There was a rather nationalist (if not racist) joke making the rounds a while back, about an Arab who visits the US and sees an episode of the original Star Trek series. He notes to his American hosts that many different races and nationalities are represented: Russian, Japanese, African, Scottish, even races completely alien to Earth, and wonders why there are no Arabs on the show. The punchline is when an American says, “because it’s the future.”
Fortunately, it turns out that at least some Islamic countries are not so inflexible. A story in The Register says that Malaysia “has had Islamic scholars working on the problem for a year, and have come up with a set of guidlelines [sic] to help their astronaut to meet his religious obligations when he arrives at the International Space Station later this year.”
Maybe the Arabian crewmembers of the original Enterprise just weren’t on the bridge that day.
In spite of my lack of sympathy for Islam, especially the fundamentalist variety, I don’t particularly find that odd. observant Jews have particular needs concerning life in space that have been addressed by religious authorities. (How to determine when’s the Sabbath and prayer times for example) It shows that religion’s a living concern when it addresses itself to current needs… Though, again, not a big fan of Islam.
I don’t care for the “kill all the infidels” variety, which has a lot of overlap with Islamic fundamentalists (and, with slightly different terminology, some Christian fundamentalists as well). But most followers of Islam, like most Christians, Jews, and other groups, are of the live-and-let-live variety. In fact, as I understand it, the Koran specifically includes injunctions to respect other religions, and tolerates and allows for “protected peoples” (dhimmi)… though as with Christians and the Bible, a significant minority of Muslims don’t seem to pay attention to the Koran very closely, preferring to listen to self-proclaimed imams who preach their own, sometimes radically different, brand of Islam.
Dhimmi in practice is “seperate but equal”, and we know how well that works. I know a Jewish fellow from Iran who’s experienced that first-hand. Other than that I’d agree with you that most Muslims are decent people. In fact our halachic decisors have always classified them as non-idolatrous, due to their true monotheism and escewing of idol worship. Also, not all Muslims are fundamentalists – there was a huge pro-secularist demonstration in Turkey recently.