Posted on 07/08/2013 4:24:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
For years, terrible and violent crimes have been committed in the name of Islam. Does that mean Islam is inherently a religion of terrible violence?
The scholar Daniel Pipes has long argued that it is a mistake to attribute the evils committed by Muslim supremacists and jihadist killers to Islam itself, or to the text of the Koran and the hadith, the religion's sacred scriptures. Like every great faith, Islam is what its adherents make of it. Today, many of those adherents are influenced by Islamism, the militant totalitarian version of Islam that emerged in the 20th century. The Islamist ascendancy is reflected in the savageries of al-Qaeda, the brutal misogyny of the Taliban, the apocalyptic hostility of the regime in Iran.
But just as the nightmare of the Third Reich was far from the totality of German culture and character, so Islam's 1,400-year history is not encapsulated by the violent ugliness of the present moment. In other eras, Muslim society was known for its learning, tolerance, and moderation. "If things can get worse, they can also get better," Pipes writes in the current issue of Commentary. As recently as 1969, when he began his career in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, Islamist extremism was all but unknown in world affairs. "If Islamism can thus grow, it can also decline."
Since 9/11, Pipes has summarized his approach to the threat from Islamist terror and oppression with the maxim "Radical Islam is the problem; moderate Islam is the solution." Obviously radical Muslims disagree — but even Turkey's Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, often held out as the face of moderate political Islam, rejects the distinction, insisting that "Islam is Islam and that's it."
Many non-Muslims disagree, too. The prominent Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who wants the Koran to be banned in Holland, maintains that Islam and Islamism are "exactly the same" and that moderate Islam is "totally nonexistent." Islam is not a religion like Christianity or Judaism, Wilders told me in a 2009 interview. "It's an ideology that wants to dominate every aspect of society."
To those who hold this essentialist view, Islam's teachings are immutable; the values promoted by the Koran and other Islamic scriptures are today what they have always been and always will be. By this argument, the backwardness, repression, and violent incitement against non-Muslims that hold sway in much of the contemporary Muslim world don't reflect a particularly harsh and unenlightened interpretation of Islam — theyare Islam.
Not true, asserts Pipes. "Only … by ignoring more than a millennium of actual changes in the Koran's interpretation" — on topics ranging from jihad to the role of women to slavery – "can one claim that the Koran has been understood identically over time." Take the Koran's famous injunction (2:256) that "there be no compulsion in religion." Is that a call for universal religious tolerance? Does it apply only to the various denominations within Islam? Was it limited to non-Muslims in seventh-century Arabia? Is it to be understood as purely symbolic? Does it protect only non-Muslims who agree to live under Muslim rule? Was it overridden by a subsequent Koranic verse?
As Pipes and other scholars have shown, the correct elucidation of the phrase is: All of the above. There is no monolithic reading of that seemingly straightforward passage. Muslim authorities have variously given it completely incompatible interpretations.
Like all religions, Islam changes. And like all scripture, the meaning of the Koran's text depends on its expounders. The words may be enduring, but the lessons drawn from them need not be. The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament also contain passages whose normative meanings changed as the faiths based on them evolved. Do Jesus' words in the gospel of Matthew — "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" – mean that Christianity is not a religion of peace? The answer to that question is not the same today as it would have been during the Crusades or Europe's wars of religion.
It is only fanatics who believe that they alone are in possession of the sole correct answer to every important question, and entitled to enforce it through power and persecution. The credo of the Muslim Brotherhood, which until last week's coup was Egypt's ruling party, declares categorically that "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way." That authoritarian, supremacist line — the Islamists' line — is only one understanding of Islam. As millions of Egyptian citizens have made clear in recent days, it is by no means unanimous.
Radical Islam — not Islam itself — is the menace that must be defeated. In that struggle we have no more invaluable allies than moderate Muslims. Pretending they don't exist helps no one but the Islamists.
Islam = lies
Islam = lies of an old pedophile terrorist named Muhammad
Japanese militarism grew - and then declined - in the last century.
