Cats and quakes

I ran across two stories yesterday that fall squarely into the "You People Do Realize You Have Bigger Problems To Worry About, Right?" department.

In the first, we have a senior Saudi cleric who has issued a fatwa on people taking selfies with cats.  Well, not just with cats.  Also with wolves.  But since cat selfies are way more common than wolf selfies (more's the pity), I can see why he specifically mentioned the cats.

The subject came up because of a question asked at a talk that Sheikh Saleh Bin Fawzan Al-Fawzan was giving, in which someone asked about a "new trend of taking pictures with cats which has been spreading among people who want to be like westerners."  Al-Fazwan was aghast.

"What?" he asked.  "What do you mean, pictures with cats?"

Because that's evidently an ambiguous phrase, or something.  Maybe it has subtleties in Arabic I don't know about.

So the questioner clarified, and after he got over his outrage, Al-Fazwan gave his declaration.  "Taking pictures is prohibited," he said.  "The cats don't matter here."

Which is kind of odd, given that he was being filmed at the time.  But rationality has never been these people's strong suit.

"Taking pictures is prohibited if not for a necessity," Al-Fazwan went on to say.  "Not with cats, not with dogs, not with wolves, not with anything."

Wipe that smirk off your face, young lady.  Allah does not approve of you and Mr. Whiskers.

So alrighty, then.  Now that we've got that settled, let's turn to another thing a prominent Muslim cleric is worrying about, which is: gay sex.

Of course, gay sex seems to be on these people's minds a lot, and also on the minds of their siblings-under-the-skin the Christian evangelicals.  But this time, the cleric in question, Mallam Abass Mahmud of Ghana, has said that the practice is not only prohibited because it's naughty in Allah's sight (although it certainly is that as well), but because it causes...

... earthquakes.

"Allah gets annoyed when males engage in sexual encounter," Mahmud said in an interview, then went on to add, "Such disgusting encounter causes earthquakes."

As an example, he says that this is why Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.  Although as I recall from my reading of Genesis chapter 19, it wasn't an earthquake in that case, but having "fire and brimstone rained down upon them... so that the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace."  But I guess since gays are apparently the most powerful force of nature known, there's no reason why they couldn't also cause a volcanic eruption or something.

On the other hand, if two guys having sex is causing the ground to shake, they must really be enjoying themselves.  I don't know whether to feel scared or jealous.

What crosses my mind with all of this is that there are a few more urgent concerns in the Muslim world than worrying about cat selfies and guys making love.  Human rights, tribalism, poverty, wealth inequity, corruption, terrorism, radical insurgencies, drought.  To name a few.  You have to wonder if focusing their followers on nonsense is simply a way of keeping the hoi polloi from realizing what a horror much of the Middle East has become under the leadership of people like this.

And given the reactions they got -- which, as far as I can tell, were mostly nodding in agreement -- it appears to be working.  So if you go to Saudi Arabia or Ghana, just remember: no kitty selfies or gay sex.  Or, Allah forfend, you and your gay lover having sex then celebrating by taking a photograph of the two of you with your cat.  That'd probably just cause the Earth to explode or fall into the Sun or something.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is pure fun: Arik Kershenbaum's The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens and Ourselves.  Kershenbaum tackles a question that has fascinated me for quite some time; is evolution constrained?  By which I mean, are the patterns you see in most animals on Earth -- aerobic cellular respiration, bilateral symmetry, a central information processing system/brain, sensory organs sensitive to light, sound, and chemicals, and sexual reproduction -- such strong evolutionary drivers that they are likely to be found in alien organisms?

Kershenbaum, who is a zoologist at the University of Cambridge, looks at how our environment (and the changes thereof over geological history) shaped our physiology, and which of those features would likely appear in species on different alien worlds.  In this fantastically entertaining book, he considers what we know about animals on Earth -- including some extremely odd ones -- and uses that to speculate about what we might find when we finally do make contact (or, at the very least, detect signs of life on an exoplanet using our earthbound telescopes).

It's a wonderfully fun read, and if you're fascinated with the idea that we might not be alone in the universe but still think of aliens as the Star Trek-style humans with body paint, rubber noses, and funny accents, this book is for you.  You'll never look at the night sky the same way again.

[Note: if you purchase this book from the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Cats and quakes

I ran across two stories yesterday that fall squarely into the "You People Do Realize You Have Bigger Problems To Worry About, Right?" department.

In the first, we have a senior Saudi cleric who has issued a fatwa on people taking selfies with cats.  Well, not just with cats.  Also with wolves.  But since cat selfies are way more common than wolf selfies (more's the pity), I can see why he specifically mentioned the cats.

The subject came up because of a question asked at a talk that Sheikh Saleh Bin Fawzan Al-Fawzan was giving, in which someone asked about a "new trend of taking pictures with cats which has been spreading among people who want to be like westerners."  Al-Fazwan was aghast.

"What?" he asked.  "What do you mean, pictures with cats?"

