Pathological Tendencies in Islam and Other Religions
By Sam Sewell, on October 4th, 2015
Why I think some liberals, fewer conservatives and most
Muslims are pathological.
Author’s note: The political entities that affect the
national consciousness the most are Conservatism, Liberalism, and Islam. This
article examines the pathological aspects of all of these paradigms. This a
very important article and I encourage all people to read it. Yes, it is long
by today’s standards, but the subject matter influences all of us every day.
Please give me feedback,
http://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-i-think-some-liberals-fewer.html
No matter how pathological American liberals and conservatives become, I doubt they will ever be as dangerous to mankind as the radical Islamic sect. I believe that the majority expression of today’s Islam is pathological. There are also notable and noble exceptions to that majority. Muslims are people. Islam is a multifaceted thought paradigm. Individual Muslim people exposed to the larger religious pathology are not all going to get sick, any more than everyone in an epidemic dies. In fact, one of the most important fields of research in epidemiology, the study of disease, is to study those who do not get sick when exposed. Maybe there is a clue there for us in dealing with Islam.
No matter how pathological American liberals and conservatives become, I doubt they will ever be as dangerous to mankind as the radical Islamic sect. I believe that the majority expression of today’s Islam is pathological. There are also notable and noble exceptions to that majority. Muslims are people. Islam is a multifaceted thought paradigm. Individual Muslim people exposed to the larger religious pathology are not all going to get sick, any more than everyone in an epidemic dies. In fact, one of the most important fields of research in epidemiology, the study of disease, is to study those who do not get sick when exposed. Maybe there is a clue there for us in dealing with Islam.
Next, it isn’t just Islam. Those of us who study
religion as a sociological phenomenon see religions as divided into different
categories than do the practitioners of religion. For instance
Confucianism and Judaism are both “wisdom” religions. Old Testament
Judaism was a ritualistic/legalistic religion. When the temple was
destroyed, it was impossible to observe temple rituals, so ritualistic Judaism
morphed into a wisdom religion. Today’s leaders of Judaism have the title
Rabbi, “teacher” rather than “priest.”
“Fundamentalism” is a specific sect that shows up from time
to time in all the major religions.
The main characteristics of fundamentalism are:
1. Selective/Narrow –
Fundamentalist religions are very selective about what they embrace and accept
from the main stream of their religion. Christian fundamentalists
are ignorant of most Christian tradition, and are very selective about which
scriptures they read or quote. Trained theologians call this “proof-texting,” meaning
they find a text to “prove” what they already believe. Non-fundamentalist
Christians use a different yardstick for scriptural interpretation.
Intellectually-honest Christians will ask, “What is the full testimony of the
scriptures?” What is the message of the entire body of scripture verses
relevant to a particular subject? Islamic fundamentalists ignore
classical Islam and the traditions of Islam. They focus on those passages
in the Koran that talk about infidels, and ignore the passages about compassion.
2. Static/Entropic
– Fundamentalist religions are very reactive to change. They want
things to stay the same. They fear modernity and they can not be
comfortable with ambiguity. They must slow the world down and simplify
thinking to the point where it will fit on a bumper sticker.
Fundamentalists are not sophisticated thinkers. They have primal anxiety
reactions to change and to complicated, uncertain thinking. By contrast,
Paul Tillich, the preeminent protestant theologian of the twentieth century,
became known as the ‘Apostle to the Intellectuals’ because his intellectual
quest was to communicate the Christian faith to humanistically educated
skeptics. To quote Paul Tillich, “Doubt is not the antithesis of faith.
Doubt is an essential element of faith. Without doubt there is no faith,
there is only dogma.” That describes a living faith, and is the opposite
of an entropic religion.
3. Supramoral/Anti-social –
This is the aspect of fundamentalism that is criminal and psychotic. The
fundamentalist Christian who decides his “morality” is so important and right
that it is ok to kill abortion doctors is close kin to the guys who flew
airliners into the WTC. Entropy is just another name for death.
Fundamentalists are anti-life. Wait, you say, fundamentalists are opposed
to abortion. Yes, but they are praying for the end of time when all
mankind will die and a select few will become spiritual beings, very similar to
Islamic fundamentalists. This anti-materialism is a left-over heresy from
the early church. Main stream Christians are more likely to say “It is
more important to be loving than it is to be right.” Maybe they would
say, “People are more important than ideas.”
So here is the gist of my thinking. Islam is a “Poster
Child” for a desperately-needed, twelve-step program called “Fundamentalist’s
Anonymous.” The big problem is that Islam is about one thousand years
behind the development of other world religions. Hundreds of years ago
Christians were doing the same things that Islam is doing now. When any
selective/narrow, static/entropic, supramoral/anti-social group is so sure that
their idea is so important that they are willing to kill everybody who does not
agree, they are of mortal danger to our planet. The Islam of today is
dangerously fundamentalist. Most people do not understand the high degree of
danger the world is exposed to by Islam.
When the practitioners of Islam start cleaning up their own
religion, I will believe that Islam has turned the corner and is reversing its
destructive trend toward pathology.
That is a perfect segue to my next major point. I find
it predictable that Dr Wafa Sultan, a psychiatrist from the Middle
East http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null would
accurately see the symptoms of a sick Islamic religion.
Keep in mind that a diagnosis does not require that the
person be completely sick. When it comes to individual humans, they only
need to be “significantly” dysfunctional to accurately be assigned a diagnostic
code. “The murderer, when he is not a murdering, walks through the meadow
with his daughter and picks flowers for her.” Hitler was kind to his
dogs. What? Am I supposed to believe that Hamas is moral because
they do charity work? As I understand it, Ted Bundy was charming,
socially appropriate, and had many friends.
So, we do not need to decide that all Islam is sick.
We need to determine if Islam is significantly dysfunctional. My
definitive diagnosis is: Islam is significantly dysfunctional to an
extreme degree and is a danger to all mankind.
My next door neighbor who lives in this “up-scale”
neighborhood was stabbed in the stomach and his wife was slashed in the breast
by a person with the same mind set as fundamentalism. “Whatever I want is
more important than you and yours.” How would you respond to a psychotic
invading your bedroom?
I wish I could remember the spiritual teacher’s name who,
after a long sermon on non-violence and peace, was asked how he would respond
to a robber in his home. He responded, “I would beat the crap out of him
and call 911. If that didn’t work I would kill him, if I could.”
Well said! I suggest the same policy toward Islamic
fundamentalism, before it is too late.
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