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My neighbor here in Secure Undisclosed Locationville, Salman Rushdie, with whom I frequently swap stories across the back fence, says in the Sunday Times (thanks to JE) that Muslims outside Islamic countries can spearhead a new, modern formulation of Islam that will allow for peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims.
Salman, I think there very well may be something to this. I don't think, for example, that the phenomenon of Irshad Manji could have developed anywhere in the Islamic world. However, being part of the Muslim "diaspora" doesn't guarantee that reform efforts will not trigger a backlash from traditional Muslims: after all, you received your death fatwa while living in Britain, and that was just for some silly ridicule in a meandering novel. What is needed, whether in Britain or elsewhere, is a group of Muslims large enough to stand up in the face of intimidation and death fatawa and say that they are rejecting Sharia and accepting pluralism, and rejecting Qur'anic literalism.
I am not holding my breath.
A FEW weeks ago, in a column written in response to the London bombings, I wrote about the urgent need for a “reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age”.The response to this article has been widespread and extremely interesting.
Naturally there were those who rushed to dismiss my arguments because they came out of my mouth: “The man who lost his personality and beliefs should not speak about the great religion of Islam.”
However, there was an encouraging flood of more positive commentary, much of it coming from Muslims: “Absolutely right — it is time Muslims accepted that it is Islam’s 8th-century attitudes that are causing so much suffering in the 21st-century world,” wrote Mohammed Iqbal, who lives in Leeds, home of three of the London Underground bombers.
“Please keep dogma aside and let reason be part of the debate,” wrote Nadeem Akhtar of Washington. “We believers have done enough to harm ourselves. What European monarchs and clergy did in the Dark and Middle Ages is exactly what Muslim rulers and clergy are doing to the Muslim world.”
Several writers challenged me to take the next step and hypothesize the content of such a reform movement. The thoughts that follow are an initial response to that challenge, and focus primarily on Britain.
Why Britain? It may well be that reform will be born in the Muslim diaspora, where contact — and friction — between communities is greatest, and then exported to the Muslim-majority countries....
Posted by Robert at October 8, 2005 7:19 AM
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And how many hundreds of years do we have to wait for that to happen?
Posted by: Voltaire![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 8, 2005 8:30 AM
I join with a large number of fellow Christians in Sinophone Asia in the belief that the only cure for the Islamofascist madness is a reformation of Islam--which means that Muslims start turning Christian en masse.
Posted by: Kepha at October 8, 2005 8:36 AM
I don't buy it, none of it.
This cult is nothing without Jihad. Without the quest for domination and hatred of "infidels" it becomes a toothless entity, and any Mohammedan who has his coffee-filter properly screwed to the scull will run amok to "defend" his "religion" (of 'peace')
The whole concept of Islam is a battle-cry for conquest and booty and slavery, abuse of the subjugated people...
Can anybody find me something good in the Koran, the sira or in the hadith? Is there anything at all that makes peaceful coexistence possible and makes Islam less of a threat to Infidels and Jews?
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at October 8, 2005 8:47 AM
A MUST READ
Europe Died in Auschwitz By Sebastian Villar Rodriguez September 23, 2005
I was walking along Raval (in Barcelona) when all of a sudden I understood that Europe died with Auschwitz. We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20 million Muslims!
We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create.
We burnt the people of the world, the one who is proclaimed the chosen people of God.
Because it is the people who gave to humanity the epic figures who were capable of changing history (Christ, Marx, Einstein, Freud...) and who represent the origin of progress and wellbeing.
We must admit that Europe, by relaxing its borders and giving in under the pretext of tolerance to the values of a fallacious cultural relativism, opened its doors to 20 million Muslims, often illiterates and fanatics that we could meet, at best, in places such as Raval, the poorest of the nations and of the ghettos, and who are preparing the worst, such as the 9/11 and the Madrid bombing and who are lodged in apartment blocs provided by the social welfare.
We also have exchanged culture with fanaticism, the capacity to create with the will to destroy, the wisdom with the superstition. We have exchanged the transcendental instinct of the Jews, who even under the worst possible conditions have always looked for a better, peaceful world, for the suicide bomber.
We have exchanged the pride of life for the fanatic obsession of death. Our death and that of our children.
What a grave mistake we made!
at October 8, 2005 9:19 AM
Is Rushdie writing for us or for his fellow Muslims ?
Islam is THEIR problem, and ours only if we tolerate or embrace (yuk) Muslims.