Because that's evidently an ambiguous phrase, or something.  Maybe it has subtleties in Arabic I don't know about.

So the questioner clarified, and after he got over his outrage, Al-Fazwan gave his declaration.  "Taking pictures is prohibited," he said.  "The cats don't matter here."

Which is kind of odd, given that he was being filmed at the time.  But rationality has never been these people's strong suit.

"Taking pictures is prohibited if not for a necessity," Al-Fazwan went on to say.  "Not with cats, not with dogs, not with wolves, not with anything."

Wipe that smirk off your face, young lady.  Allah does not approve of you and Mr. Whiskers.

So alrighty, then.  Now that we've got that settled, let's turn to another thing we had a prominent Muslim cleric worrying about, which was: gay sex.

Of course, gay sex seems to be on these people's minds a lot, and also on the minds of their siblings-under-the-skin the Christian evangelicals.  But this time, the cleric in question, Mallam Abass Mahmud of Ghana, has said that the practice is not only prohibited because it's naughty in Allah's sight (although it certainly is that as well), but because it causes...

... earthquakes.

"Allah gets annoyed when males engage in sexual encounter," Mahmud said in an interview, then went on to add, "Such disgusting encounter causes earthquakes."

As an example, he says that this is why Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.  Although as I recall from my reading of Genesis chapter 19, it wasn't an earthquake in that case, but having "fire and brimstone rained down upon them... so that the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace."  But I guess since gays are apparently the most powerful force of nature known, there's no reason why they couldn't also cause a volcanic eruption or something.

On the other hand, if gays having sex is causing the ground to shake, they must really be enjoying themselves.  I don't know whether to feel scared or jealous.

What crosses my mind with all of this is that there are a few more urgent concerns in the Muslim world than worrying about cat selfies and two guys making love.  Human rights, tribalism, poverty, wealth inequity, corruption, terrorism, radical insurgencies, drought.  To name a few.  You have to wonder if focusing their followers on nonsense is simply a way of keeping the hoi polloi from realizing what a horror much of the Middle East has become under the leadership of people like this.

And given the reactions they got -- which, as far as I can tell, was mostly nodding in agreement -- it appears to be working.  So if you go to Saudi Arabia or Ghana, just remember: no kitty selfies or gay sex.  Or, Allah forfend, you and your gay lover having sex then celebrating by taking a photograph of the two of you with your cat.  That'd probably just cause the Earth to explode or fall into the Sun or something.

Allahu akbar, Frosty!

Islam has had some serious problem with its PR in the past couple of weeks, what with the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a series of Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria that left an estimated 2,000 dead, a horrific incident involving a ten-year-old female suicide bomber, and the flogging of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi for "insulting Islam."

So let's do a little thought experiment, here.  You're a prominent Muslim cleric, and you read the litany of bad news.  You're concerned not only about how the rest of the world views your belief system, but how Muslims themselves must feel when they hear about the atrocities being done in the name of their religion.  What do you do?

1. You make a strongly-worded statement repudiating violence in the name of religion.
2. You put pressure on religious and governmental leaders to consider human rights reform.
3. You encourage your followers to donate money to groups that are fighting terrorism.
4. You open a discussion of the passages in the Qu'ran that encourage such behavior.
5. You issue a fatwa against snowmen.

If you picked #5, you understand the leadership of Islam all too well.  Muslim leaders have been far more willing to mess around with prohibitions against random behaviors than to stand up against the horrors perpetrated in Islam's name.  (Some leaders have done so, fortunately; there have been several Islamic groups who have spoken out, especially regarding Charlie Hebdo.)

But in theocratic Saudi Arabia, mostly what we've heard on the topic of human rights, freedom of speech, and eliminating terrorism is: silence.

But woe unto you if you build a snowman.  Saudi cleric Sheikh Mohammed Saleh al-Munajjid said that it was forbidden to build a snowman, "even in fun:"

It is not permitted to make a statue out of snow, even by way of play and fun...  God has given people space to make whatever they want which does not have a soul, including trees, ships, fruits, buildings and so on.

So now snowmen have souls?  What, did this guy think that Frosty the Snowman was a historical documentary?

While some Muslims are shaking their heads about how ridiculous this is, there are a lot who apparently think this is perfectly reasonable.  "May God preserve the scholars, for they enjoy sharp vision and recognize matters that even Satan does not think about," one responder wrote.  "It (building snowmen) is imitating the infidels, it promotes lustiness and eroticism."

My opinion is that if seeing snowmen makes you feel lusty and erotic, you have an entirely different problem, unrelated to matters of religion.

[image courtesy of photographer Thomas Cook and the Creative Commons]

And seriously.  Do they really have that big a snowman problem in Saudi Arabia?  It's no wonder that Satan hasn't thought about it.  Last I looked, Saudi Arabia is basically a big desert.  Prohibiting snowmen in Saudi Arabia is about as reasonable as me, up here in the arctic wasteland of upstate New York, issuing a fatwa against palm trees.

