If Islamic doctrines are inherently violent, why isn’t every single Muslim in the world—that is, approximately 1.5 billion people—violent?
This question represents one of Islam’s most popular apologias: because not all Muslims are violent, intolerant, or sponsor terrorism—a true statement—Islam itself must be innocent.
Let’s briefly consider this logic.
First, there are, in fact, many people who identify themselves as Muslims but who do not necessarily adhere to or support Islam’s more supremacist and intolerant doctrines. If you have lived in a Muslim majority nation, you would know this to be true.
The all-important question is, what do such Muslims represent? Are they following a legitimate, “moderate,” version of Islam—one more authentic than the terrorist variety? That’s what the media, politicians, and academics would have us believe.
The best way to answer this question is by analogy:
German Nazism is a widely condemned ideology, due to its (“Aryan/white”) supremacist element . But the fact is, many Germans who were members or supporters of the Nazi party were “good” people. They did not believe in persecuting Jews and other “non-Aryans,” and some even helped such “undesirables” escape, at no small risk to themselves.
Consider Oskar Schindler. An ethnic German and formal member of the Nazi party, he went to great lengths to save Jews from slaughter.
How do we reconcile his good deed with his bad creed?
Was Schindler practicing a legitimate, “moderate,” form of Nazism? Or is it more reasonable to say that he subscribed to some tenets of National Socialism, but when it came to killing fellow humans in the name of racial supremacy, his humanity rose above his allegiance to Nazism?
Indeed, many Germans joined or supported the National Socialist Party more because it was the “winning” party, one that offered hope, and less because of its racial theories.
That said, other Germans joined the Nazi party precisely because of its racial supremacist theories and were only too happy to see “sub-humans” incinerated.
Now consider how this analogy applies to Islam and Muslims: first, unlike most Germans who chose to join or support the Nazi party, the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world were simply born into Islam; they had no choice. Many of these Muslims know the bare minimum about Islam—the Five Pillars—and are ignorant of Islam’s supremacist theories.
Add Islam’s apostasy law to the mix—leaving Islam can earn the death penalty—and it becomes clear that there are many nominal “Muslims” who seek not to rock the boat.
That said, there are also a great many Muslims who know exactly what Islam teaches—including violence, plunder, and enslavement of the kafir, or infidel—and who happily follow it precisely because of its supremacism.
In both Nazism and Islam, we have a supremacist ideology on the one hand, and people who find themselves associated with this ideology for a number of reasons on the other hand: from those born into it, to those who join it for its temporal boons, to those who are sincere and ardent believers.
The all-important difference is this: when it comes to Nazism, the world is agreed that it is a supremacist ideology. Those who followed it to the core were “bad guys”—such as Adolf Hitler. As for the “good Nazis,” who helped shelter persecuted Jews and performed other altruistic deeds, the world acknowledges that they were not following a “moderate” form of Nazism, but that their commitment to Nazism was nonchalant at best.
This is the correct paradigm to view Islam and Muslims with: Islam does contain violent and supremacist doctrines. This is a simple fact. Those who follow it to the core were and are “bad guys”—for example, Osama bin Laden. Still, there are “good Muslims.” Yet they are good not because they follow a good, or “moderate,” Islam, but because they are not thoroughly committed to Islam in the first place.
Put differently, was Schindler’s altruism a product of “moderate Nazism” or was it done in spite of Nazism altogether? Clearly the latter. In the same manner, if a Muslim treats a non-Muslim with dignity and equality, is he doing so because he follows a legitimate brand of “moderate Islam,” or is he doing so in spite of Islam, because his own sense of decency compels him?
Considering that Islamic law is unequivocally clear that non-Muslims are to be subjugated and live as third-class “citizens”—the Islamic State’s many human rights abuses vis-à-vis non-Muslims are a direct byproduct of these teachings—clearly any Muslim who treats “infidels” with equality is behaving against Islam.
So why is the West unable to apply the Nazi paradigm to the question of Islam and Muslims? Why is it unable to acknowledge that Islamic teachings are inherently supremacist, though obviously not all Muslims are literally following these teachings—just like not all members of any religion are literally following the teachings of their faith?
