I knew the guy lived in a cave yet used satellite phones, but I figured that both were just necessities in his line of work. I didn’t know there was a seemingly arbitrary line between acceptable and unacceptable technologies. From Wikipedia:
In keeping with Wahhabi beliefs, bin Laden opposes music on religious grounds, and his attitude towards technology is mixed. He is interested in “earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants” on the one hand, but rejects “chilled water” on the other.
Is it just me or is Wikipedia slightly mocking him with the absurdity of this juxtaposition?
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Wednesday ~ November 3rd, 2010 at 8:12 am
TequilaKid
The predominant schools of thought in Islam reject the notion that ethics are intuitively grasped. Instead there is a long catalogue of arbitrary do’s and don’ts derived from the sacred scribble.
Wednesday ~ November 3rd, 2010 at 8:32 am
TequilaKid
This is because there are no overarching ethical principles. Most notably the behaviour enjoined toward members of your ingroup is often the contrary of that enjoined toward those of your your outgroup. Islam is an “us versus them” religion. There is a saying in Arabic “Al wilaa wa al barraa” that means “loyalty [among ourselves] and enmity [to outsiders]“. Mohammed regularly instructed his followers to use deceit and treachery without compunction against outsiders. Fortunately most Moslems haven’t read the Koran and are fairly decent people.
Wednesday ~ November 3rd, 2010 at 9:08 am
Mike
So what you’re saying TequilaKid is that Islam is like Christianity up to about the 14th or 15th century?
Wednesday ~ November 3rd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
TequilaKid
No, I am saying nothing of the sort. Christianity certainly has a checkered history, but its founder did not tell his followers to lie, rape, kill, enslave, etc. On the other hand the founder of Islam did all those things and more. I can dish up some pretty spicy anecdotes about Mohammed, all perfectly authenticated by Islamic scholars.
Wednesday ~ November 3rd, 2010 at 11:11 am
sardonic_sob
Obviously you have not interacted much with the Amish.
On the whole, their entry into the 20th century seems to be snowballing, but they have had similarly torturous rules about what it was and was not okay to have/use (not the same thing: they have been able to use telephones for a long time, but not have them in their homes) for much of the modern era. It’s certainly not unique to bin Laden or fundamentalist Muslims.
Even Mennonites and primitive Apostolics (two groups found in my home area and among which I have various relatives) have unofficial rules on this kind of thing. When I was in my early teens, my grandfather (not a religious man) got a television so he could watch basketball games (up until then, in the mid 1980′s, he still only listened to the radio.) My grandmother would tell me, every time I went to church with her, not to mention that my grandfather and I had been watching television the night before.
Wednesday ~ November 3rd, 2010 at 4:04 pm
jazzbumpa
I don’t know if WikiP is mocking deliberately. With such an incoherent grab bag of don’ts, almost any juxtaposition might look like a mockery.
A religious friend of mine, in one of those odd moments of lucid candor, informed me that religions are “by their nature, exclusive.” If you’ve ever been to a Southern Baptist service, you’ll know what I mean.
But this is true, I believe, only of monotheistic religions. Monotheism inherently and necessarily discounts the validity of any other religious or spiritual experience. OTOH, the pagan Romans, frex, were quite accepting of other religious concepts.
Mike actually has a pretty good point. Islam is 600 or 700 years younger than Chrisitianity, and that far behind, in some ways. Perhaps you can’t find explicit exhortations to lie, cheat, steal from, and murder the infidel in Christian scripture, but those things certainly have been tolerated and (officially at times) encouraged, from the Albigensian heresy, through the Inquisition, European ghettos and Krystallnacht, right up to murdering of gays and physicians here at home, today.
OTOH, as Hatmann points out, culture precedes religion. The values – or lack thereof – get institutionalized in scripture.
Or in some other way justified in the minds of the hateful.
JzB a reformed evangelical Druid
Wednesday ~ November 3rd, 2010 at 4:05 pm
jazzbumpa
Not Hatmann. Thom Hartmann.
Wednesday ~ November 3rd, 2010 at 5:07 pm
IVV
Chilled water doesn’t strike me as that strange, actually. Lots of people around the world think that it’s bad for you. I’ve seen Chinese stories where spirits come to benefit people that prevent others from drinking chilled water too quickly, to Europeans who are convinced that ice water causes lots of GI problems and throws your system out of balance.
Of course, ice-eating Americans prove this wrong on a daily basis, but the cultural fear of chilled water is rather prevalent.