Islam's Two Futures are Related to Islam and Islamism

Submitted by Randall B (Israel), May 15, 2013 at 01:01

On Islam vs. Islamism

Thank you for your analysis, and work.

Very, briefly, I think that another perspective may join the positions on the two camps: "a. islam" and "b. islamism."

Basically, the islamic world is on a collision course with the rest of the world within the framework of things like UN declaration of human rights. This is somewhat different from the perspective of "what went wrong?" but the collision with the non-islamic world is similar.

1. That collision may produce an explosion, a self-disintegration, something like what happened to the Soviet system last century. Such a disintegration would effectively remove islam from the world stage. This might be the mechanism for the "islam" camp-view above, where 'an islamic looking in the mirror' will eventually have its effect.
2. Or that collision may produce a metamorphosis. This would be your position that islam will transform itself and repudiate/remove the islamist track. Moderate muslims will need to work hard to prevent the first mechanism from occurring.

Just like slavery is a thing of the past for defensible views of society, so is a denial of human rights. The 1990 Islamic conference subjugation of human rights to shari'a is probably only a temporary holding structure. Their statement shows that they appreciate the inherent contradiction.

I think both scenarios 1 and 2 are possible and we will probably see the result in the 21st century. While I'm not a professional "orientalist," I've been saying this since the 80's. Unfortunately, people suffer in collisions.

Thank you again for your useful commentary and research.

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