It even makes people hold extremist views about animals.
But what your viewpoints illustrate (unless of course you are being ironic, which I really doubt) is this: some Muslims need to resort to trying to "prove" that pork is "scientifically shown" to be unsafe, even though 1) it isn't and 2) millions upon millions eat it every day without any ill-effects, so CLEARLY IT IS NOT.
Rather than just follow a religious instruction, their fanaticism and fundamentalism needs to show the world "proof" that their 7th century religion in fact is literally centuries beyond its time. By needing to prove their religion as though it were a science, they move from being followers of a faith to proponents of an alternative, higher discourse of scientific knowledge. In a sense it is like trying to prove that Islam has more validity than science - wow, this really is fundamentalism - and that every aspect of the Koran which is not true, has simply 'not come true - yet'.
The Jews, on the other hand, are so much more pragmatic : they simply don't eat pork because it's "instruction from God", not because they're on a mission to show the world how they are the Only True Religion.
They, and others like them, understand that there is context which influences religious teaching, dogma and ritual - not that every instruction in the religion is based on some scientific precept which simply has yet to be discovered. This kind of Islamic insistence on 'proving' things which aren't true but which are written in the Koran really questions the credibility of Muslim scientists, harms the religion's claims to be one which seeks knowledge and truth.
It also shows how utterly unable its followers are to place religion into a context - to see that pork could be banned for sensible, practical reasons related to the time, rather than metaphysical and eschatalogical ones for all times and all places, even the decadent generation of Veterinary Science, Commercial Agriculture and Refrigeration. As we know, both chicken and beef both have illness associated with them, but pork is by far the most problematic in 40 degrees of heat. In addition, Muhammad prohibited pork as a way of converting Jews to Islam living in Medina (I believe it was) who were obviously following the same prohibition.
The equivalent would be the fact that Christians eat shellfish despite being told in the Old Testament not to. Imagine how stupid they would sound if they said "shellfish have been scientifically shown to pick up toxins from the sea and that's why God forbade them - he knew what he was doing." This is really a rather primitive and, frankly, stupid thing to say; (a far more nuanced explanation is that the shellfish thing is part of the Mosaic code which was a specific set of cultural impurities but not held applicable to outsiders.)
See, that's the trouble with religion.
It even makes people hold extremist views about animals.
But what your viewpoints illustrate (unless of course you are being ironic, which I really doubt) is this: some Muslims need to resort to trying to "prove" that pork is "scientifically shown" to be unsafe, even though 1) it isn't and 2) millions upon millions eat it every day without any ill-effects, so CLEARLY IT IS NOT.
Rather than just follow a religious instruction, their fanaticism and fundamentalism needs to show the world "proof" that their 7th century religion in fact is literally centuries beyond its time. By needing to prove their religion as though it were a science, they move from being followers of a faith to proponents of an alternative, higher discourse of scientific knowledge. In a sense it is like trying to prove that Islam has more validity than science - wow, this really is fundamentalism - and that every aspect of the Koran which is not true, has simply 'not come true - yet'.
The Jews, on the other hand, are so much more pragmatic : they simply don't eat pork because it's "instruction from God", not because they're on a mission to show the world how they are the Only True Religion.
They, and others like them, understand that there is context which influences religious teaching, dogma and ritual - not that every instruction in the religion is based on some scientific precept which simply has yet to be discovered. This kind of Islamic insistence on 'proving' things which aren't true but which are written in the Koran really questions the credibility of Muslim scientists, harms the religion's claims to be one which seeks knowledge and truth.
It also shows how utterly unable its followers are to place religion into a context - to see that pork could be banned for sensible, practical reasons related to the time, rather than metaphysical and eschatalogical ones for all times and all places, even the decadent generation of Veterinary Science, Commercial Agriculture and Refrigeration. As we know, both chicken and beef both have illness associated with them, but pork is by far the most problematic in 40 degrees of heat. In addition, Muhammad prohibited pork as a way of converting Jews to Islam living in Medina (I believe it was) who were obviously following the same prohibition.
The equivalent would be the fact that Christians eat shellfish despite being told in the Old Testament not to. Imagine how stupid they would sound if they said "shellfish have been scientifically shown to pick up toxins from the sea and that's why God forbade them - he knew what he was doing." This is really a rather primitive and, frankly, stupid thing to say; (a far more nuanced explanation is that the shellfish thing is part of the Mosaic code which was a specific set of cultural impurities but not held applicable to outsiders.)