This question becomes more pressing when one realizes that, for over a millennium, the West deemed Islam an inherently violent and intolerant cult. Peruse the writings of non-Muslims from the dawn of Islam up until recently—from Theophanes the Confessor (d. 818) to Winston Churchill (d. 1965)—and witness how they all depicted Islam as a violent creed that thrives on conquering, plundering, and subjugating the “other.” (Here are Marco Polo’s thoughts).
The problem today is that the politically correct establishment—academia, mainstream media, politicians, and all other talking heads—not ones to be bothered with reality or history, have made it an established “fact” that Islam is “one of the world’s great religions.” Therefore, the religion itself—not just some of its practitioners —is inviolable to criticism.
The point here is that identifying the negative elements of an ideology and condemning it accordingly is not so difficult. We have already done so, with Nazism and other ideologies and cults. And we know the difference between those who follow such supremacist ideologies (“bad” people), and those who find themselves as casual, uncommitted members (good or neutral people).
In saner times when common sense could vent and breathe, this analogy would have been deemed superfluous. In our times, however, where lots of nonsensical noise is disseminated far and wide by the media—and tragically treated as serious “analysis”—common sense must be methodically spelled out: Yes, an ideology/religion can be accepted as violent or even evil, and no, many of its adherents need not be violent or evil—they can even be good—for the reasons discussed above.
This is the most objective way to understand the relationship between Islam as a body of teachings and Muslims as individual people. It’s also the best way to respond to the apologia that, if Islam is inherently supremacist and violent, why isn’t every single Muslim so.
Very well and eloquently said.
Needs dissemination so as to be read by all high talking heads.
Greets to the author!
Very good!
Islamofascism is more dangerous than Nazism because Islamofascism uses all of its adherents as infiltrators into other regions where nonMuslims are in the majority. Nazism may have attempted to do this to some degree, but did not have the “religion” subterfuge to fall back on whenever their methods and motives were discovered and challenged. Islamofascism does have the “religion” subterfuge working for them, and they use it very handily to their advantage, in all situations where governments and individuals become suspicious of their motives and methods. As a group, and worldwide, it is now the prevailing notion that all religions have equal rights to grow, convert new members, and spread into all other lands, without any distinction to be made as to what the precise teachings and preachings may be for each specific religion or faith. This leaves the Western democracies jugular exposed for attack, and only in certain areas where Islamofascist chaos is now breaking out like a plague, are people waking up and beginning the long struggle back to the light and to rationality.
Jay, very correctly said.
In addition, Nazism grew on a soil of century-long Christian culture, and after the 13 years (1933-1945) of its manifestation it was quickly abandoned, with nearly no trace. It couldn’t take any deep root.
Islam is purposely made to be and is much more endurable and well rooting. To add, Islam is considered an ordinary religion and that’s why a few turn against it – and even try to understand it – as against the Nazism.
That primarily happens in the West, indeed, where democracies remain exposed to penetration while remaining weak and indecisive.
On the contrary – decisive steps need to be taken in the beginning and not when it will be too late or even impossible.
Since Schindler turned against the German war-effort, I think it’s safe to say he had abandoned Nazism.
An example that might fit your thesis closer would be John Rabe. He stayed (misguidedly) loyal to the Fuehrer at the time he was rescuing pretty much the core of Nanjing.
There are Muslims who are not truly devoted to their faith, and are “good people”. However, there are also the “sleepers” – those who will appear to be moderate or “good people”, but will reveal their true selves when Islam power prevails; these are the people you read about in Iraq who turned against their neighbors of a lifetime, once ISIS arrived. The problem is that you don’t know which are uncommitted and may really be “good people” and which are “sleepers”.
Or they do things here and there like lawsuits or discrimination stunts that, while obviously not bankrupting society overnight, slowly drains from the coffers and into the hands of places like CAIR and other Muslim organizations.
Personally, I wouldn’t trust ANY Muslim farther than I could thrust him.
