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When you are inside a belief, you can't see it from the outside. We can claim that Muhammad had no direct contact with God, because we say it in the most literal sense, and don't believe in a literal God (I don't, I'm guessing you don't from your posts). Like any religion, though, there are Muslims who do not consider God as literal, but rather as a myth to describe a higher truth they can't define. How would you say that something which created existence exists, for instance? What would existence mean in that sense? On a higher level, the question of a literal God becomes irrelevant--religion is a way to personify abstract and undefinable concepts. Why are we here? Is it better to be good or bad? Is there some reason to be good when being bad gets you so much more? I would answer that question in terms of science--for instance, society is built on a mutual trust and cooperation between all humans, and when that fails, society suffers in a way that harms all individuals. But that's too abstract for many, so the concept of Heaven and Hell, or divine retribution and reward on Earth, is much easier to get across to people. There are Muslims who would agree with this. For them, Muhammad is the personification of their culture, their beliefs, right and wrong. He exists as a myth exists, as some in America claim our flag or our Constitution exist. They defend any violation of the system of beliefs he has given them.
When I say democracy is a myth, I don't mean just that it can be rigged, as in 2000. I mean that the idea that we choose our government, our destiny, is a myth. We don't know who we are voting for. Candidates claim they will do one thing and do another. They create a false front to win a vote then do what they want once the govern. We aren't governed by the people, we are governed by a handful of people we rarely meet, and who don't generally care what we want. They adjust their plans and goals to win our approval in polls and elections, but the adjustments are rarely major adjustments. This is not much different than the way most other governments operate. In any government the leader has to worry about the will of the people. Will they rebel? Will they become less productive? A local governor or duke or whatever who can't make his subjects happy and productive will be replaced. A head of state who can't be productive will be overthrown by someone with more ability--either violently, or by whatever ruling class choses the leader.
Take Iraq. Hussein could not make his nation profitable or the lives of his people comfortable, yet he survived, so this is a seeming contradiction. But Hussein brought a level of stability Iraq had not had before. He kept together several factions by ensuring that none of them gained strength over the other. This was the best they could hope for, and though most people didn't like it, or like Hussein's methods, they did not rebel or overthrow him because no side felt the reward of doing so was worth the risk. Now we have established a "democracy" in Iraq. But the democracy is dominated by the dominant group, and the other groups are oppressed, and don't like the new system, and in order to maintain a semblance of peace the new leaders have to do the same things that the old leaders did. Democracy in itself hasn't changed anything.
Take America. We have been successful from the start because of our resources. In the beginning, only 15% or so of people could vote. Before 1965, a third of the nation was enslaved. Until women's sufferage, half the nation was ineligible to vote no matter what race. Until the 1970s, blacks were effectively prevented from voting. Yet our government has done essentially the same things the whole time. Democracy is a symbolic concept--it means we have an equal standing in our country, and we have some say in how our leaders are chosen, but the beauracracy, the nuts and bolts of government, and even the pool we choose our leaders from is little affected by it. They could be chosen by an aristocracy and we'd have largely the same results. Some would argue they have been chosen by an aristocracy all along.
I'm not saying democracy is meaningless. It involves the citizens in the government, and thus makes the government more quickly responsive to the people, and often with less violence. But it really doesn't give us much that other people haven't had. We may vehemently hate Bush, but what does he really do to us that makes us hate him? He kills people we don't often know, like all leaders. He reduces our level of comfort through bad management (but even in poverty our level of comfort far exceeds that of many places in the world). He really doesn't do much to us, he just runs things poorly. Whether we survive or fall as a nation really doesn't have a lot to do with him, it has more to do with out resources and capital base.
Yet we maintain the myth that our democracy is sacred and that it is the way we control our destinies. "Myth" doesn't mean false. Itis just a story that has been so often told that it's meaning is in the telling and not in reality. Same as religions, same as Muhammad.
I doubt anyone's still reading or even understanding me here. I guess what angers me about the elitist attitude on DU that Muslims have no right to their beliefs is the sheer "American Supremacy" attitude. I grew up in the South with similar arguments about why black people didn't deserve an education, or why their desire to vote was just silly because they weren't smart enough to, and all of that supremacist crap. Now we have the same attitude towards Islam. We had it towards the Native Americans, towards Spain, towards Japan, towards Viet Nam, towards every other group we have decided to attack. It's the attitude that makes war possible. "We know better than those silly little people with those irrational beliefs." Some of the smartest minds that have ever existed believed in Muhammad. We have algebra, we have medicine and science, we have love songs and poetry, we even have Greek and modern philosophy, because people who believed that Muhammad heard the words of God also believed that these intellectual exercises were worthy pursuits. To belittle these great minds because they believe something we don't is the height of arrogance.
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