My last post on religious tolerance had a couple of comments that amounted to, “But Christians are jerks too!” There’s no question that all religions tend to breed intolerance, but I do think that it’s important to keep things in perspective. Randy said that the attitude that I ascribed to Christians as letting people make their own decisions and facing the consequences was “magnanimous” and wondered where those Christians were. Well, you’re probably surrounded by them every day, even in Ithaca. The US is overwhelmingly a Christian nation. People are, in general, pretty reasonable and in day to day interactions questions about divinity and belief just don’t come up that often. Of course the exceptions really stand out. We’ve all had some nutjob trying to cram literature down our throat all in the hope of “saving” us.
It’s basically the same way over here. The vast majority of people leave you alone and some may ask if you are a muslim. I’ve never had a really bad reaction to the news that I am a Christian. I’ve faced some incredulity. One guy asked how I could possibly believe in that, I couldn’t help but think that I take that question much more seriously from agnostics and atheists, Muslims’ beliefs are just as wacky as mine… I have gotten some literature given to me. It was, without exception, dreadful. The stuff I get in the States is pretty bad, but these make an effort to seem in depth and scholarly. It really backfires, if I had any leanings towards Islam, those pamphlets would have driven me away…
Anyway, my experiences here go a long ways towards the “people are people all over the world,” theory, but they don’t prove it. There are some huge differences of course, and my last post on religious freedom was meant to highlight one of them. No serious follower of any religion is happy when people stop believing in it, or turn to something that is considered evil, or just wrong. I have yet to make any casual acquaintances that consider me a “serious” Christian, so maybe I’m exempt:-) My last post on the subject was trying to highlight the difference between any Christians that I can think of and muslims in this part of the world when it comes to apostasy. If a Christian makes a declaration of not believing anymore, or changes to another sect or religion entirely, there may be some personal contact (and family) issues, but nothing that can’t be dealt with. Here (in Yemen, KSA, and probably places like Afghanistan), if someone makes the statement that they are no longer a muslim and/or converts to another religion, people expect that person to be killed.
Islam is practiced differently in many different places, but here, apostasy is a capital crime. It’s funny, in the US both atheists and Christians feel that they are “under attack” from all angles. Each side thinks that the other side is “winning.” Neither really knows what it is like to be “under attack” for religious beliefs. No one in the US fears for their life because of what they believe or what they say about it. People here that become disillusioned with Islam and become atheists or people that convert (I assume that if there’s any conversion going on at all, it is to Christianity) have to stay quiet and keep it hidden from friends and family. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had to keep pretending to be a good muslim, it’s funny what the threat of death can do to a person.
You can say what you want about Christian hypocrites and their intolerance, Lord knows there’s plenty of them around, but they don’t kill people for religion’s sake any more. The US’s report about religious freedom in Yemen was right to criticize Yemen on the inability to convert. Certainly, not all muslims share that opinion, maybe not even all here, but enough do to make conversion a decidedly dangerous proposition. Compared to this part of the world, I do call Christians “magnanimous” and yes, tolerant…