Excellent article. Another thing to note is that jihad in the cause of Allah (fi sabilillah) is a communally obligatory (fard al-kifayah) religious duty in all four Sunni madhhab (school of thought) among the Ummah, so some people know that it isn’t individually obligatory (fard al-’ayn), therefore they don’t need to wage jihad, despite it being the highest moral (in the Islamic sense) deed a Muslim can do (Qur’an 9:20). We look at the Mujahideen of the Islamic State and, from a non-Islamic perspective, we view them as bad people/Muslims. Rightfully so. But from an Islamic perspective, they’re the best Muslims, and are doing the highest moral deed and act of worship (ibadah) a Muslim can do. And a Muslim is defined by a number of things, including their submission to Allah, the obligatory prayer, iman (five articles of faith), tawheed (Islamic concept of monotheism), al-wala wal-bara (obligatory love of what Allah loves and hate of unbelief, “wickedness, and rebellion,” so Muslims are also supposed to hate Christians, Jews, unbelief, “wickedness, and rebellion.” The Mujahideen are submitting to Allah more than the Muslims who are living in dar al-kufr/harb (the land of unbelief/war), where it’s forbidden for them to associate themselves with the kuffar, as per the Qur’an (7:3, 25:52, 33:48, etc). Associating oneself with the kuffar or associating any partner (whether it be a god or anything in general) with Allah is kufr, therefore one becomes a murtad (apostate) and leaves the Deen of Islam. The majority of what we see among Muslims, where they pray five times a day and aren’t waging jihad fi sabilillah, we take that this fundamentally represents their Deen, but this is false. It’s the other way around. From an Islamic perspective, all the Mujahideen of the Islamic State are submitting to Allah greatly, and especially because they’re Salafis. There is tawheed in the Islamic State, there is Allah’s word as the absolute highest authority in the land, there is the Khilafah governing system (24:55). These are some of the fundamentals of Islam. In the US, these Muslims don’t fundamentally visually represent the Deen. The Nazism analogy is perfect. Many Muslims are ignorant, or are scared to kill kuffar because they have humanity and could never think of doing such a thing, or they don’t adhere to the concept of sacred love and hate (al-wala wal-bara), where then, if they are in dar al-harb, then da’wah and hisbah (commanding right and forbidding) would be obligatory, but they could not ally themselves with the kuffar. The only allies of Muslims are Muslims themselves, Allah, and his messenger (rasul) Muhammad (5:56).
Well, said, 563F23789, yours also needs dissemination and familiarization at high levels.
Why our politicians, “intellectuals” and media does not recognize Islam as a violent creed, like they did with nazism?
Because we had to and still have to fight nazism, and we had to ban it.
If we apply the above (and correct) logic, we will have to ban and fight Islam, until we eradicate it as much as we can.
But how will we fight 1.5 billion people, who at the same time constitute to be a huge trading partner for us? Never mind that Muslim leaders already bought all our politicians, media and the so called “intelligentsia”.
“Moderate” should be replaced by “inconsistent.” One cannot consistently live by faith–no matter what the content of the faith–and live. Adherents of Judaism and Christianity live more consistently by reason than by faith post-Enlightenment. The Islamic world has yet to go through an Enlightenment, thus more Muslims live relatively more consistently by faith than by reason compared to Jews and Christians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJjD-a0qMFo
The criterion of “am I forcing my views on others?” is not the best criterion. Inflicting a self-harming belief on yourself voluntarily is even worse.
the problem with this article is that it fails to mention the part that jihad takes many forms of which lying is a basic form and how to teach people to tell between a taqiyya dribbling moslem and a good person who happens to be born a moslem.
When I show moslems its intolerance and hatred in their Koran, they have all – yes **ALL**, have done nothing but bash, deny, excuse away, etc their stuff.
When they do that it shortens the list of ‘good people who happen to be moslems’.
Hitler’s appeal to Germans was fundamentally based in nationalism. Since
Bismark and up until 1918, Germany unified and gained strength
politically and economically. After WW I, the allies – led by Britain, who had feared Germany as a threat to its own waning empire, France, which had feared Germany’s power since the Franco-Prussian war, and the United States – sought to preclude Germany from ever becoming a European power via the Treaty of Versailles. Germany was vindictively treated as the villain of WW I, its economy destroyed,
and its national identity and pride intentionally crushed.
