The following post will not fulfill its purpose or make full sense, unless the entire series of posts it’s a part of is read in order. You are therefore encouraged to start with the introduction.
Category #2 - “Good” Non-Rational Faith
There are truths in this world that are universal, and when it comes to moral ones, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the best document we have so far that espouses them on a global level.
However, there are moral “truths” which are relativist.
Despite the fact that I find the idea of moral relativism difficult to accept, I realize such a thing does exist, which brings me to “good” non-rational faith.
“Good” non-rational faith is belief perceived to be good in matters that are difficult to rationalize or back up with sufficient rational evidence. Its “goodness” is that of a relativist subjective kind and depends on the social construct you grew up in.
To one community, something can be “good” but to “others” it’s “bad” and hence the relativism. It also tends to fall within matters of morality, both religious and cultural.
Faith-based dress code modesty and sexuality are good examples that involve lots of moral relativism.
The Muslim Zaynab who covers her hair with a hijab because she believes Allah instructs her to do so. The Afghani woman who goes one big step further and veils her entire face because she believes that’s what Allah truly wants. Or the liberal Fatemah who wears jeans with a T-shirt and doesn’t cover her hair at all because she believes Allah’s definition of modesty is a dominantly spiritual one.
All three’s moral dimension of their dress-code and their idea of modesty is relativist. It’s not universal. It can be challenging to paint into a straight forward black and white picture.
Through mainstream Muslim eyes, Zaynab will seem like the most faithfully moral of all three. Fatemah will come across as inadequately pious, and the Afghani woman’s faith in the morality of her dress-code will be perceived as too culturally contaminated.
But ultimately and generally speaking, the three Muslim females’ dress-code will be tolerated and accepted by the global population of Muslims as normative.
On the other hand though, a Muslim girl wearing tiny jeans shorts and a bikini who’s walking during summer down a street populated by mainstream Muslims will easily find herself labeled immoral and highly lacking in faith.
Personally speaking, I find Fatemah’s choice of clothing normative. The hijabi Zaynab… well, I’m not a fan of the hijab and I would never encourage any future daughters I may have to wear it.
Yup, I don’t like the hijab, although I respect a Muslim woman’s right to wear it out of choice, as many in my extended family do… similarly to how Christian nuns and religious Jewish women cover their hair too.
As for the face veil, I’m staunchly against it and find it heinous.
Hence, from a personal perspective, I wouldn’t place the hijab and face veil under “Good” Non-Rational Faith. I don’t find anything about them good from a universal perspective, or even “good” from a relativist one.
However, a Muslim community in general will, and this post is written from its perspective, in order to keep the example simplified.
Ultimately though, the point I’m trying to make is that all of us have beliefs we see as clearly good, and they are indeed universally good.
For instance, how often do you find people arguing over whether or not rape is a good or bad thing? See my point?
However, then you have those faith-based beliefs which to you or your community are good, but to many others, are not necessarily so. For example, the hijab or face veil, and the big debates surrounding them.
Hence, “Good” Non-Rational Faith.
Up next: Category #3 - Bad Non-Rational Faith
SudaneseThinker
SudaneseThinker
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
“Ultimately though, the point I’m trying to make is that all of us have beliefs we see as clearly good, and they are indeed universally good.
For instance, how often do you find people arguing over whether or not rape is a good or bad thing? See my point?”
Uhm. These things are very few. With rape, for instance, I can think of two cultures who consider it “good” at least in some cases: Pushtun and ancient Vikings. Which makes sense if (most of) the roots of morality are social instincts
Hey Drima,
On the subject of good non-rational faith, thought you might be interested to read about these (albeit rare) examples of how Islamic faith can sometimes be used (exploited? manipulated?? :-P) to effect positive behavioural changes in community-based wildlife conservation:
Eco-Islam: Malaysia’s Imams to preach against poaching
Islam and turtle conservation
Personally I think it’s a bit sad that we have to use religion to get through to these people. But hey, whatever works. Now if we could just get a blanket fatwa issued about turtle eggs being haram…
Drima…
I think we have kind of touched on this one before…
To me it is very simple…If there is a God, then there are universal truths…period. If there is no God, then we deteriorate to moral and cultural relativism. To me it is enormously simple in this case.
