On Tuesday night I saw a local Imam (Muslim congregational leader) give a short presentation on the basic doctrines and beliefs of Islam followed by a question and answer session. 

Among the questions he addressed a few involved issues of morality. For example, the Qu’ran does not condemn slavery and in the Sahih al-Bukhari Mohammad marries a 6 year old girl. The Imam gave the following explanation: Basically, you have to take into account the historical context of the time and the fact that slavery was generally practiced and considered okay, while marrying off girls at young ages was acceptable.

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Okay. I certainly do not dispute that. However, the Qu’ran is supposed to be the absolute perfect word of God and Mohammad a moral exemplar (after all, he was in direct communication with God). A cultural contextual explanation makes sense if one considers religions, including Islam, as being man made. After all, the people who helped create and shape the religion cannot be expected to absolutely escape the context of their time. If this is the case, then one should expect the morality of the Qu’ran and other holy books to be relative to their time and place. No big revelation there.

However, the perfect Creator of the Universe is not bound by such constraints. All that it would have taken was a single line in the Qu’ran that stated unambiguously that “Slavery is wrong.” Period. Muslims of the day would have had no choice but to submit to this commandment (presumably, the all powerful and all wise Creator of the Universe could have at least requested at a far earlier date in human history that people cannot own slaves). As a friend of mine at the meeting said to me, the Imam seems to be saying that God only legislates certain moral principles when it is socially expedient.

What about Mohammad marrying a six year old and consumating his marriage when the girl was nine? By all standards today, that is immoral. Marrying a pre-pubescent girl was probably even pushing it in that day. Mohammad was, supposedly, God’s final prophet. Even if God did not explicitly order this marriage He certainly permitted it, thereby implicitly sanctioning it. Again, why would the all powerful and all wise  creator of the universe give in to social pressures or even embrace social practices that even our humble selves today can clearly recognize as morally repungent? It is too absurd to even consider.

The question of the opression of women in certain Muslim countries was also raised. The Imam gave a similar answer. He said that this behavior is part of that particular culture and does not come from Islam iteself.

Right! But why is it a part of that particular culture? Isn’t Islam itself an integral part of that particular culture? Why don’t I hear these people justifying their brutal oppression of women as “cultural” rather than explicitly religious? These ideas do not come from a vague notion of ‘culture’ they come from their particular interpretation of Islam and they have no qualms with saying as much.

That’s about as much as I can take for now.