Hitler appealed to Germans’ latent and forbidden nationalism. They embraced
his nationalistic ambitions and continually accepted – either implicitly or explicitly – its increasingly apparent virulent excesses as part of the effort to promote and preserve German nationalism and a strong and prosperous Germany.
Islam is a supranational religion and ideology, while Hitler’s ideology was primarily national in goals and appeal. Since Islam doesn’t acknowledge national boundaries, it’s a much greater global threat than Hitler ever was. “Uncommitted/Moderate/Uncommitted/Nominal” the world over would celebrate, accept or acquiesce to the imposition of Sharia law and Islamic theocracies as necessary to promote and preserve Islam, regardless that it persecutes non-believers, enslaves them, or relegates them to an inferior caste with diminished social,
political, and economic rights.
Muslims no matter where they live, are of two groups. First the ones that have become Muslims by reading the Quran and decided to lead their lives based on its instructions. These groups of people actually behave according to what has been asked from them, which include all the those that are wrongly known as extreme or radical Islamic group but in fact they are the only Islamic people.
Second group are the ones that have not reviewed the Quran in their lives, but they just got to become Muslim through inheritance or marriage, and as a result do not have exact idea what has been asked them to do, they just heard the good things from their parents about Islam as their parents have heard the same things from their parents. These group are wrongly known as moderate Muslim but in fact they are the ones who are lost in their lives and cannot be label as Muslims since they follow a grey and artificial pattern of faith, which is nonexistent.
Very well said. I would argue that the law of non-contradiction renders the dichotomy between radical/extremist and moderate muslims false. This is so simple in my view. Islam is defined by its authoritative texts – Qur’an and Hadith – and Muslims are those that accept them as true and follow them. The person who refuses to follow the immoral teachings of Islam is not a Muslim. At best that person is a Muslim in name only, or an apostate. Mass ignorance of what Islam teaches does not change that or solve the problem of those that do understand it: IS, Boko Haram, Hamas, al Qaeda, etc., and practice it. I love Raymond and his work, and I believe he is a brilliant scholar, but the analogy he is making here is based on a false dichotomy. The Germans that didn’t necessarily agree with the totalitarian ideology of Nazism and were morally repulsed by the murder of Jews and non-Germans, but nevertheless supported the government and hence the war were Nazis. They had a moral obligation to fight against it, and they didn’t. There can be no middle ground; it’s like a woman claiming she is half-pregnant. If the West is going to survive, we need to confront Islam for what it is: IMMORAL, and thus FALSE. Those Muslims who are ignorant of Islamic tenets and otherwise want to live moral lives need to be confronted with this and decide who they are going to support. Islam is at war with the world, it always has been and always will be. The West is so mired in the fallacy of moral relativism that it can’t confront it, which is why it remains and continues to expand. Anyway, that’s just my $.02. Thanks for reading.
OK, here are some thoughts of mine: first, Germans & Nazis dilemma can be justified by the Germans’ fear from getting killed by Nazis if they protest against them, while the silence of allegedly moderate Muslims versus radical Islamic groups is not necessarily a reflection of fear. Second, if you ask the allegedly moderate Muslims’ view on any of the Quran Instructions that violates the principle of human rights, do you think they admit that Quran has such immoral command? By sure they would reject such a claim due to their lack of knowledge, because they have not reviewed the Quran or Sharia, but they remember the good hadiths they heard from their parents. On the other hand, those allegedly Moderate Muslims who admit and believe such claims are the true Islamic faith that they follow then they are in fact fitted in the radical Muslims groups, if they are keeping their silence and not saying anything against the brutal acts of radical groups is because they agree with them and have been waiting for the first opportunity they get to join them. They cannot publicize their inclination toward the radicals because they have been trapped within the standards and laws that govern the civil societies, once they get these laws changed into Sharia laws, you will see how they rush to join the radicals.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I agree that fear and, I would add, propaganda were used to control the German population, whose firearms had been taken by the Nazi government early on so that they couldn’t fight back. Nevertheless, if the so-called majority of peaceful Germans, and in particular, Lutherans, had all protested, then Hitler and his henchman would have been left without an army and a population to supply that army if he tried to kill them all. I contend that WWII would have been much different and the number of people killed during it, over 50 million, if the German masses would have protested. I think the Germans were more like the moderate Muslims you describe who will throw in with the jihadis when the timing is right. I don’t think that is due to being trapped within the laws of civil societies, but instead it is because they aren’t ready to risk their lives like the jihadis. It doesn’t make them any less of a Muslim or a threat to free societies. I no longer buy the argument that Muslims don’t know or should be excused not knowing the totalitarian tenets that Islam teaches. We are living in the information age with exceptionally high literacy rates, and the jihadis cite chapter and verse of the Qur’an and Hadith to justify their actions. While the comparison makes for some interesting discussion, I simply don’t think it advances the ball toward confronting the problem of Islam, and its totalitarian goal of ruling the world. Free societies who believe in the protection of basic human rights have a moral obligation to its children and citizenry to confront Islam for what it is: an immoral totalitarian ideology that deserves no quarter in our free societies or on the planet. Our very survival depends on it. In addition, I think Muslims, who have been indoctrinated into it, and therefore victimized by it, need to be confronted with the truth. Thank you again Mansur.
