What alternatives to Shariatic Islam?

Submitted by Concerned European (Lithuania), Jan 10, 2007 at 05:19

Three alternatives to the radical islam could be the following:

-Converting of Muslims to non-Abrahamic faiths, as Hinduism or Buddhism. I do not believe that Muslims will ever convert to Christianity in great numbers, since for Muslims Christianity is only an imperfect version of Abrahamic religion with similar(but imperfect) concept of God and very similar conceptual framework, so I cannot imagine how Christianity could be made attractive to Muslims. Eg. Christian God seems for Muslims not sufficiently allmighty because he allows(or is incapable to prevent) some freedom and leeway in human acts. The idea of sin and total depravity also does not look plausible for Muslims - how a creature of the Perfect Creator could fall so low etc.

However Hinduism and Buddhism are conceptually very different religions from the Abrahamic ones with largely non-theist(but not atheist or agnostic) world-view. They are really alternative doctrines that maybe can be used to undermine and dismantle religious ideas offered by islamism and/or mainstream shariatic islam with better efficiency. Eg. even if oriental religion does usually have figures of personal gods, it can very well function completely without the idea of personal, theistic god simply by assuming the operation of Law of Karma.

- Atheization/agnostization of Muslims. It can work to certain extent. However given the fact that idea of God looms considerably larger in Islam than in Western culture consequently it is much more difficult for a Muslim to reject the idea of God altogether, even if he reads tons of Western critical and scientific writings.

-Finally, the alternative of shariatic Islam could be liberal, tolerant and broad minded form of Sufism ( I do not mean everything which is called Sufism, because certain forms as Sufism can be sufficiently intolerant and unliberal), what I mean is a genuinely liberal Sufism which views Sharia merely as external form/external manifestation of deeper spiritual and metaphysical truths and is therefore bent on allegorical interpretation of it and not necessarily eager to implement it in practice.

Only such kind of Islam could be genuinely moderate. Some important points are that in liberal Sufism the sainthood (which is eternal) is viewn more important than the prophethood and sharia (which is temporal) and that Sufis stress that "every day He is with a new task". consequently no kind of Sharia could exhaust the Divine Plan and change is inevitable. I remember reading about a Sudanese Sufi who preached that only the fundamental principles of the Meccan suras are eternal, while the laws of the Medinan Suras are temporary, and was killed by the Sudanese junta for that.

A kind of Islam which puts emphasis on litteral adherence and implementation of Sharia norms, even if it is not outrightly radical and violent(it needs not be such) and even if it puts little emphasis on Jihad(what quite often happened in various periods in the past) , is nevertheless too little adaptative, too much inflexible, and this failure to adapt will sooner or later would lead to troubles. The adept of such Islam is a reactive man(to use the terminology of Nietszche) who merely reacts to the environment, is unable to create anything positive and is always late to cope with changes. And those who are always late, are angry. That is the thing that such otherwise smart and thinking people and apparently sincere Sufis like Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Abdul Hakim Murad and Hamza Yusuf Hanson fail to appreciate and this lack of awareness pushes them towards islamism.

The idea that Quran has come down through a long and complex historical process and that Muhammad is rather a symbolic figure, could rather help towards liberal kind of Islam since it shatters many of the assumptions of the litteral Shariatism, but hardly touches the essence of allegoric Sufism. It may be that Quran was not delivered singlehandedly by the person Muhammed, however, a Sufi would say, the symbolical and metaphysical Muhammedan Reality has presided over every person who wrote down Qur'an and over every bit of it.

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