By Diana Muir in the Washington [bleep]:
Salman Rushdie, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof and Mansour al-Nogaidan are among the well-intentioned people who have called for an Islamic Reformation. They should be careful what they wish for.[...]
The Reformation was a time of intense focus on God and what He requires of people. As a movement, it was enthusiastic, narrow and far from tolerant. It and the Counter-Reformation brought two centuries of repression, war and massacre to the West. It's unlikely that anyone who lived through it would consider wishing a Reformation on Muslims.
[...]
Like the followers of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Islamic reformers reject the interpretations of generations of scholars in favor of seeking the word of God directly in scripture. [...]
As Luther put it: Sola scriptura (Scripture alone).
This is heady stuff. The conviction of having the Word direct from God can empower individuals to rebuke, to command and even to kill in His name. Protestant determination to follow the word of God straight from the Bible was accompanied by a desire to purify Christianity by emulating the beliefs and practices of the early church. Hassan al Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; Sayyid Qutb, a leading Muslim Brotherhood thinker; and Ibn Wahab, the founder of modern Salafi, or Wahhabist, Islam, call upon Muslims to return to the uncorrupted beliefs and practices of early Islam and to become as pure as Salafis, or the first three generations of Muslims. To become, as it were, Puritans.
Muir makes some interesting points here. First, the hope for an Islamic "reformation," even if it followed the form of the Christian Reformation, would hardly prove a walk in the park. Second, a Muslim reformation of sorts is very much underway already thanks to the Salafis and individuals like Qutb and Al Banna -- though this is hardly the shortcut to enlightenment that naive Westerners would understand "reformation" to mean.
Western pundits have debated whether Arabs who voted for Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian and Egyptian parliamentary elections were voting for the Islamist religious program or voting against corruption. Surely it was a two-for-one deal. To vote for the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas is to vote against corruption and for returning to the purity of the days of the prophet Muhammad. This was a compelling idea when preached by Calvin. It is compelling still.There are, of course, differences between the Protestant and Islamic reformations. In Islam today it is usually radical reformers who have reached first for the sword. In the European Reformation, things became tense when a determined minority demanded reform, but in general it was those church and state officials who held power who first resorted to violence.
Like others before her -- and, one confidently predicts, many yet to come -- Muir starts off well but then glances off the central point. Still, for the [bleep], she comes pretty close.
While the Christian Reformation and the Islamic one both subscribe to sola scriptura (though it is important to note that all schools of Islamic orthodoxy accept the literal, unalterable, and supreme authority of the Quran), the one critical difference -- which Muir, and, it seems, everybody else -- fails to mention is just what are the differences in content between the Christian and Islamic scriptures. No one wants to talk about the violent injunctions in the Quran or the bloody precedents set by Muhammad -- as compared to the commands of Christ to love, forgive, and turn the other cheek and his example of preferring an ignominious death to resisting his tormentors. I think somebody wrote something on this recently?
In the near term, though, the Islamic Reformation will divide Muslim society as the Reformation divided Europe. A fervent minority in many countries is already pressing for narrow interpretations on issues such as veiling, whether to listen to music and replacing secular laws with religious codes. As we have seen in Europe and more recently in Afghanistan, Muslim Puritans are likely to take over communities where they are far from being the majority. Meanwhile, the majority has yet to construct an effective ideological defense of moderation.
This last remark begs the question: Why has there been such a lack of "an effective ideological defense of moderation"? During the Christian Reformation, there was a very robust conservative defense mounted by the Roman Catholic Church -- which persists to this day. So where are the "moderates" in Islam today? Why have they not appeared? Precisely because Islam is not "moderate." "Moderate" (as in mainstream), orthodox Islam is a violent, political program with world conquest as its aim. Until the actual content of Islam is brought forth into the light of day, commentators such as Muir will continue to scratch their heads in bafflement as to why the Muslim "moderates" can't get their act together.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/016342.php
Some Western observers are searching for a "Muslim Martin Luther" who is expected to end the resurgent Islamic Jihad. But one could argue that we already have a Muslim Martin Luther: He's called Osama bin Laden, deeply inspired by the teachings of Muslim Brotherhood thinker Sayyid Qutb. If "reform" is taken to mean a return to the historical period of the religious founder, Muhammad, and his followers, it will lead to an inevitable upsurge of Jihadist violence, since that was what Muhammad and his followers were all about. The question of whether Islam is reformable is an important one. But perhaps an even more crucial one is whether an Islamic Reformation would be desirable from a non-Muslim point of view, and the likely answer to that is "no."
Secular-minded people think religious reform is like any other reform, with a bunch of people sitting down and saying, "These things in our religion are wrong and outdated; let's fix them and bring them up to date". They couldn't be more mistaken: religious reform means (to the minds of the religious, of course) bringing the religion back to its pristine state, cleaning it of all the heretical innovations that have crept into it.