Well JustThinking, your reasoning makes sense if your target people are the ones that live in the western civilization who follow common sense in leading their lives. I ask you to take a trip to any country in Middle East, for example Iraq or Iran, and participate in their Friday prayers ceremonies; you will witness there are people whose beliefs in faith have not been formed through reading or research but through devotion to some religious figures who decree and adjudge religious orders and directions (Fatwa). Most of the knowledge that form these people’s faith are shaped through the sacred decrees that come from these adjudicators, if today they say this food is religiously prohibited, the masses obey and follow their orders, and if tomorrow they make it legal to eat the same food, the masses again obey and follow the order. In other words, in leading their lives these masses don’t refer to their wisdom but to what they are ordered. Now when these masses migrate to western societies, unless they find an adjudicator to follow his religious command they have no clue how to direct their lives, they feel lost and become silent.
Thank you Mansur. I have never been to Iraq or Iran, and on my bucket list, it is at least ten items below shooting myself in the head. I can only speak about my many interactions with English speaking Muslims, who are intelligent and anything but clueless about how to direct their lives. I have no doubt that a large number of those chaps will fall in with the jihadists if the jihadists were to get the upper hand. And as all western countries should know by now, such Muslims will never take steps to remove the jihadists among them or implement programs in their mosques that teach why the jihadists are wrong. In any event, the “target” is Islam and every person that practices it or gives it quarter. As long as Islam is accepted as a moral ideology, free societies will continue to be attacked by the people who practice it. The “moral relativism” which seems to dominate western thinking is going to surrender to the sword of Islam if western societies continue on the current course. Its a daunting task, but there is no choice. Thank you again.
OK, this is what I’ve had in mind for some long time, a solution to the current Islamic dilemma that the world has been entangled with. There are plenty of passages in the Koran and other Muslim tracts that justify killing Jews, Christians, and nonconformists who refuse to submit to Islam. Anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, deemed to have insulted Islam according to various rules of Islamic jurisprudence, might be flogged, imprisoned or executed. Unlike Jews and Christians, who have addressed arguably comparable biblical language and updated their texts, Islam has not rejected its bloodthirsty religious doctrine as a relic of the past. On the contrary, in a significant part of the Muslim world, Islamists find justification in this language. The tolerance of religious beliefs and practices outside Islam cannot be possible within Islam unless its doctrine changes track. It is time for Islam to get itself a modern revision that fits the today society and this can only be done by the Islamic leaders in the world. They are the ones that can make their Islamic communities understand the vital need for a change in the Islamic doctrine and that the Quran should be reinterpreted to fit into the current age.
Egypt President, General Al SiSi himself asserted the vital need for such change in his speech addressed to Islamic leaders, part of the speech:
“You cannot see things clearly when you are locked in this ideology, you must emerge from it and look from outside in order to get closer to a truly enlightened ideology. We must oppose it with resolve, let me say it again we need to revolutionize our religion. The world in its entirety awaits your words, because the Islamic nation is being torn apart, destroyed, and is heading to perdition; we ourselves are bringing it to perdition.”
