Reply to Thiagan

Submitted by Safraz (United States), Apr 6, 2008 at 13:02

Thiagan,

I grew up in the developing world, and was university educated in the U.S. So my perspective on the issue leads me to believe that you have misdiagnosed the problem. The problem, as I have said before, isn't with Islam itself, but moreso with social and political problems that are endemic within much of the third world (Muslim and non-Muslim), but finds a voice and plays itself out in the philosophy of radical Islamism. In any case, I trust that there will be no convincing you - as the only way to show you this is to get rid of Islam, and then see the same issues rising out and showing its head in other philosophies, whether they be religious or secular.

And as a side note, you seem to have also misdiagnosed India (in my humble opinion) conflating what is well known as an ethnic conflic over control (much like Rwanda and other African ethnic conflicts), as caused by Islam - when the fact of the matter is Islam has nothing to do with this ethnic conflict (besides the fact that it is a different religion from the competitor Hindu religion in India).

As I said, it is dangerous to do so - because suddenly by concentrating on world issues that have nothing to do with Islamism (simply because the actors are Muslim), you miss the real battle and the Islamists win.

Also, Attaturk was a secularist - a Muslim secularist. It was no accident that he insisted on the crescent and star being central to the Turkish flag.

And finally - my view is that Islam was already reformed via the doctrine of ijtihad (where the Koran is held to be supreme in the faith, the hadiths basically thrown out, and reason and logic dictates interpretation of the Koran). It was this reform (or this line of thinking) that made Muslim Spain, Ottoman Turkey, and Mughal India such powerful and intellectual advanced empires.

However, it is the Islamic counter-reformation (where ijtihad was destroyed), is what we are fighting today. It is this counter-reformation that has caused the decline in the Muslim world, where its achievements over the past 500 years, is nothing compared to its achievement within a single decade of its past glory.

The doctrine of ijtihad, if applied today - with reason and logic central to Koranic interpretation - is what would bring Islam as a religion in parallel to modern post-reformation Christianity.

Safraz.

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