Now once you put God in the equation…then we begin the trip through the labyrinth of interpretation, manipulation, the integration of habit and culture and personal belief into religious practice.
Take two Jew things…wearing a head cover and not eating milk product with chicken. Both are blindly accepted as religious yet there is not religious foundation for either practice. We also know that religious people think like Jew lawyers…they will often ultimately cook the books until they come up with an interpretation that suites their needs. This is one of the reasons I have really very little faith in leaders.
“These things are very few. With rape, for instance, I can think of two cultures who consider it “good” at least in some cases: Pushtun and ancient Vikings. ”
Didn’t Afghanistan just attempt to legalise rape within marriage for Shiites?
Abu,
Pushtun heh? Never heard about that one. Roots of morality are social instincts?
Care to elaborate? I think the best answer is that we don’t really fully know and understand. But I certainly do see that morality to a significant extent is a social construction.
Sheema,
Check this…
“Morality is doing what is right, regardless what we are told;
Religious dogma is doing what we are told, no matter what is right.”
It’s from Tarek Fatah, one of my most favorite Muslim intellectuals… a sane and brave voice challenging Islamists in North America and the Muslim world.
http://www.chasingamirage.com/
Howie,
“If there is a God, then there are universal truths…period. If there is no God, then we deteriorate to moral and cultural relativism.”
I have the same freaking problem… That’s why I find moral relativism difficult to accept. And that’s why I now find the idea that Quranic verses can be interpreted metaphorically, troublesome, because it inevitably leads into moral relativism.
Take the verses literally, and we end up with some nonsensical irrational claims in some cases that are laughably unscientific.
Hmmm… what to do in that case? Science and pure reason alone? Naaa, too simplistic and reductionist. Consciousness doesn’t arise in the brain, but the brain is merely a mechanism that produces it. Okay, crap I’m thinking aloud here. Better not go into a long rant. Will save it for upcoming posts.
Andrew,
I’m aware that in some countries, there are no laws that recognize rape within marriage as a crime. But I was talking about the most common rape which is one outside marriage. Haven’t come across anything or anyone trying to suggest it is a good thing. Or things like beating the shit out of an orphan.
Drima,
I couldn’t agree more with that quote. But the examples I mentioned above seem to suggest that there are instances when a religious approach can help to promote more ‘moral’ behaviour, so to speak. Or is ‘morality’ in this instance also subjective?
Which is not to say that dogma can be so easily shaken off though. There was the example of the mufti who declared that eating turtle eggs cannot possibly be haram, “because it’s not mentioned in either the Qur’an or the hadith”…
Drima…
That is the whole problem my friend…we don’t KNOW…it ultimately comes down to how we see things, which all gets filtered through our/other’s mechanisms of; rationalization, denial, ignorance, culture, temperament, education, environment, level of intelligence, astrological sign and lawd only knows.
That is why, long ago, I pretty much gave up on the intellectual pursuit of God (for the most part) and await mystical c0nnection and revelation and why, although you stress logical and reason, at heart you are a Sufi/Kabalist already.
To me…there really is no other chance…no other hope of KNOWING anything of the ultimate truths of life…just a bunch of ants floating on a log and debating about what type of bark the universe is made of.
Well…of to yoga I go in 45 minutes…I will let you know if God reveals Himself to me this morning…I kind of have a good feeling about it. Oh…and I did start the day reading the Old Testament in Spanish…I am suspecting the Hebrew is not the holy tongue and I am looking for clues to the universe my counting the points of the letters in words such as; taco, burrito and pura vida.
Hasta la vista….baby
hOOOMie
Drima -
Part of that most gentle and wonderful of codes of ethics, Pushtun Wali, is your tribe raping the women of an offending tribe. As a legal punishment.
We had a prodigiously long discussion about the roots of morality in another thread here
Basically, a lot of our supposedly ethical behaviour has been proven to be resultant from instincts, or just be conditioned by a piece of meat. Much more is being researched and looks to derive from the same source. Lots of interesting articles online about it.
