End of Faith

While reading Sam Harris’ “End of Faith” there were several things that I found quite surprising. Primarily his direct attack towards Islam and Muslims in general was very disturbing and I guess even unwanted to a certain extent. His argument behind Islam being such a threatening religion was not convincing at all, at least to me, and he did not seem to back up any of his arguments with substantial proof and reasoning.
In the very beginning of this chapter, he describes the great contributions that Islamic scholars have made in the past to science and math. Then rather quickly he moves on to discussing how those “very few” good deeds do not measure up to the plenty other bad ones that Islam alone has contributed over the last few decades. He provides five pages worth of quotations from the Koran, very carefully selected out, to portray what a violent and threatening religion it is. According to me, he has definitely taken the words in Koran for its literal meaning and has not analyzed them metaphorically. There seems to be nothing allegorical about the way he has interpreted them. These five pages worth of quotations do not depict the whole teachings of the Koran and therefore it definitely seems rather unfair that they were used to generalize about Islam and Muslims because Islam is a religion that highly encourages peace. He also discussed how the division of Muslims within Islam as Sunnis and Shias pose to be a threat to the Western world! I wonder why and how? Finally, I would like to make a note about the issue on suicide bombings. It seems rather irrational to judge the strength of belief of all Muslims by those who execute the suicide bombings. As in every other religion, Islam also has its fair share of extremists and their actions should not reflect the belief of the rest of the Muslim population.
Tying in this with all of our previous readings it makes me think if religion can be used as a “tool box” to explain historical and religious changes that have occurred over the years. Do we use religion to explain only those things that we cannot find a scientific reasoning for or those situations, which has brought upon us misery and sorrow as we saw in Lamentations? Religious interpretations change as times change so that we can understand and apply them to suit our needs. They undergo social and technological changes making religion more of a malleable form that takes different shapes depending on what era it is in.