Get them away, and OUT of the West, by incentive,by exposure, and by SHUNNING.
Why should the West have to LISTEN to them as they reform themselves ? T'would be better to see the results - no more preying upon and intimidation of Christians and Jews, no more taqiyyah, no more explode dopes.
(and no more Princes of Darkness out of the Saudi Hell)
Posted by: dgene at October 8, 2005 9:33 AM
I recently read The Satanic Verses, just to see what all the fuss was about. Actually, I quite enjoyed it, and I could see why it provoked so much agita among the seethers. It is wonderfully irreverent, casting doubt on the timeliness and hence veracity of the Messanger's words. (Mo always seemed to receive the Divine word to resolve an issue that had just arisen.)
Rushdie also imagines an amusingly rude scene about a brothel. The brothel is popular because each prostitute housed therein is named for one of Mo's wives (including his child bride Aisha). Such depictions are anathema to the True Believers because their world view is predicated entirely on reverence--for their Prophet, for Allah, for the one true faith. Rushdie blew them a big, wet irreverant raspberry, something which is hugely threatening to those who believe; something they would not and could not abide.
Posted by: scaramouoche at October 8, 2005 9:53 AM
Salman Rushdie needs to get real ! Islam hasn't changed one iota since its birth in the desert sands of Arabia fourteen hundred years ago. It ain't gonna change one iota from now on, either! How can it? It was written in stone, so to speak, then. There is no re-interpretation to be, since the Qur'an is said to be the literal word of Allah!
Moreover, in Arab Muslims, you have literalists! One interesting thing I noticed very quickly when working with them some years ago: They are not given to figurative or abstract thought , or to the interpretation of anything that is not literal! They are simple people.
So what change and development can we expect from these people? And, after all, these people are the driving force behind this faith.
at October 8, 2005 9:53 AM
Secure Undisclosed Locationville--is that near Philly?
Posted by: scaramouoche at October 8, 2005 9:55 AM
RS -- I'm with you. Rushdie is engaged in pipedreams. His wishful thinking is as fanciful as other reform utopian ideas that have been floated over the centuries. Yes, Muslims must make the change, but change won't come without rivers of Muslim and infidel blood. As long as Islam continues to revere the Koran as an immutable whole, Mohammed as the "perfect man," Jihad againt infidels, agnostics, and heresies, as the correct Muslim expression, reform has no chance.
The specter of extremism has shown its ugly face many times over the centuries and has been the driving force more times than we can count. Many of us could never hope that reform could be a reality because we have been fooled too many times.
Jihad is eternal and eternal vigilance and preparedness is the only way we can be prepared to withstand yet another onslaught.
Posted by: epg at October 8, 2005 11:07 AM
How would this "reformation" take place? It would have to begin with a public, large-scale, heartfelt (not feigned) admission that there was something terribly wrong -- and always had been -- with Islam. The precise Qur'anic passages (and authoritative commentators) that inculcate hatred of Infidels, the duty to dominate Infidels and to incorporate their lands into Dar al-Islam, the stories in the Hadith that do the same, the most offensive acts committed by (oh, let's modify it: let's say "attributed to") Muhammad, that Model of Mankind, must all be laid out -- not by Infidels at Jihadwatch or elsewhere, but by Muslims.
They have to recognize the history of Jihad-conquest, and the subsequent subjugation of non-Muslims -- Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, and all others (including, for example, the Sikhs who may have originated as a necessary response, by a warrior-class, to Muslim oppression).
How does Rushdie think this can conceivably be accomplished? How will the Word of God -- the Qur'an -- be modified, edited, emended? Who will take his pen and cross out that passage, and that one, and that one? And who will do the same for the Hadith, or perhaps make the argument that Hadith and Sira together are fictions spun out of the Qur'an?
And who will permit the views of Western scholars of early Islam -- Patricia Crone, Christoph Luxenberg, Ibn Warraq come to mind -- to be broadcast, discussed, argued about, within the closed world of Islam? Can Irshad Manji or any other Bright Young Muslim Things do that?
This is a wan hope. Rushdie has never himself looked deeply into Islam. He can mock the obvious, but the whole history of Jihad-conquest and the dhimmi status imposed on all non-Muslims is not something he has either looked into, or communicated. Perhaps he could begin with his own family's history. Perhaps his next book could be an imagined description of the conditions in which those of his ancestors who converted to Islam -- those intolerable conditions -- forced them to do so. He could offer it up, as his own little gift to Indian Muslims and to Pakistanis.