Pure, unadulterated irredeemable insanity
For years, terrible and violent crimes have been committed in the name of Islam. Does that mean Islam is inherently a religion of terrible violence?
A correction. Not for years but for centuries.
Yes islam is inherently evil. Anyone reading the Koran can come to no other conclusion. Anyone studying the history of muslim country’s and cultures can come to know other conclusion.
islam is a death cult that uses oppression torture and terror to achieve its goals.
BUMP
btw - your link to the article is going to the photo, not the article
Nor is this the first manifestation of extremism in Islam. The Kharijite movement of the late 7th Century AD also flourished and ultimately burned itself out.
Things like this come and go in waves; such is the nature of all religions and movements. They wax and wane.
This article is pure BS written by either a knowing Muslim apologist or a useful idiot to Islam.
Geert Wilders is right — Islam and “Islamism” ARE exactly the same. If you believe anything other than this, you are deluded.
Evil.
“Like every great faith....”
Haha....I stopped reading at that early point in the article. Islam is no more a religion than Nazism, or communism or any other ism....
I think this country has lost patience with these people. We’re one click away from totally declaring war on them in this country...All it will take is some dispicable act like killing one of our soldiers on the street.
Come on.. make our day...
“By this argument, the backwardness, repression, and violent incitement against non-Muslims that hold sway in much of the contemporary Muslim world don’t reflect a particularly harsh and unenlightened interpretation of Islam — they are Islam.”
Twelve years after 9/11, I still await the “moderate” Muslims to voice their rejection of the act. My patience is wearing thin.
The name of my pot belly pig?
This post has a nice rundown: http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3022557/posts?page=27#27
Islam needs to be treated today as the German American Bund was treated during WWII. Any muslim is an enemy of the state simply by identifying themself as muslim. Mosques should be shut down.
No, they should not be arrested, but including them in our military is lunacy.
When Moslems had the means, even before the death of Mohammed, they conquered the Arabian peninsula and large portions of the Middle East and North Africa, then they turned to Persia, India, Europe and other areas. It was non-stop invasion and conquering for several centuries.
When Moslems have the means, they invade and conquer and subjugate. It’s now been several centuries since they’ve had the means to be a major military power. But they have developed new tactics, primarily terrorism and invasion by immigration and the womb.
It’s just PC to look for any excuse to say Islam is not a violent religion, but looking at the history and the present, there’s never been a shortage Moslems who find more than enough justification to use violence to advance whatever they believe to be their cause.
It is a faith and way of life which breeds ignorance, slavery, violence, incest, rape, cruelty, severe punishment and complete obedience or blind subservience to authority and lastly, Holy War.
The main crux of the faith rests on two possible states of the world existence:
Dar al Hareb
or Dar al Islam
Dar al Hareb is the world in conflict, a world in flux, the world with the scimitar, an imperfect world because there are many nonbelievers of Allah and Muhammad. Islam lives on the sword forcibly converting nonbelievers (Infidels) to the faith of Islam. Look at their flags, they all have a crescent moon and maybe a sword or like the Saudi flag, crossed swords. All the Muslim terror groups either use a sword icon or an AK-47 icon which is the same thing.
This is our planetary situation today only fortunately, Muslim's are vying for power with each other.
Dar al Islam is the Garden of Eden, a utopia world where everybody is Islamic, no matter how they got there or how many rivers of blood were needed to create that most perfect state.
For so long as Islam sees the world where it is now, Dar al Hareb, conflict is here to stay. That is why this is indeed a Clash of Civilizations because they cannot rest until we reach the Dar al Islam perfect state of being.
Where there is Islam there is conflict or HAREB so...wake up folks and let ‘em have it with a two ton hammer.
But only after we waged a purposeful, focused bloody war to the death against them, dropped two atomic bombs and imposed a military occupation on them.
Actually, the west needs to declare war on Sharia.
Period.
With hussein in power? You’re dreaming.
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