Category : BOOK REVIEWS

“Political parties and interest groups strive to make their concerns become current triggers of your moral modules. To get your vote, your money, or your time, they must activate at least one of your moral foundations. “

The Righteous Mind; Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

“Political parties and interest groups strive to make their concerns become current triggers of your moral modules. To get your vote, your money, or your time, they must activate at least one of your moral foundations. “

I spent a lot of time thinking about the aforementioned paragraph when I first came across it.

Right-wing politics about Muslim women in India has been of “Inventing Victims.”
Are Muslim women in reality victims in their community at the hands of Muslim men? How have political parties been able to successfully create this narrative?

Let’s examine the author’s experiment to better comprehend the answers to these questions. He carefully removed all conceivable harm to other people. However, 38 per cent of the 1,620 times that people who heard a harmless-offensive story claimed that somebody was harmed.

The case of the “Inventing Victims.”

Here, I am drawing a parallel with the case of “Triple Talaq.” The ruling party purposefully told a story about married Muslim women, that they were being abandoned by their husbands simply by uttering the word “Talaq” three times, thus ending the marriage immediately, as if this were a widespread occurrence among Muslims, affecting every single Muslim family.

of protests from Muslim women opposing the bill, the government was successful in passing the Triple Talaq Bill, also known as the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2019, as a law on July 30, 2019.

The book raised two questions, “Is inventing victims by the people an example of “Informational Assumption” at the hands of political leaders? Do people condemn the actions because they foresee harm, or is it the reverse process—do people invent these harms because they have already condemned the actions?”

The author writes, “Most of these supposed harms were post-hoc fabrications. People usually condemned the actions very quickly—they didn’t seem to need much time to decide what they thought. But it often took them a while to come up with a victim, and they usually offered those victims up half-heartedly and almost apologetically. “

The author further writes, “Even when subjects recognised that their victim claims were bogus, they kept searching for another victim. They said things like, “I know it’s wrong, but I just can’t think of a reason why.” They seemed to be morally dumbfounded—rendered speechless by their inability to explain verbally what they knew intuitively. These subjects were reasoning. They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it was not reasoning in search of the truth; it was reasoning in support of their emotional reaction. “

This book provides a solution to the topic of why, if Muslim women reject victimhood politics, people do not want to listen to them or believe them.

The book answers many more such queries.

The author of the book takes his readers on a journey through human nature and history from the perspective of moral psychology.

The author chose the title of the book, The Righteous Mind, to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it is also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgemental. He adds that an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition.

He says, “Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings—but no other animals—to produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of kinship. But at the same time, our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife. Some degree of conflict among groups may even be necessary for the health and development of any society. “

This book serves as a helpful reminder for Muslims that their morality is sound. Anything that lowers our thoughts and corrodes the purity of our hearts is not permitted.

Allah commands us to look for the truth before making assumptions about people.

Islam’s two scales of balance are the Fardh and the Sunnah. We refrain from committing sins by being afraid of Allah, seeking His guidance, and remembering Allah by acting righteously toward ourselves and others for the sake of love for the Almighty. Our moral compass is located in the middle of these two balance scales. Our predominance is either Fardh or Sunnah.

After finishing the book, I concluded that we shouldn’t wrestle with moral quandaries. Allah expects us to sincerely repent for every sin we commit; this implies we should not indulge in guilt-tripping. We are required to abide by a list of dos and don’ts already.

We make daily decisions by keeping in mind what will help us and what will harm us or not be in our best interests. This serves as the cornerstone of our morals.

When liberals question the morality of Islam, in particular, and of Muslims in general, this book rejects the liberal narrative. The author demonstrates that there is no one real morality that applies to all individuals, societies, or eras—especially when that morality is based on a single moral foundation.

Three sections make up the book. One important moral psychology premise is presented in each section. Four sub-topics have been created from those guiding concepts. Experiments and instances of how people have made moral decisions support each sub-topic.

The book aims to demonstrate that moral psychology is the ladder to understanding politics and religion.

Human civilizations, according to the author, are multifaceted, with varying requirements and difficulties. The author argued that religion had a significant impact on evolutionary history and that human religious beliefs and behaviours coevolved to form ever-larger moral societies. The moral sphere differs between civilizations.
Instead of offering a remedy, the author only displays the moral psychology matrix.

Despite data suggesting that the case of Triple Talaq is significantly negligible and the reality of protests from Muslim women opposing the bill, the government was successful in passing the Triple Talaq Bill, also known as the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2019, as a law on July 30, 2019.

The book raised two questions, “Is inventing victims by the people an example of “Informational Assumption” at the hands of political leaders? Do people condemn the actions because they foresee harm, or is it the reverse process—do people invent these harms because they have already condemned the actions?”

The author writes, “Most of these supposed harms were post-hoc fabrications. People usually condemned the actions very quickly—they didn’t seem to need much time to decide what they thought. But it often took them a while to come up with a victim, and they usually offered those victims up half-heartedly and almost apologetically. “

The author further writes, “Even when subjects recognised that their victim claims were bogus, they kept searching for another victim. They said things like, “I know it’s wrong, but I just can’t think of a reason why.” They seemed to be morally dumbfounded—rendered speechless by their inability to explain verbally what they knew intuitively. These subjects were reasoning. They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it was not reasoning in search of the truth; it was reasoning in support of their emotional reaction. “

This book provides a solution to the topic of why, if Muslim women reject victimhood politics, people do not want to listen to them or believe them.

The book answers many more such queries.

The author of the book takes his readers on a journey through human nature and history from the perspective of moral psychology.

The author chose the title of the book, The Righteous Mind, to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it is also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgemental. He adds that an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition.

He says, “Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings—but no other animals—to produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of kinship. But at the same time, our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife. Some degree of conflict among groups may even be necessary for the health and development of any society. “

This book serves as a helpful reminder for Muslims that their morality is sound. Anything that lowers our thoughts and corrodes the purity of our hearts is not permitted.

Allah commands us to look for the truth before making assumptions about people.

Islam’s two scales of balance are the Fardh and the Sunnah. We refrain from committing sins by being afraid of Allah, seeking His guidance, and remembering Allah by acting righteously toward ourselves and others for the sake of love for the Almighty. Our moral compass is located in the middle of these two balance scales. Our predominance is either Fardh or Sunnah.

After finishing the book, I concluded that we shouldn’t wrestle with moral quandaries. Allah expects us to sincerely repent for every sin we commit; this implies we should not indulge in guilt-tripping. We are required to abide by a list of dos and don’ts already.

We make daily decisions by keeping in mind what will help us and what will harm us or not be in our best interests. This serves as the cornerstone of our morals.

When liberals question the morality of Islam, in particular, and of Muslims in general, this book rejects the liberal narrative. The author demonstrates that there is no one real morality that applies to all individuals, societies, or eras—especially when that morality is based on a single moral foundation.

Three sections make up the book. One important moral psychology premise is presented in each section. Four sub-topics have been created from those guiding concepts. Experiments and instances of how people have made moral decisions support each sub-topic.

The book aims to demonstrate that moral psychology is the ladder to understanding politics and religion.

Human civilizations, according to the author, are multifaceted, with varying requirements and difficulties. The author argued that religion had a significant impact on evolutionary history and that human religious beliefs and behaviours coevolved to form ever-larger moral societies. The moral sphere differs between civilizations.
Instead of offering a remedy, the author only displays the moral psychology matrix.

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