It won’t happen. Here’s why.
Islam demands that believers accept the Koran and the sayings of Muhammed as the explicit word of God, unchanging and unalterable.
The essence of moderation is that ability to choose between alternatives. In Islam, there are only two alternatives - belief or disbelief.
Islam has strong opinions about those who do not believe. The Koran explicitly tells believers that they should try to convert the unbeliever. If the unbeliever refuses to convert, he can be killed. The exceptions are Jews and Christians, who are allowed to live under Islam as long as they follow harsh rules limiting their conduct, religious expression, political standing in the community, and so forth.
Therefore, there are no “extremists.” In Islam, it’s either us or them. Waiting for the Islamic world to denounce extremism is a lot like waiting for the Christians to reject the risen Christ, because the behavior that we consider extreme is simply action taken by Islamic believers following the rules set down by God.
In the Christan world, choice is a powerful force, starting with the choices made by the Jews to follow or not follow God, and then continuing with the choices made by Christians. Throughout the Bible, people stray, come back, stray again. Believers mirror that struggle themselves by grappling with the sin in the lives. With Christians and Jews, there are “extremists,” because there is an established diversity of opinion about how to be a good Jew or a good Christian.
The Koran allows no diversity. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened - look at the Shi’ite and Sunni split - but when push comes to shove, the Islamic believer looks to the Book for the absolute word. The struggle is between the absolute truth and the believer’s ability to follow.
And here we are confronting each other - freedom vs. strict adherence to a 1,300-year-old book.
Thanks :
The Koran allows no diversity. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened - look at the Shi’ite and Sunni split - but when push comes to shove, the Islamic believer looks to the Book for the absolute word. The struggle is between the absolute truth and the believer’s ability to follow.
Apparently Osama said that : after they killed all the Jews and Christians...they would go after the ‘heretic’ muslims.
( no link, just my old memory )