Moderate and Conservative Islam

Submitted by Concerned European (Lithuania), Jan 11, 2007 at 02:13

[Hard-core Islamists are 20% of the world's Muslims? That's a crock, I would wager they aren't even 2%, and not all Islamists are Taliban-types. Moderate Islam is not a myth, it is the form of Islam preached in places like India, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Turkey - the form of Islam that accepts that they can only convert people if they wish to, and if they don't wish to it cannot be done.]

Islam which is preached in these countries for the most part is not moderate, it is conservative. There is some shade of difference between conservative Islam and Islamism and it lies mainly in the fact that the conservative Islam is found mainly in countries where Sharia is still strong and widely practiced and conservatism strives rather to retain the sharia in its classical form to extent in which it is practiced, while Islamism could more likely be found there where Sharia is already undermined by modernity (or it seems so to some) or where it has never existed(as in the West), and where, according to radical preachers it should be reestablished in full.

therefore Islamism, differently from simple conservatism, develops political doctrines and ways about how sharia should be established. Islamists are also more likely to make some cosmetical modifications of Sharia(not touching essence and often for tactical reason).

However since both conservative Islam and Islamism are serious about litteral, practical implementation of sharia in real life, conservatism could easily turn into Islamism once the conservatives perceive that the sharia is no more obeyed by the general population as it used to be before.

As for moderate Islam only such forms of Islam could be considered moderate which either do not care about the implementation of sharia, or reject it outright, or reinterpret sharia in such radical way that it ceases to be sharia in the classical sense, ie. the legal framework for the regulation of the everyday life of faithful.

[Radical Islam cannot be defeated on the battlefield - it is defeated in the mind.]

However Nazism and radical Shintoism were first defeated in the battlefield, and only later disappeared from minds. Even Communism disappeared from minds only then when it was defeated in economical competition.

[If a man sees American money build a school for his children and provide a job for him to support his family and make something of himself, is he gonna hate Americans? No.]

Unfortunately, yes. The man in street probably will start to say that the schools built by Americans is a conspiration to undermine the faith of his children or something of that kind.

[If the US forced Israel to give the West Bank to the Palestinians and then built infrastructrure to make Palestine a state on par economically with Israel would the Palestinians hate Israel so much?]

Britain and France have forced Czechoslovakia to give Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in 1938. And what happened later?

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