Everyday Ethics: 11 JAN 15: Islam and the West - can we live with difference?
‘We have to be proactive about this. It's no good just saying, you know, Islam is, in general, a religion of peace or something like that. We have to be discriminating, we have to work out. And the problem is that while I agree, there are hopeful signs that the overwhelming tendency is towards forms of Islam that are kind of less mystical, there's a more voluntary stick less philosophical, Wahhabism, and so on. And, you know, the more promising traditions of Islam that we can really enter debate with are much more the Shiite traditions, the more mystical traditions within Sunni Islam, especially if they're sort of wrapped apart from politics, that are often more associated with specifically religious non legal grouping, there's a then more like a church formation. And you know, the whole problem about Islam is in a sense that unlike Judaism, it's not a self imposed divine law for one group. Nor is it a sense of a religion, beyond law and looking towards reconciliation, like Christianity, but it is a religion of universal law, is inherently problematic in the modern world, and it needs to adapt, and it needs to draw on the more mystical interpretation of Islam that can, frankly, approximate it more to Christianity and Judaism.’
‘Ali, what's your view on this? Is this possible? Can Islam change in this way to be more of a synthetic with with Christianity and Judaism?’
‘I think there is a technological mistake that we are doing at the moment. It seems that there is a call for ethnic cleansing at the moment, and we have to be really alerted from that. That is the, that is-’
‘I don't actually think Ali that anybody is asking for Muslims to be driven into the sea. But I think we can ask, Where does this desire for a caliphate, for for a fundamentalist view come from? Because, you know, in the in the last century, and in the early part of this century, there is a sense of of Muslims living peacefully within one Empire or another and not particularly wanting to have a jihad against the West, where has all this come from?’
‘Take a country like Ireland, for example, here, like the existence of Muslims in Ireland, it's back to the early 50s. Yeah. And please mention one incident that happened in Ireland... You can apply your, live up to the values of your Islam, in a society like Ireland, and there are no problems whatsoever. I think it is a mutual responsibility. Muslims and non Muslims should cooperate, to create the right atmosphere for peace, and harmony.’...
[On Ched Evans] 'I know that this is not a popular view, with particular kind of feminist, but there are different kinds of rape. And I do think that man believes he's innocent because he believes it was consensual sex. She was drunk, they seem to all have been drunk, it’s a most unsavory incident, extremely unsavory. He ended up getting five years, which seems to me to be actually excessive. And even if he were guilty. He can't apologize in the normal way, because he’s wants to appeal, he can't do that. So he's in a really tricky position. All he can do, he's not a very talented person in any regard except football. Why can't he be allowed to play football? We're supposed to be in favor of rehabilitation, and encouraging people to go back to a normal life. I think it's mob rule, I think it is utterly mob rule. And I noticed that a lot of the people going after him are the sort of people who think that Julian Assange is a hero'...
‘The culture of football… is disgusting. The event was disgusting. I just don't like seeing scapegoats. And I think that's what we've got. Now the victim has suffered in this one, particularly because having one particular set of a mob having gone after, having gone after Evans, another mob proceeds to go after his victim. The whole thing is that social media at its absolute worst… it absolutely appalls me that people are giving into this. It appalls me that people who want to give him a job and are saying, no, we won't, because we've been threatened on Twitter with having our daughters raped. So people who are, who are saying that Evans shouldn't be allowed to play football, are saying they’re so much against rape, that they're going to threaten people with raping their daughters, if they give the fellow a job. What sort of a world are we in when we actually give way to that?’…
‘The scapegoat has a very strong moral provenance. And the idea of the society taking responsibility for the evils within it, by making an example of somebody. And football does have evils within it, which it must associate itself from, and if it falls to Chad Evans to be the scapegoat, by which responsible people in football say no, we have a sexual culture, which is appalling and what we need to get rid of, then so be it he is that scapegoat, he will have done us all a fine service if he bows his head and accepts that responsibility.’
Amazingly the one saying to lynch Evans was a man and the one against threatening his prospective employers was a woman
Since Evans got acquitted, what does that say about all the moral posturing?