Luther had no intention of bringing the Enlightenment when he stuck his Theses to the door at Wittenberg; it can be argued Biblioskepticism could not have flourished without the free readership of scriptures that sola scriptura created, but in any case it was an unintended side-effect.
Reform At Will (Not)
Im pretty sure their has already been an Islamic reform going on,Its called the global salafist movement . Real old school Islam, killing , terrorism and Jihad Oh my
The Quran was the Islamic Reformation. The Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, etc. could call themselves Islamic Reformation, if it didn't sound too Christian.
Muhammad in a sense, claimed to reform Christianity and Judaism. Muhammad brought reformation by the Sword.
The Crusades can be seen as a counter-reformation. The reformation is not within Islam its within the monotheistic Abrahamic religions. The scope of the conflict is not within Islam. If we stand by while they "reform", we will not be there to see the conclusion. To them, "reform" means eliminating us and our false versions, Christianity and Judaism, of their true religion, Islam.
Islamic Reformation was on display on 9-11. Islamic Reformation means subjugating Christians and Jews and using slow genocide to finish them off. Ultimately, they just can't tolerate the Christian and Jewish versions of their true religion to exist. Reformation means getting rid of them.
Reformation isn't about tolerance for error, its about eliminating error. We are the error in their religion. Reformation in Islam from Muhammad on has always meant getting rid of us.
We are the "other" in their religion. Their book builds us in at ground zero as the "other" to be reformed by subjugating us. They can't allow our symbols in their lands. Ultimately, they can't allow us to exist. Islam was always a reform religion in this sense. As in the time of the founder, so in our time today.
To accept Islam is to accept the Quran. The Quran makes it a duty for Muslims to reform us, by conversion or conquest.
Excellent article Greg. When it comes to reformation there will always be conflicts in the process and the need to reform the reform. Even right now in my church there is efforts to clean up the mess left by the mistakes that came out in the process VCII with the bringing back of the TLM as well as getting rid of the radical changes.
Do not forget also another voice for debate in the Muslim world is Irasrad Mahjid, famous for the book "The Trouble With Islam".
Reformation in Islam is the Wahabbi verson, not the percieved Sufi verson which everyone thinks.
Simply put, don't confuse religious 'moderation' with 'reformation'.
Even if Islam has a reformation, there's still going to be hundreds of millions of Muslims still retaining the original belief, and therefore still blowing us up and looking to take over the world.
Investing all hope in a reformation, is just stupid.
Seriously, you have to be really nieve to think that 1.2 billion Muslims will all switch to a reformed Islam.
Any reformation will only account for a single digit percentage of the world population of Muslims.
Maybe 5% at most.
Compare that with mainstream Islam, which will account for 85-90%~ of world Islamic population.
They will reject any reformation.
Stop the reformation-fantasies plz.
Rogster,
The truth of the matter is that the closet to ANY "reformation" in Islam is the extreme Wahibbi verson which is pure 100% proof Islam.
Einstein (or maybe Ben Franklin) said that Insanity is repeating the same process over and over expecting different results. Re-calibrating to a false standard will not improve upon the false standard. It would just be insane.
The model of the false standard of Islam is their lunar calendar. It's eleven days off from the true solar year. It will always be eleven days off.
The same is true for the Quran. It couldn't be the verbal word of an all-knowing supreme being to apply to all peoples for all times. It's too full of errors, contradictions, and downright "un-Godly" edicts. So any reformation, recalibrating to that text as the standard for a revitalized religion, will still be off the mark.
Wahabbi is reformed Islam, and they did not have to challange the word of Allah to reform to this purity. Not 'purity' as in without blemish or error,
but purity in the sense of pure Islam. Limitation is the source of power. This means to eliminate anything not pertinant to the goal. The surgeon does this with his blade, Islam does the same with its sword, 'cut away the unwanted'. Islam can't be reformed in any way that denies the word of Allah, so 'concentration' by evaporation occurs untill purity is achieved. Thats Wahibbism. Concentrated Islam in its purest form. Since we know that blemish and error are the heart of Islam, these things are not eliminated but amplified. Reforming Islam is actually more dangerous to non-believers, than not reforming it. Islam must be defeated, not reformed...
That last remark PROMPTS the question. Not "begs." The latter would mean it's assuming its conclusion, which is not what you mean.
What people hope for is a "reform" that gets rid of the calls to terror in the Koran. Turning them into no-longer-valid historical arcana or harmless metaphors for inner struggle.
Without this kind of "reform" Islam is doomed.
Or we are.
I'm betting that Islam's depredations will eventually wake the nation.
And relegate Mohammadism to the ash-heap of history as one more defunct deathcult.
Say Islam had a reformation, and say 5% of Muslims decided to convert to the reformed version of Islam, but 85-90%+ decided to stay with the original Islam.
I would then ask Robert Spencer, how he thinks we should deal with those Muslims who reject the reformation.
