I have heard discussions of Muhammad's wives, the status of women, and
various acts of intolerance committed by Muslims. However, in my
mind, the biggest difference between Islam and most other religions is
that Islam seeks to control society at all levels.
No I don't have a prescient news article to quote on this subject, but
it is becoming increasingly apparent that for me at least, this is the
heart of the matter. After all, I don't really seem to be bothered by
Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and so forth. These societies are not
controlled by religion at all levels.
In fact, there do seem to be some benefits to having religion
controlling everything. Assuredly there are less children raised in
broken families and even less crime, as some people on this forum have
astutely pointed out.
One question I have is, can Islamic society really evolve? Of course
this is assuming that I am correct that religion does really control
Islamic society at all levels. But if it does, it really calls to
question how much such a society can change. There is, as I
understand, a lack of social scientists in most Arab countries. I
also see a lot of Muslims looking fondly at the past instead of
looking forward to the future. Is this just because their past was
better, or is there a deeper problem here? Islam does a pretty good
job of setting up fair rules, but the problem doesn't seem to be so
much the justness of the rules but rather their multiplicity. The non-
Islamic world seems to follow its own intuition about the way that
society should go far more frequently than Muslims do.
Regards,
Matt
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