Drima…
Check out the Song of Songs…it is in the Old Testament….it clearly depicts two very horny people that are bringing the heat to each other through the sharing of some hot and heavy poetic interactions. Well…this is a tough one for orthodoxy as they don’t really sound very married…but that is another debate…so THAT becomes a metaphor for stuff like God’s love for Israel…yeah…right…but stuff that serves “their” purpose is NOT metaphorical…it is literal…like punishments etc.
So…it goes back to what I said earlier.
Oh…God did send me a message after all today…He said “beware Raccoons who are material reductionists and do most of their thinking under heavy doses to tetrahydracannibal”.
I know I talked about some of this before but here are my thoughts on the subject of morality as I understand it.
Any ethical system will ultimately come down to ones values and desires. These values and desires have two sources. One is learned from what you are taught by religion and society. The other is an instinctive emotional inclination for or against certain things.
While this would mean that morality is subjective, we do have common ground to work with. Most people will try to avoid and prevent negative experiences that cause physical or emotional pain to themselves. This is where empathy comes in. People are naturally inclined to feel sad when they witness the suffering of others and happy when others are doing well. This gives individuals a vested interest in the well being of others, especially those they know well. I see this type of morality as the most important and simply a natural part of being human.
Unfortunately other emotions like jealousy, greed, fear, and hate can and often do suppress empathy. This becomes an even bigger problem as taught behavior that originally stems from such emotions are passed down from generation to generation.
I argue that the taught side of ethics should do more to encourage our natural empathy rather than suppress it as is too often the case with religion and society.
moral and civil laws come from the Torah 10 commandments of divine inspiration, which are hold as “objective truths”by any moral person.
Until that no civil laws were definitly transcripted, they were the basis of behaviour, generally taught by religious persons. Then in Midle-ages, kings started to understand that a general code for civil behaviour would be useful to treat different cases of “Justice”, with the Torah truths as skeleton.
No rational law tells how someone must dress her/himself, this is more of “collective conventions” of a given society, like there are rules for different enterprises, they only concern exoteric, and cannot apply to a “moral” behaviour but to a social tradition, and can’t be punished as so.
This is why mixing the moral principles and the social rules conduct to exagerations and harms such as the actualities can show us when a muslim girl is murdered for not wearing one of the clothes that are hold as a religious commandment.
Beating or raping a person are not relevant in the first place, and should be considered as crime in term of morality in this fact it destroys a personality and anhilites its possibility of ever feeling good and of developping creative potentialities and because of that, also a crime in term of civil laws
Nobody ever really “gets away” with anything. In the economy of nature, nothing is extraneous, and no act or omission ever fails to produce a complementary response.
an interesting article about the same subject:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/law_and_lawfulness_in_a_civili.html
can’t be punished as so I ment can be punished as so
Howie -
We, the Raccoons, are not materialist reductionists! We’re just very materialistic… down to the quantum levels of materialism, at which matter ceases to exist as such
An’ Jah loves mah smokin’ da weed, mon!
Marie -
The ten commandments? With the unrelated bits about Sabbat and Idols and Yahweh being a (badass gangsta) vengeful God who’s going to smite your ass if you don’t accept him as the one true god?
Or the entirely impossible bits about not coveting your neighbors wife, stuff, etc? Not to mention that greed is the driving engine of prosperity in these past few dozen millenia…
I am willing to accept 2 of these: thou shalt not murder and thou shalt not steal. Any real crime can be defined as theft, whether you’re stealing someone’s wallet, someone’s life or someone’s freedom. But not all theft is a crime.
Another three I am willing to accept as soft guidelines with many exceptions: honoring parents, false witness and adultery. Of these, only honoring parents should exist by itself, really, and it has to do with social contracts. False witness and adultery are variations on theft when they’re a crime.
Sorry if I’m being a spoilsport :/
I am trying to avoid labeling you “that kind of Mulsim” you know the loser type, whose words arent taken seriosuly by both worlds…Muslims and non-muslims alike.
As for Muslim women who wear Higab. They make me proud… flat out.
