Who Gets to Define the Faith of 1.5 Billion People?

Loading

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? The salafi fundamentalists? Sufi Islam? Farrakhan and The Nation of Islam? Baha’ism? Sunni or Shi’a? The Ayatollahs who wish to bring about the end time and reign in the 2nd coming of the 12th Imam? Modern “reformers” like Sayyid Qutb and Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the inspiration for al Qaeda and modern Islamic fundamentalism? What gives them the religious authority to define a religion that does not have priests? Is CAIR really the voice of “moderates”? Is Islam inflexible and incapable of embracing modernity and a divorce from the violence and hatred of political Islam and 7th, 12th century backwardness? Or, can it be reformed by those devout Muslims like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser?

Personal photo of Dr. Zuhdi Jasser after a Q & A at a free Los Angeles screening of PBS’s Islam vs. Islamists, June 13, 2007. My post.

Z, a friend of mine, had an opportunity to listen to Dr. Jasser speak; and I think came away from the talk, a better person for it, and a better advocate for fighting the war against Islamic terror and Islamism, without lashing out at at the hundreds of millions of Muslims who practice the faith, in peace.

I know this doesn’t sit well with many right-wingers. Good. Sometimes, we need the stupid smacked out of us. We’ve become so educated on the dangers of the Islamist threat by immersing ourselves in Robert Spencerian research and anti-Jihad books, blog any and every news story on honor killings and Islamic cultural encroachments upon our western society, that we find validation in our dim view of Islam as a whole.

I’m not saying there aren’t real dangers and a real threat from wahhabism and Islamist fundamentalism. But I am saying that some of us are becoming religious bigots, where our prejudice and hatred are based upon self-indoctrination of anti-Islam literature. Our views against Islam are shaped not by a lack of education, but by an overabundance and an overbalance of education, tilted in one direction. We are all-too willing to believe the worst about Islam, and zero-in only on repeating the negative stories. Positive stories about Muslims get ignored or dismissed as the exception; we seize upon the negative news, then cry out “where are the moderate voices?” We don’t see them, because we’re too busy looking for the worst.

We are under threat of becoming the stereotype that multicultural liberals wish to see us as: intolerant, warmongering, religious and ethnic bigots.

I have an anti-Islam troll living under the bridge of my blog; anytime I come out with a post that doesn’t condemn the entire religion, he will crawl out of his hole to tell me how I am a dhimmi and defender of evil. Bigots like him are part of the problem and have their heads up their asses every bit as much as they rightfully accuse some of us as having our heads in the sand.

bin Laden and Zawahiri tried to convince the Muslim world that the West are at war with Islam. They have failed. That is, unless they’ve simultaneously convinced the West that Islam is at war with them.

Dr. Jasser represents the kind of modernity and reformation that Islam needs to undergo if it is to survive peacefully alongside the other great world religions in the 21st century. We should not fall into the trap of becoming what we hate.

Here’s an excerpt from Islam vs. Islamists (apparently uploaded by Tarek Fatah):

Another clip:

This is the PBS episode from their program series that they had initially pulled, apparently influenced by the likes of CAIR, who they deem to be the “true” “moderates”, because they are bearded. I got to see a free screening of this documentary in June of 2007 and highly recommend it to everyone. It is the irony of ironies that the multiculturalist liberals at PBS would suppress Islam vs. Islamists, when the four voices of those in the program are the very “moderates” people need to hear from.

When we lament, “where are the moderate voices in Islam?”, “Why aren’t they speaking out and denouncing Islamic terror?”…..well, you can thank, in part, PBS.

Ok, readers: Let me have both barrels in the face, and tell me why I’m wrong.

An elderly man reads the Koran on the second day of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, at the Grand Mosque in Sanaa September 2, 2008.
REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
3 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Here’s my own personal litmus test for divining true moderates from islamist frauds: Is the muslim in question willing to stand up in a forthright, confrontational way to their co-religionists in defense of separation of church and state? If so, I welcome them to my country, my city, my neighborhood. That’s all I require – and Jasser fits the bill.

Many years after 9/11 I researched and read about Islam. The result of my research was that I had to admit that Islam is a birth to grave, total way of living, complete with laws, religion, and rules for everyday life. It is in short, a political system with a mandatory state religion. That is the way it is practiced in the Muslim countries. We simply misunderstand that basis. We attempt to make those countries into our vision of the world, to some extent and with great distance, it seems to work.