In this case, he will no longer be able to go "Oh...Islam needs to be reformed, yeah" - Well great news, it already reformed, and the vast majority of Muslims rejected it. So can't use that line again! So what now?
"Re-calibrating to a false standard will not improve upon the false standard... So any reformation, recalibrating to that text as the standard for a revitalized religion, will still be off the mark."
Posted by: Chris
Well said.
You wonder why 'moderate Muslims' do not disown the attitudes and behaviour of extremist Muslims.
Why should they? It has long been fashionable in Western society to denigrate the achievements of our own civilisation. If we do not hold ourselves in better estimation, why should anyone else?
Speaking as an heir of the Christian Reformation, the Islamic Reformation that I'd like to see is the conversion of Muslims to Christ.
The only reason Western pundits enthuse about the possibility of a Muslim Reformation is that they're utterly ignorant about their own history and culture. They've been misled by the rotting-from-within post-Protestant "mainstream" to see Protestant Christianity as a wax nose that can take any shape; while ignoring the actual beliefs of the Reformation as expressed in the confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries.
from article: The conviction of having the Word direct from God can empower individuals to rebuke, to command and even to kill in His name.
Yep, when a devout submitter reads the Quran, the word of Allah is not 1400 years old it is 'now' in real time. Allah is speaking to them in the present.
All our favorite verses are current and valid in Allahs virtual reality, 8:12, 5:33, 9:5, 8:39, and more. This is a mind warp, a Vulcan mind meld between the submitter and Allah. Reality becomes distorted, and the submitter may very well act as described above. It's great to have God on your side, aint it?
Dictionary Muslim Brotherhood: an Egytian nationalist movement founded by Hasan al-Bannah in 1928 that committed to the islamic fundamentalist cause and opposes Western influence.
1928- they sure have come a long way in such a short time. That short time, just the past few years! Already in the White House! Wasn't it Lincoln that warned us of appeasement?
It is going on in the global south, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America a massive growth in the addition of new Christians. In the sub-saharia alone even former Muslims are coming to faith in Christ.
Islam had undergone "reformations" over and over again in its history. None of them give any reason to think another one would be a good idea. There was, for example, the reformation under the Almoravids, who turned what had been merely oppressive dhimmitude for Spain's Christians into a truly hellish existence. And, of course, there was the great reformer, Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, founder of Wahhabism, which has made Saudi Arabia such a pleasant place to live.
I suspect what those calling for Islamic Reformation really want is a Moslem equivalent of liberal Protestantism, as observed by the mainline denominations today (i.e., something that bears only a tangential connection to orthodox Christianity). Christianity, however, provides no example of a jump straight to liberal Protestantism. The only thing that has worked to "tame" Islam that I can think of has been its subordination to some other ideology--Sukarno's Marhaenism, which claimed to be a mixture of socialism, nationalism, and Islam, but was primarily nationalistic; Ataturk's Turkish nationalism; the Arab nationalism of Nasser or the Ba'athists. And of course there was Marxism-Leninism in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Of course, from the point of view of the West, all these rival ideologies had their own problems, so I'm not sure how good an idea it would be to encourage their equivalent in the Moslem states today.
"We--the befuddled infidels--talk airily about "reforming" Islam. But what if the reform has already taken place and jihadism is it? What if the long percolation of Islam through Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian revolution, and contemporary Western-promoted whining over grievances such as "colonialism" *is* the reform?"
I've come more and more to believe this to be the case, much as it depresses me. I would love to see a peaceful reforming of Islam, but I don't think we'll see one anytime soon.
We have to focus on our own response to the threat from Islam--education of "infidels" to jihadi aims, fighting against not just Islamic terrorism, but also Da'wa and Muslim encroachment via immigration and high birth-rate, resisting creeping dhimmitude, and refusing to fund our own destruction via aid (jizya) to places such as "Palestine" or Saudi Arabia.
By the way, I wish I could take credit for the above quote, but it comes from Mark Steyn in "America Alone". This book is comprehensive, deeply distressing (even for a regular JW reader), and yet extremely witty and laugh-out loud funny in many places. I highly recommend it.
"If you fix Islam, you break it." Wafa Sultan
"Al-lah is happy when the kuffar is killed." imam Hamza al-Masri
As we can see killing human beings forms the nucleus of Islamic theology and 'religious' practice. Since Islam's object of veneration is none other than Baal of Babylonian origin and which has been traditionally been the source and recipient of human sacrifices (for several thousand years) there is no way Islam will voluntarily stop its mass killings. Homicide has been too deeply ingrained in the Islamic consciousness (such as it is) and for much too long. al-lah, in the Muslim mind, is hungry for human blood and Muslims must satiate that humger somehow.
Islam, to stop killing, will have to be forced to stop killing by the remainder of the world. And accomplishing this may well prove to be the bloodiest episode in the history of the world. But the world may actually be destroyed if we do not put a stop to Islam's 14 century-long homicidal streak.