Religions should be judged by their best products rather than their worst

Evidence

The Mahatma says that the standards I have applied to test Hindus and Hinduism are too severe, and that judged by those standards every known living faith will probably fail. The complaint that my standards are high may be true. But the question is not whether they are high or whether they are low. The question is whether they are the right standards to apply. A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning, if religion is held to be a necessary good for the well-being of the people. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1264 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

It followed from this that Islam, as defined by its classical texts, was the key lens through which Muslim-majority societies could be understood. If women were oppressed it was because of the teachings of the Koran; if Muslims supposedly lacked an entrepreneurial spirit it was due to “Islamic tradition”; if modernization was rejected, again the Koran was to blame. In short, a whole host of characteristics associated with the West but allegedly absent from the “Muslim world” could be explained by recourse to religious texts and the mentalities they supposedly created. In this book, the term “Muslim world” has been put in quotation marks precisely to challenge the notion that Islam is the single most important factor in defining the people who live in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, or that there is a single undifferentiated entity called the “Muslim world.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 123 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Religions deliberately value saints who started as great sinners — , A Year of World Stories, 8999; Religions should be judged by their survival value to their nations; Real change requires discarding rather than reforming the old religion (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Religions must be judged by social standards based on social ethics #corroborates (0.60) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1264
• A religion’s failure by demanding standards offers no comfort to its defenders #qualifies (0.40)
• Attributing every social characteristic to religious texts erases contextual factors #qualifies (0.40) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 123