Working title: Here's How It Happened.
His contribution to sanity, and the Avoding-the- War Effort.
Posted by: Hugh at October 8, 2005 11:17 AM
Here is a muslim's attitude toward mixing with us, infidels.
http://www.jannah.org/articles/letter.html
at October 8, 2005 12:07 PM
From my link,
Rather study them as would a researcher and an examiner
at October 8, 2005 12:11 PM
Reform Islam? I think we should start with ourselves. Half of America and seemingly most of Europe is sliding into reaction and counter-Enlightenment fascism. Our revolutionary values, the values that created the Modernism of the West are falling by the road-side, and the West is taking a path back to irrationalism and feudalism.
Revolutionize the West--again.
How is it we value chickens and rabbits as highly as people? This is a fascism, not our revolutionary heritage. Those who think themselves Leftists are totally deluded. They're not Leftists in any historical sense. The Left is fascist. We need a further revolution to reclaim of revolutions of Modernity. Half of our population is hardly more rational than Muslims. Half of our population thinks Islam is OK. Half would hardly know the difference if they converted. Forget Islam reforming. We need to revolutionize the West.
See where we are by seeing where we were. The fascists of Germany's yesteryear are with us today, and they are us:
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com
We need a revolution. Again.
Posted by: sonofwalker at October 8, 2005 2:31 PM
The fastest way to Reform Islam is to shut down muslim immigration, and then to reverse it by making the West as islam-unfriendly as possible. In so doing we will force a reformation of islam i.e., in effect its abandonment, and thus free the billion souls in its captivity. And even if that does not occur, we will have at the least, removed the climate of fear that we are living in now, restored our freedoms, and removed an unnecessary expense of time and treasure in security measures, Jizya, and all other expenses entailed in keeping muslims in the West.
Posted by: DP111 at October 8, 2005 5:25 PM
It may well be that reform will be born in the Muslim diaspora, where contact — and friction — between communities is greatest, and then exported to the Muslim-majority countries....
The evidence so far is quite the contrary. The Jihad has been enabled because of the muslim diaspora, particularly the one in the West. Here it has had easy access to not only the target, but the means necessary to harvest Infidel lives. It is in the West that muslim fanatics have found the freedom to propagate and proseltyse. It is in the open West that monetary means were readily available; even the Benefits handed out were used to kill Infidels. Remittances from a part of Welfare is used to support the Jihad in dar-ul-islam. In dar-ul-islam itself Jihadi actions were restricted by authoratarian governments.
Far from the West providing a sanctuary for "moderates" to open a Reforming thesis for Islam, it has led to the invigoration of the Jihad, even to the extent that muslim ganags now openly burn churches in England, desecrate Jewish graves and go about murdering innocent Westerners for excercising their right to Freedom of expression. The reality is that the Jihad has been revitalised in the West and is being exported to Muslim-majority countries.
Now politicians and writers such as Rushdie wish us to give space to non-existent or elusive moderates. What gave these politicians the right to foist a murderous bunch of people on our shoulders, just so that have the chance to reform islam?
The freedom of the West has actaully been counter-productive to the emergence of a Reformed islam, that is, if a reformation is possible at all.
Posted by: DP111 at October 8, 2005 6:06 PM
SonofWalker posted:See where we are by seeing where we were. The fascists of Germany's yesteryear are with us today, and they are us
How true. There are of course the ever present "useful idiots". I think the vast majority are the latter category.
at October 8, 2005 6:11 PM
I got curious about the phrase "useful idiots," which is usually attributed to Lenin. I didn't recall him ever writing it, so I looked it up, and he seems not to have done so. He did write something along the lines of "pin the convert's badge on him and we'll sort him out later."
Too many people act without thinking what it is they act on, falling into conformity for the sake of sociablity and even from a sense of morality, assuming that what is is good, and they are sometimes taken in by cynics who care only for their bodies and what-have-you, to be chucked later if they're not worth anything. So, I think, it is with most Western dhimmis who go along with the prevalent winds of social discourse, thinking that what others say is good because so many decent others say so. One has to stop and wonder, though, who is at the top of this game spreading the words and ideas to those below.
In the piece I pointed out above the idea is that environmentalism is a fascist ideology, not to say that those who care to save the whales are fascists but to say that without ecxamination of the history of the environmentalist conception of reality one might well be used to further a fascist agenda till one is not useful at all, at which time some great harmmight-- unwittingly-- be done.