But rationality has little to do with this.  If Islamic leaders keep tightening the grip on every move their followers make, even in realms that have little to do with reality, it'll obviate them of the need to focus on the real issues.  It reinforces the message that Allah is watching, that he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows when you've been bad or good, so be good or you get 1,000 lashes on your bare back.

Even if it does convince most of the rest of the world that the worldview is, at its basis, completely insane.

Islam and the fatwa against Mars One

Sometimes I run into a story that infuriates the absolute hell out of me.

Most of the time, I can maintain a sense of perspective about things, even if they frustrate me.  Despite my often strongly-worded missives here on Skeptophilia about the illogic of certain claims, very little of it gets me truly angry.

Yesterday, though, I ran into a story at The Register that raised my blood pressure into the "incipient aneurysm" zone.  The subject of it was a fatwa issued by group of Muslim clerics -- preventing observant Muslims from participating in the Mars One mission.

[image of the Martian surface courtesy of NASA and the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, on first glance, this isn't surprising.  Traditional Islam isn't known for its progressive stance with respect to science.  (Contrast that to Islam in the Middle Ages -- when they were the shining lights of reason and rationalism and experimental inquiry.)  But it becomes more interesting -- and infinitely more absurd -- when you find out why the fatwa was issued.

"Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life, and that can never be justified in Islam," read part of a statement from a committee appointed by the General Authority for Islamic Affairs and Endowment, as reported in The Khaleej Times.  "There is a possibility that an individual who travels to planet Mars may not be able to remain alive there, and is more vulnerable to death."

Dr. Farooq Hamada, president of the GAIAE, went on to say, "Protecting life against all possible dangers and keeping it safe is an issue agreed upon by all religions and is clearly stipulated in verse 4/29 of the Holy Qu'ran: Do not kill yourselves or one another."

Now wait just a second, here.  Seriously?  You're concerned about observant Muslims joining what could turn out to be a suicide mission, and so your response is to issue a fatwa against the Mars One mission?

How about issuing a fatwa against suicide bombers?  Or the Muslims who are right now slaughtering each other in Syria?  Or "honor killings?"  What about the fact that seven of the top ten countries, in terms of numbers of executions, are Yemen, Iran, Syria, Libya, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia, and in those countries the execution methods include public hanging, beheading, and stoning?  The Muslim world has a few bigger problems at the moment than the chance that some observant Muslim might end up on a mission that could end with the deaths of the participants.

Oh, but wait!  Coming together, as a unified voice, against any of that other stuff would be controversial.  That would require the hidebound, patriarchal, tribal-minded leadership to reconsider some of what their devout adherents are actually doing.  It might even require them to say, "You know that violent, brutal, inhumane shit that we've accepted for all of these years?  That stuff is wrong.  It's always been wrong, but we've been too cowardly to say it.  So you people need to knock it off."

To be fair, there was a fatwa issued against terrorism, back in 2010.  It was hailed as a landmark by press in the west -- and then promptly forgotten.  Ever heard a leader of any Muslim country mention it?  Have you noticed a decrease in violence in the Middle East in the last four years?

Didn't think so.

It's possible that if the leaders of all of the Muslim countries -- and that includes the religious leaders, since politics and religion in most Muslim countries are so entangled as to be inseparable -- said, with one voice, that killing others would condemn the killer to hell, that some of it would stop.  At least, perhaps, it might slow down the killings that are motivated by Islam itself, the ones that are acts of violence committed in the name of some twisted notion of sanctity and purity and holiness, where all too often the victims are random strangers who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But that's not going to happen.  It's much easier to go around issuing fatwas against distant eventualities (Mars One, even if it succeeds, isn't going to depart for the Red Planet until 2023) than it is to change present evils that have been accepted without question by the leadership up to this point.  It's much easier to give lip service to "protecting life against all dangers" than it is to demand that the people here and now who are raping and murdering cease and desist.

You have to wonder, don't you, what would happen if all the religious leaders of the world finally stood up for human rights?  I'm no apologist for the Catholic Church, but I have to admit that Pope Francis has made some real strides in that direction.  But the others?  Not so much.  Most of them are too busy worrying about who is having sex with whom to deal with the issues of how their followers are infringing on the basic rights of their fellow humans.  And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the Muslim leaders are about the worst offenders in this regard.

I don't know how much this blog gets read in Muslim countries.  Not much, is my guess.  But you never know.  And so I'll issue this challenge: if you really claim to follow the Qu'ran, then the verse that Dr. Hamada quoted should be taken at its face value.  Your leaders need to demand, now, that all of the murders and suicide bombings and honor killings and public executions stop.  All along, they have tacitly supported a worldview that allows people to claim that they are observant Muslims, approved by Allah, and are headed to heaven, while simultaneously hurting or killing others (and sometimes themselves).

Maybe you could change that.  Turn your religion into a force for good.  Leave aside useless gestures like objecting to missions to Mars, and deal with the problems that some of your followers are causing here and now.

To do any less is pure hypocrisy.