The problem is among the western politicians, Obama and western leaders are on denial that Islam principle is the root of terrorism. There should be a universal will and support for people like Al Sisi to be able to tackle such an important matter, until then the world won’t see the peace it deserves.
Thanks Mansur. I think your ideas are excellent, but besides Al Sisi and perhaps the King of Jordan, I just don’t see that happening. Why? Islam’s authoritative texts and 1400 years of scholarship surrounding them will have to be re-written and re-interpreted. It’s like trying to divide the baby in half, it kills the baby, and Muslims, who believe that the Qur’an is the perfectly preserved word of God, won’t stand for it. To eliminate or re-interpret the immoral sections would be a rejection of God to a Muslim. I just don’t see that working. I agree with your assessment of Western leaders. But they are by a large degree a reflection of the populations they govern. The masses are going to have to change their thinking about Islam and demand that their leaders take steps to address it. Raymond wrote an article a couple of weeks ago correctly criticizing the Pope for making climate change the number problem in the world, instead of the persecution of Christians and non-Islamic people in the Muslim world. You will find after that article a post from me piling on to Christian leadership of all denominations for their silence and inaction on this issue. I am afraid that, just as the world capitulated with Nazi Germany which lead to mass murder, the same is going to happen with Islam. With modern day nuclear and chemical weapons, the casualties are going to be much higher, and whether Western civilization survives is in question. Courtesy of Obama,the UN, and the Russians, Iran is about to have nuclear weapons. The mullahs have made it clear that they intend to use them, first against Israel and then the Great Satan in the West, all in an effort to bring back the Mahdi. Its madness of epoch proportions, and I hope and pray that Western populations wake up. Thank you again, Mansur.
Well JustThinking, Sorry to say that I am still on my opinion, I agree it is going to be very hard to initiate the cause for modernizing the interpretation of Quran but it is not impossible as it has happened with Bible and Torah. Protest and demonstration against the radicals may give a short solution however won’t bring a permanent solution as long as the (wrong) ideology is alive. No matter how many times you kill Nazis, there is always a chance for it to come back, it is the same for radical Islam. IT IS THE BAD IDEOLOGY THAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED so that the future young generations have no recollection of the old wicked Islamic texts.
Thanks Mansur, I respect your opinion. I respectfully argue, however, that your analogy between the Quran and the Bible is false. If you study both books, you will find that they differ considerably, like night and day in my opinion. You will also find that there has been no “modernizing” of the Bible. I assume you were referring to the Protestant Reformation with that term, and if you study that, you will find that conflict centered around the movement to return to and follow the authoritative text of the New Testament and reject the traditions and cannons of the Catholic Church, which were, at best, loosely connected to them. You are proposing the opposite with Islam. To modernize it, the authoritative texts which command Muslims to behave immorally will either need to be removed or re-interpreted to change their otherwise unambiguous meaning. You are expecting the Muslim community to play Allah with Allah’s words. That’s never going to happen. An ideology is defined by the ideology’s authoritative texts. Islam is a clearly defined ideology, and removing or re-interpreting its texts will result in a new ideology. As I said in my first post to you, which I think you agree with, the moderate – radical terms create a false dichotomy. The Nazi ideology wasn’t changed, it was defeated. When Germany and for that Japan were defeated after WWII, the Allies installed governments that rejected and outlawed their ideologies. Accordingly, the surviving population was forced to reject them as well. Islam is immoral, and until the West confronts it on that basis, we are going to see the violence and atrocities that Muslims commit continue to occur and escalate. Anyway, thanks for reading, and for the civil dialog.
Civil dialog, of course it is, I am pretty sure Jews and Christians at some point of history have addressed arguably comparable biblical language, although this matter may be trivial in regard to Bible since Jesus himself, contrary to Muhammad who was a violent person, was personally a peaceful man and can be expected that his book should represent morality. However this matter is true about the Torah, I did not read the book myself but I was witnessed a documentary assertion of a Jewish scholar on the modification of Torah over time.
Regardless, let’s get back to the point. The Nazis can come back any time of history because as you said, it was confronted and stopped by force, which means they killed the people representing the ideology of Nazism but they did not kill the ideology, even though rejected or outlawed but was left intact, exactly my point. I understand your point when you talk of Muslim initial response to this change, which would seem an impossible mission, but the key here is the method and the timing of the approach to this cause.