I argue that we are our own worst enemies in the West, given that if we so choose, we could end the Islamic problem in a literal flash. We might. I feel that that's a bad idea. To prevent that scenario from reaching the stage, let us look at who we are in our own collective minds and see why we think the unexamined things we speak.
I got lucky, somehow, in that even though I'm an idiot, I'm not useful. No one bothers trying to convince me of anything. I end up with my own ideas thereby. One is that others should look at the history of our social agenda, particularly the dhimmi fascist Left to see where they came from and why we, naively, are following them. there is a lot of very surprising information about the world we live in, and some of it explains why our Western world is siding at this time with dhimmitude. To know about these things is useful.
Posted by: sonofwalker at October 8, 2005 8:24 PM
Islam and the West shall be reconciled only when one has been totally defeated. Thats how serious this is.
Posted by: Sharku at October 8, 2005 9:44 PM
The problem I have with Rushdie is that despite the fact that he himself has been the recipient of Islam's intolerance, he still refuses to acknowledge that the intolerance he faces comes straight from Islam itself. He has, if anything, actually been tirelessly supporting Islamic causes whether it be for the Palestinian muslims in the Palestine-Israel conflict or for the Kashmiri muslims in the Kashmir conflict.
Posted by: Razdan at October 9, 2005 9:18 AM
One way, maybe, to induce Islamists to question their own beliefs might be to challenge them with the contradictions within the Quran, and between the Quran and what the Arabs/Muslism stand for and do today. For instance, Quran 5:12, 20-22, says that Allah assigned the Holy Land to the Jews. How do they reconcile this with their hatred for Israel? The answer might be to point to another Sura that says that the Jews will return to their land at the end of days. Hence, the Jews will have to wait till the end of days. The response might be that this is hairsplitting, and that it is clear from the Quran that the Land belongs to the Jews. No doubt there are many more contradictions that could be presented to fanatic Muslims to challenge their fanaticism. Of course, this might elicit violence from the Muslim side, which is another problem.
As to sonofwalker's assertion that today's left is fascist. OK. I buy that. The problem is that there is now a convergence between much or most of the Left and Islamic jihad. In order to contest and confront jihad in Western societies, it is now necessary to get through the Leftist defense of jihad and Islamofascism. Carlos the Jackal, the terrorist now serving in a French jail for killing policemen, illustrated this convergence. He wrote to his friend, the old Nazi [!!] Francois Genoud, that the "Islamic revolutionist" was in the vanguard of world revolution. This is bizarre, and not only because the Left is supposed to stand for equality, whereas the Muslims usually frankly admit that there is no equality with non-Muslims, but only a theoretical equality among Muslims.
Without explaining why the Left today supports jihad, it has been traced back to Stalin's --in the name of the Bolsheviks-- Appeal to the Muslim Toilers of Russia and the East, which was issued shortly after the Bolshevik putsch in Russia in late 1917. This appeal supports Muslim territorial claims against those of non-Muslim peoples, especially the dhimmis or rayahs. See this link:
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/10/bolsheviks-for-jihad-genocide-stalins.html
At any rate, this Islamic-Leftist convergence is a sinister danger to be feared.
Posted by: Eliyahu at October 9, 2005 10:01 AM
I also read the _Satanic Verses_ and was quite amused. However, I strongly suspect that there are a lot of things which only a Briton of South Asian heritage could truly appreciate. Also, why the heck did he make one character's Jewish girlfriend Armenian? The Armenians are an historically Christian people, after all (apart from the Khemshins, who are Muslim).
But, re more serious stuff, Rushdie long made a career excorciating the evil, Western colonialist (who made possible diasporae of so many of us living in peace and security in countries ruled by law and popular consent) and romanticizing such tinpot savages as the Sandinistas. His first instinct towards the Khomeini-ite revolution was to welcome it (although his probable real heroes were the Tudeh). Hence, when Khomeini issued his fat-head fattuwah against Rushdie, the latter was a little like the dog you feel so sorry for as it lies suffering, bloody, and laboriously panting out its last by the side of the road--it wouldn't have gotten into such a mess had it not rushed out to bite the tires of a speeding truck. Rushdie had even less excuse than the proverbial dog, for he should've known what his erstwhile co-religionists were capable of. Surely he must have known of how Islam treats apostates and young women who shame their families.
Posted by: Kepha at October 9, 2005 5:38 PM
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