About time—if the angry Muslims making these claims are right: “UK targeting Islam not extremism, says Muslim News editor,” from Mathaba, July 18:
The British government Friday was accused of trying to interfere in the Muslim community on religious matters by announcing controversial plans to fund a board of theologians to prevent Islam being abused by extremists.
Muslim News editor Ahmed Versi said that the government was being “wrong-headed” as other attempts to have control of a state-version of Islam had “no credibility.”
“It proves that the whole strategy of the UK government is to target not just Muslims but Islam itself,” Versi said. “It is not targeting extremism but the Muslim community, including now on matters of Islam,” he warned.
Could it be—gasp!—because “Muslim extremism” is a direct byproduct of “matters of Islam,” that is, Islamic theology?
[…]
Blears acknowledged that it is “not for Government to dictate on matters of faith or religious teaching,” but insisted that it was the “Muslim communities themselves have told us that stronger leadership is needed on what are often controversial issues.”
Speaking from the interfaith conference in Madrid, Versi told IRNA that the latest government measures show it was “not only targeting Islam itself but religion too now” and warned that it was misguided.
Is Versi admitting what has long been suspected—that Islam is not a religion, merely a political ideology?
“There was unanimous agreement among Christian and Muslim delegates in Madrid that extremism is not a problem of religion but of politics,” he said.
Simply because that was a gathering for Christians to behave like dhimmis, and Muslims to practice taqiyya.
Other critics of the government’s new measures included Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian academic and director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London.
Tamimi warned that Muslims would be “skeptical” about the government’s involvement in trying to set up a state version of a “Muslim church.”
Of course, that would lead to accountability. Much better to have Islam the way it’s always been: no heirarchy, no organization, no “final word,” and thus, no accountability.