Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The evil of religion

It does this sort of thing to people's minds:

So, Ibn Taymiya, the intellectual godfather of many Wahhabis and many Salafis, wrote a book that said Logic was un-Islamic. Modern day Salafi kids use that book as a permission to be completely contradictory — or just to insult someone who tries to reason with them.

But as we see here, Ibn Taymiya’s book is critiqued within the tradition. The basic argument Shaykh Sa’id Fawda makes...
And so on. The Shaykh's argument follows the sort of 'If a duck floats, would it weigh the same as a witch?' line of reasoning you find in religious debate.

We all lose from this: the fanatics who might have led reasonable lives without this poison; those who engage in debate with them to draw the poison from the wound, and in doing so demean their own minds; the rest of us who have to live with the erratic passions of the insane.

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