Reforming Islam or on changing a crocodile into a camel

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jan 10, 2006 at 16:58

Dear Aidan Maconachy , you wrote :

" Dear contributors -

Please go to Irshad Manji's site here ...

http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/ijtihad.html

Dear Aidan,
I started reading it and was quite surprised to learn the following revelations :


"Islam's lost tradition of independent thinking".

...Islam and independent thinking ???...Independent of what , if I may ask? ...of Islam????.. . Has such a thing/thinking ever existed or could it ever exist under Islam?...
But the author not only imples it did. It formed even a "tradition" ... sort of a thirteenth tribe of Israel that got lost during a lengthy wandering of Muslims over the desert of classical Islam ...

I hoped I was capable of a bit of independent thinking here and there but on reading that I sense there must be something wrong with my thinking. If the above statement turns out to be true I promise I will cherish no further wish to think.


> "In the early centuries of Islam, thanks to the spirit of ijtihad, 135 schools of thought thrived."

135 ?... I thought Muhammed had said after his death there would be 73 sects perverting his teaching but only one would avoid going to hell.


>Inspired by ijtihad, Muslims gave the world inventions from the astrolabe to the university.?

Oh, really ? How about e.g. Plato's Academy ?...I forgot he was also a Muslim after all ... probably a disguised prophet of Allah.

> ... the astrolable...

One more "Muslim invention"? ...

"The origins of the astrolabe were in classical Greece. Apollonius (ca. 225 BC), the great codifier of conic sections, probably studied the astrolabe projection."...
"The astrolabe was introduced to the Islamic world in the eighth and ninth centuries through translations of Greek texts."

http://www.astrolabes.org/history.htm


> " So much of we consider "western" pop culture came from Muslims: the guitar,

Isn't it a modern development of the ancient Greek "kithara" ? ...I forgot again, Muslims did contribute more goods and values to the Western culture than the Greeks ever dreamt of . It is what some medieval history books - and some medievallly-minded scholars - seem to teach us.

> mocha coffee,

This sounds more probable although there is also a different etymology of the word :
" perhaps rather from Kaffa region of Ethiopia, a home of the plant" ,

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=coffee

Whatever the etymology, there is no doubt that it came from Christian Ethiopia . And it should be also said that before coffee was allowed to become popular "independent" Islamic jurists and scholars had to pass an appropriate fatwa.

> even the ultra-Spanish expression "Ole!" (which has its root in the Arabic word for God, "Allah").

The below Spanish site tends to connect this expression with the Bible and Spanish wedding customs though.

http://etimologias.dechile.net/?ole.-


With all respect for Irshad Manji, let's face the evidence instead of dreaming of or promising false paradises of reformed Islam. Or if I may use this flowery oriental metaphor : " Calling a crocodile a camel is not enough to make people believe the crocodile is about to become a vegetarian again."
Jan

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