Can Islam be reformed?

Submitted by Carl A Goldberg (United States), May 19, 2021 at 00:16

I always find it somehow amusing when a non-Muslim tells religious Muslims how they should interpret and practice their religion. In this article, Dr. Pipes tells Muslims what they "must" do in order to change Islam, as it has been taught and preached by the most respected Islamic religious authorities for 1400 years, into a religion of modernity, tolerance and peace. Muslims must do this, and must do that.

Unfortunately, Dr. Pipes does not get down to brass tacks by citing any of the hateful, violent jihadist and misogynist verses of the Koran, and then showing us just how those literal words of Allah can be plausibly interpreted so that they mean the opposite of what they so clearly look like they mean. The Devil is always in the details, and Dr. Pipes does not give us any. Nor do the "anti-Islamist" Muslims whom Dr. Pipes says we should support as the only hope for changing Islam. Those "anti-Islamist" Muslims have practically no support in the Muslim world because they, like Dr. Pipes can offer no plausible peaceful reinterpretations of the Koran and the Sunnah. They are impotent, and, therefore, we should not waste our time supporting them. They do not speak to Muslims because Muslims will not listen to them.

In the meantime, those "anti-Islamist" Muslims are misleading the naive non-Moslem public into believing that Islam can somhow, someday be changed from malign to benign. That is a false hope, and it prevents the non-Moslem public from uniting against the Islamic threat which emanates, ultimately, from the mosques which teach and preach that the Koran is the literal, perfect, unchangeable and eternal word of Allah.

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