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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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askchapo
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Sure, so the question presented here is one about “Islam.”
I’m not a religious person, and I imagine you are not either (considering you use this website, I imagine you are a materialist). So, as nonreligious people, I think we should have no issue saying is that there is fundamental “truth” as to what “Islam” is out there in the world. Rather, what the concept/religion of Islam is just what its followers generally believe it to be. Like most concepts, there probably aren’t many super hard-and-fast necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather there is a family resemblance of concepts that exist in the minds of its followers, with some ideas being more core (i.e. believed to be part of the concept by more people) and some more fringe.
So, answering the question of whether Islam is homophobic (rather than was or has been historically) is just a matter of determining what beliefs/values with respect to homosexuality its followers attribute to it. I imagine Mahmoud would attribute his homophobia to the religion.
As you suggest, it could very well be the case that the Muslims who are homophobic have come to those beliefs due to their material conditions of their place of birth rather than the prevailing religion in the region. But then, insofar as such homophobic people consider themselves Muslims, and attribute such beliefs to being a value of such Islam, then Islam becomes/is homophobic.
Your response to me seems more interested in the question of whether Islam “causes” people to be homophobic. But that’s a distinct question from whether Islam is homophobic.
Separately, if you want to argue that Islam is only homophobic if it “causes” people to be homophobic, then I don’t see why it has to be “the more probable cause” for a person’s homophobia in order to be homophobic. Surely there can be many different causes for why some particular person might be homophobic? If the material conditions of their place of birth is the driving cause for their homophobia, but a religion came in with the assist, (that is, it is not the “most probable cause”) I see no reason to say that such religion is not homophobic.
There's a few religious people on the website, I don't know why you would imagine anything specific.
There are still fundamental truths about dogmas that can be found. If we are going to imagine here, as a non-muslim baby leftist, I can't imagine peaceful fascist ideologies, while I can imagine non homophobic Islam.
The question of what something is, unless specified otherwise, always includes was and will be. Even if you could demonstrate that Islam is currently homophobic, (and I don't think you were that specific in your original statement) as a whole it seems to be an unjust representation. Doubly so because it's a faith, and voluntarily or not ends up being a proxy for the individuals that hold it.
Well the reason why I imagine you to be non-religious is because thats a prerequisite for the argument I intended to (and did) give. A (Christian or Muslim) religious person would disagree with my starting premise that there is no truth about a religion out there in the world. And indeed, for a religious person, the question of whether some religion X is Y may very well be a theological question, where sufficient study or faith or practice reveals the truth. This is not the sort of discussion I was interested in having.
I can certainly agree that there may be some core components to a dogma concept such that we would cease to call it that concept without it. And I certainly don’t believe homophobia to be a core concept of the Islamic dogma. (Core concepts would be fairly limited here, like that there is only one God, and Mohammad is the prophet of that God).
Hmm, I’m not sure that’s correct. But in any event, the way I read the OP’s question, with its reference to post 9/11 Islamophobic claims and the veracity of them seems to be very much a question of how Islam is currently and has been for the past 20 years. Questions of historical Islam and some hypothetical future Islam don’t seem to me to be what’s targeted here.