This cause requires the cooperation of Islamic leaders and scholars, political leaders, support of international communities, LONG-TERM COMPREHENSIVE CULTURAL PROGRAMS at all levels of civic societies, from education institutes, schools and colleges, to religious churches to art and recreation centers, to Medias, etc. And the focus will be on children and the young generation. Alongside such across-the-board teaching and training over a long period of time, gradual interpretation of the Islamic text can be taken place. This cause would also require dedications and commitments of responsible people who value and respect the human rights of mankind. This approach is not a short term methodology, it may take a decade or two, however it prepares the minds to accept the unacceptable contrary to conventional methods, which makes it almost impossible to do so.
Unlike the NT and TaNaKh, which are in most parts descriptive text written by ‘inspired’ humans retelling historical events, the Koran is prescriptive and believed not to be of human origin.
The Koran is believed to be a true copy of the Umm al-Kitab, the mother of all books that is with Allah. This is the one unsolvable problem for Muslims who would wish to re-interpret or modernize Islam. To do so would place them outside of Islam as apostates and guilty of shirk.
You cannot re-interpret or modernize the Koran. You can only leave it behind.
Thank you Raoul. I did not know that about the Qur’an, i.e., it is a copy of the Umm al-Kitab. I agree with your conclusion. I think Mansur is well intentioned, but I would bet on Stephen Hawking winning the world championship in arm wrestling before betting on the Qur’an being re-interpreted or re-written. Of course, even if I thought there was a chance of doing that, I still would adopt your approach. Why? Because the Qur’an, even if stripped of the violent and immoral teachings, can’t be true. That is the tragedy of Islam – there are over 1.5 billion people worldwide and no doubt billions more who have already gone to their graves whose existence is/was spent with a worldview that is false. I recently dialoged with a Muslim, a nice man with an engineering degree, who claimed that the Qur’an is 100% correct in all scientific matters. He claimed the Qur’an correctly stated the earth is round. I didn’t argue with him over the verses that say the earth is flat. Instead, I took him to Sura 18:83-86 where it says the sun sets in a spring of black muddy hot water and the hadith, Sunan Abu Dawud 3991, where Muhammad said the same thing. The poor man didn’t know what to say, and quickly ended the conversation when I asked him how he felt about believing in an ideology that was false. Thanks again.
The problem is that unlike the previous books which were by ‘witnesses’, the Quran claims to be God’s actual word/writing delivered to Mohammed (even tho it’s just Mohammed pretending to be God). So changing it would be the epitome of blasphemy, which is why Muslims proudly repeat how ‘there is only one quran, and it hasn’t changed since day 1″ (as if that were some sort of proof of it being the truth, as opposed to anyone who tried to change it was killed by other men)
And you are the one to prejudge them? Ignorance is bliss
Excellent!
(As always.)
How Nazism Explains ‘Moderate’ and ‘Radical’ Islam
For me one does not explain the other as both contain the exact same replicants of the construct of Other. They are in essence the other.
Please Explain: Nazi (Hitler-Mein Kampf) & Muslim (Mohammed-Quran) Cultural Codex Construct of Other. Why it is One Is and One Is-Not. Yet both = “I don’t mean participated, I mean observed.”
http://citizensfirstasnau.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/i-dont-mean-participated-i-mean-observed_23.html
http://shariaunveiled.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/hitler-a-muslim.jpg
I have to repeat my friend below..EXCELLENT ARTICLE.
I have tried some of these well-laid out plans on various people and they just cannot, or will not, understand what I am trying to tell them.
We lived in Iran and of all the muslims we met, we only knew one who we considered a practicing and dedicated muslim. We called him Hajji since he made the pilgrimage, but he was not a friendly man at all even when a guest in our home.
Another odd coincidence. Muslims claim Islam translates to “Peace”, while the Nazis used a symbol that was originally meaning “Good Luck”. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, indeed.
This is by far the most pathetic blog or website or crap that I have ever come across in 40 years in dealing and researching Nazism. By far the closest ideology and practice to Nazism is Zionism (period). Even did a report for CIA on the subject. Get your facts straight..fools.