes precedence over the opinions and arguments of any and all Companions, Successors, and later authorities. Schacht notes that:
Two generations before Shafi`i reference to traditions from Companions and Successors was the rule, to traditions from the Prophet himself the exception, and it was left to Shafi`i to make the exception the principle. We shall have to conclude that, generally and broadly speaking, traditions from Companions and Successors are earlier than those from the Prophet.
Based on these conclusions, Schacht offers the following schema of the growth of legal hadiths. The ancient schools of law had a ‘living tradition’ (sunna) which was largely based on individual reasoning (ra’y). Later this sunna came to be associated with and attributed to the earlier generations of the Successors and Companions. Later still, hadiths with isnads extending back to Muhammad came into circulation by traditionists towards the middle of the second century. Finally, the efforts of al-Shafi`i and other traditionists secured for these hadiths from the Prophet supreme authority.
Goldziher maintains that, while reliance on the sunna to regulate the empire was favoured, there was still in these early years of Islam insufficient material going back to Muhammad himself. Scholars sought to fill the gaps left by the Qur’an and the sunna with material from other sources. Some borrowed from Roman law. Others attempted to fill these lacunae with their own opinions (ra’y). This latter option came under a concerted attack by those who believed that all legal and ethical questions (not addressed by the Qur’an) must be referred back to the Prophet himself, that is, must be rooted in hadiths.These supporters of hadiths (ahl al-hadith) were extremely successful in establishing hadiths as a primary source of law and in discrediting ra’y. But in many ways it was a Pyrrhic victory. The various legal madhhabs were loath to sacrifice their doctrines and so they found it more expedient to fabricate hadiths or adapt existing hadiths in their support. Even the advocates of ra’y were eventually persuaded or cajoled into accepting the authority of hadiths and so they too “found” hadiths which substantiated their doctrines that had hitherto been based upon the opinions of their schools’ founders and teachers. The insistence of the advocates of hadiths that the only opinions of any value were those which could appeal to the authority of the Prophet resulted in the situation that “where no traditional matter was to be had, men speedily began to fabricate it. The greater the demand, the busier was invention with the manufacture of apocryphal traditions in support of the respective theses.”
In summary, Goldziher sees in hadiths “a battlefield of the political and dynastic conflicts of the first few centuries of Islam; it is a mirror of the aspirations of various parties, each of which wants to make the Prophet himself their witness and authority.” Likewise,
Every stream and counter-stream of thought in Islam has found its expression in the form of a hadith, and there is no difference in this respect between the various contrasting opinions in whatever field. What we learnt about political parties holds true too for differences regarding religious law, dogmatic points of difference etc. Every ra’y or hawa, every sunna and bid`a has sought and found expression in the form of hadith.
And even though Muslim traditionalists developed elaborate means to scrutinize the mass of traditions that were then extant in the Muslim lands, they were “able to exclude only part of the most obvious falsifications from the hadith material.” Goldziher, for all his scepticism, accepted that the practice of preserving hadiths was authentic and that some hadiths were likely to be authentic. However, having said that, Goldziher is adamant in maintaining that:
In the absence of authentic evidence it would indeed be rash to attempt to express the most tentative opinions as to which parts of the hadith are the oldest material, or even as to which of them date back to the generation immediately following the Prophet’s death. Closer acquaintance with the vast stock of hadiths induces sceptical caution rather than optimistic trust regarding the material brought together in the carefully compiled collections. Herbert Berg- Phd
Let the People of the Gospel judge by what God hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what God hath revealed, they are (no better than) those who rebel. (Surah 5, Maida, verse 47)
But why do they come to thee for decision, when they have (their own) Law before them?- Therein is the (plain) command of God; yet even after that, they would turn away. For they are not (really) people of faith. (Surah 5, Maida, verse 43)
2.41 And believe in what I reveal, confirming the revelation which is with you, and be not the first to reject Faith therein, nor sell My Signs for a small price; and fear Me, and Me alone.
2.89 And when there comes to them a Book from God, confirming what is with them,- although from of old they had prayed for victory against those without Faith,- when there comes to them that which they (should) have recognized, they refuse to believe in it but the curse of Allah is on those without Faith.
2.91 When it is said to them, “Believe in what God Hath sent down, “they say, “We believe in what was sent down to us:” yet they reject all besides, even if it be Truth confirming what is with them. Say: “Why then have ye slain the prophets of Allah in times gone by, if ye did indeed believe?”
It says confirming What is With Them. What exactly is this revelation that is with them?