Changing Islam

Submitted by Gloria Stewart (United States), May 27, 2014 at 15:32

re: Dr. Pipes response to dimmi no more. A nation can quite easily have a democracy without women clergy. Whether it is proper or not aside, these are ecclesiastical matters, not secular ones. The Catholic Church does not allow women to be priests, and its presence in the US for centuries has not added to or subtracted from our democracy.

The inequality between men and women and between Muslims and non-Muslims is in the Koran and is further strengthened by the Sira and Haddith. The death penalty for apostasy deprives one of freedom of religion. The sanction to kill those who blaspheme Islam (there is a very low benchmark) and to be free from punishment is a call to vigilante law. How can this comport with democracy?

If Islam changed these matters it would no longer be Islam. Reformations are based on basic doctrines that the reformers use to say that the religion has, at some point in its history, gone astray. If Islamic reformers want to go back to basic documents, there is nothing they can change.

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