It ain't the Koran, it's the Fatwas

Submitted by Veit (United States), Aug 3, 2002 at 16:29

Saying that the Koran is Islam is like saying the US is the Constitution without including Amendments and all decisions of the US Supreme Court. While court decisons are based directly on the Constitution, the Fatwas are multi-contradictory extensions of each other, and sometimes a statement out of the blue.

Sure the Koran is a groovey little tome. The Fatwas are somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 volumes of sometimes really weird stuff. I think Kaplan hits it best in his book "Eastward to Tartary" as he lays out the hundreds of tribes and their millenia old customs incorporated into Fatwas that best shows us what a lot of Islam is in different places. Retributionary gang rapes, pedophilia, male prostitution, ritual murder, slavery, kidnapping, all are justified by Fatwas in different places.

One thing runs constant through Islam and that is the relationship (or non-relationship) between men and women. In most Muslim countries the sexual taboos create a testosterone fueled young male mob that can only assert manhood through combat. It is this purposeless drive that is manifested in suicide bombings, nutty wars (Iran Iraq), and a refusal to move forward; the Koran DOES forbid innovation.

Is Islam Evil? An awful lot of it is and we have to admit it. Doing something about it is another topic.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".