Another aspect we overlook because it is not convenient is that Islam has no overall constant definition. There is no Muslim pope to arbitrate the discussion of the religion. It is locally defined and that definition generally changes ever so slightly as one moves about in the Islamic world. Given that reality it is impossible to define a moderate Muslim, nor a overzealous Muslim, as there is not absolute definition of Islam other than the local practice of the religion. Being a Muslim extremist is actually a viewpoint with almost no basis for definition, regardless of the position of the individual believer regarding the practice of Islam.

A few years ago PBS tried to put together a mosaic of films about Islam. Zudhi Jasser was excluded because he is considered an extremist moderate and various Muslim factions deemed his work and his writings as against Islam. I studied that controversy. Again, the end result was that Dr. Jasser is a fine man but is not within the confines of Islam as defined by the practice of Islam. He is not sufficiently Muslim to please the people who claim Islam as their private domain.

This clip brings up another often overlooked aspect of Islam, the religion is practically a convention of tribalism tied off neatly in a way of living confined in the modern world. It is in most respects a throwback to the 7th century from which it came. It also does not intend to be modernized. It intends to exist contrary to all things modern, to subvert every aspect of modern life to the readings and interpretations of the Koran, which are highly personal but always bending to the core of Islam. Read that as no assimilation, ever.

Even among Muslims there is a pecking order of holier than thou. That is the true vein of Islam. That is what defines most of the brutality of the religion. The zealous core that claim the moral high ground will always intimidate the less zealous. Because they claim to speak for the central tenets of Islam they are not ignored. Usually the zealous core of the religion is the Imam, the local religious leader. But there are thugs to be found who want to extend the limits, they are what we consider Islamists. These are the people who will take up arms to extend Islam. They consider anyone less zealous than themselves as infidels or apostates, and they wish to visit death upon them regardless.

It is an exercise in futility to try to separate the zealous extremist from mainstream Islam because the extreme seems to define the mainstream and the extremists attempt to control the mainstream of the religion. That self referential meme about being sufficiently Muslim or be cast out as a heretic or apostate ensures that extremism is the norm.

Do not underestimate the chilling threat of being cast out of Islam because the individual has embraced some aspect of modern life. That ostracism is as complete a punishment as death. It essentially is done to preserve the central tenets of the religion. Islam cannot change, it must be constant and unchanged. Therefore anyone attempting to change Islam or at least the local practice of Islam, and generally that includes being less than a complete zealot, will have to be removed. This situation exists even absent a complete definition of the religion. That is a contradiction that westerners simply cannot understand. The end result is you can be killed for almost any act under Islam, simply because almost any action can be ultimately interpreted as against Islam, therefore it is apostasy, and death is the penalty for apostasy. Speak against female genital mutilation, that’s apostasy, even though it is not specifically mentioned in the Koran, it is defined by local Muslim practice. Speak against polygamy, you are an apostate, because that is in the Muslim tradition as established by Mohammed. Have western friends, that is apostasy because a true Muslim does not make friends outside the religion. Even to publish a translation of the Koran into another language is apostasy and will result in death threats. And so on down the long list of forbidden acts.

The greatest sin against Islam is simply defined as ‘trying to change the practice of Islam’. The end result is that any Muslim who accommodates western civilization in any way will eventually be punished for sins against Islam. The challenge then is to find a place in western society for the people cast out of Islam by the extremists who run the religion. They are under a death threat just for being cast out of Islam.

thoses who are being under threat here in AMERICA,are being protected by thoses who are fighting the ennemies abroad :that is why they must be putting aside any indoctrination ;once the immigrant thouch this land to become an AMERICAN ;the rest is behind,leaving the room for becoming sucsesful member of the GREAT AMERICAN VALUE OF FREEDOM;so dear to the people;who protect it with sweat and blood all thoses years;from the beginning of this country ,with the fathers who wisely , put their faith in GOD to write the laws of the land”the CONSTITUTION”: wich stood up many trial since, but is always challenge by the keepers who knows and will keep challenging any charge to add or reduce or deny ;the truth of THE UNITEDSTATES OF AMERICA :