Of them being the love of mylife, and the heroist* of all heros : My fursiouly beautiful and couraageous mother, who wears the hijab proudly and hold a highly-esteem positions in life; a mother to 7 beautuful children raised in the best of ways, a doctor respescted by hercollegues, and patients, and an active community member loved by her neigbours and friends. (Not bragging)
Even though many of us Muslim sisters dont wear it (for many difffernt reasons*). I find that my dearest Muslim sisters who wear the higab are spitrually and phycially aware of life’s purpose…if there is one…I find that when I surround myself around them I feel like everything I do is meaningful, and my love for helping others regardless of who they are is sincere. And No I am not saying when I am around my “non-muslims” friends is meaningless, but its much more materlistc (shopping, boys, social outing, parties,) and my time is very much occupied I dont even have time to ask…Who Am I. However I find it hyprocritical (sexsit, dicriminatory, and evil) to find another Muslim say they hate the Higab and claim they love our beloved Prophet Muhammed and anything else about Islam. (not spefically attacking you, but I have met a lot that think like you, and to a worse degree.)
Excuse me and for all my Muslim sisters who I speak on their behalf , but if you are a Muslim from Sudan (esp. the “so called” arabs”)…dont even start. Mulsim women (May God Bless Them) have suffered ENOUGH in the past decades through war, and poverty. When I see a Muslim sister wear the higab in the streets of NY, or any town, or any street in the world. The fact that these women have the confidence to step out and let people around them know they are different (physical appearance) for reasons that are IMPORTANT to them, but come across as the most intellectual, kindest, and humble beings, makes me think you have issues with yourslef to actually state that you are against a piece of cloth wrapped around ones head.
Its funny how most of the time when I am asked who am I, I proudly tell people I am Muslim, however many non-muslims ask me why I dont wear the headscarf. I tell them that gudiance comes to people differently. As much I try to control my materilistc needs and focus more on accomplishments in my life for myslef, and for others… I find that I do better when I control my temptations.
I have friends who just recently put on the headscarf and others who took it off. So I suggest you stop posting usless blogs on issues you have no say or influence on. If I want to wear a veil, or skinny jeans, pink-dyed spikes, a beard that reaches the knees, or a or a coco chanel bag…its my business. If its not causing or inciting hatred among people or on a certain group…then STFU…and Get a Life.
Btw…I am not the defensive type but when you have people who “call themselves Muslim” and indirectly degarde or claim certain things in Islam is distatsteful because of what some bigger losers (France for instance) does by implenting in their laws…clearly they are scared and the relaity whether polictially incorrect is that France with its 6 million Muslims has to be stalled, and where else to start off… by disengaging the Muslim women from integrating into society…How… by stripping their rights right out of thier face.
Well we as a whole (Muslim women) can take it for we have suffered even worse by our corrupted patriacal regimes Because we know France might be doing it out of fear, what about Muslim countries likeTunisia or Turkey?
Muslim women are the represntatives of Islam. When people look at them they think Islam…they are curious, and ask questions. Some are surpised, others moved, and emotinal, others supportive, and connect similarties of their religon and ours, others undertanding but just dont get it. You know what we call that…the ebauty of tolerance…and respect. Its simple: Dont invade my personal space, and vice versa.
Persoanlly as long as they arent looking at savage-loving, ego-centirc, overly-possessive hyrpcrties like our Muslim leaders, and their undercover thugs who terroize and rape my sisters from Iraq, to Darfur, and then cry “death to the indifels”…
Then I am happy…however its unforunate the media doesnt pick up on us more than them…I wonder why?
Haha
Peace to you!
Peace and Love to all My sisters around the world.
“As for Muslim women who wear Higab. They make me proud… flat out.”
Why?
No Muslim woman appears to feel any pressure not to wear it and hence wearing it is hardly an act of rebellion against authority.
However, in many countries Muslim women who don’t wear it get into so much trouble with Muslim men, I hardly see how it has anything to do with pride to give in to them.
Because violent Muslims make for good headlines and ultimately money. It’s perfect when they are also oppressed with extra points when the oppressor is a Jew.
The last thing the media need is proud, faithful, believing, peaceful, and smart Muslim women.
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