As a Catholic, I consider Islam a heresy. It's therefore only natural to me that among Muslims -- as with the various Christian sects -- there is found a spectrum of Personal Interpretation. Some of which leads only to a certain incoherence overcome only by the abandoning of reason and the more deluded and dangerous of which leads to "radicalism", judgmentalism and plain old bigoted hatred.
It's purely my opinion (having read the entire book, understood a bit of his history and applauded his arguments on human life, family and love) that Hathout is not only a faithful Muslim but on the end most closely aligned to veneration of and obedience to Objective -- and therefore universal -- truth.
This is posted for CIVIL discusson purposes only. You can bet I'll probably link in some sound teaching on the Church's precepts re: the Trinity, original sin, evil, etc., but will do so only in order to correct what misunderstandings are apparent from his words. (Or, perhaps I'll just flag some of my Protestant and Unitarian friends to the post so's they can use his arguments ... =)
Sorry for posting the whole chapter (in lieu of the whole book ...) but I think it valuable to listen to a man who presents a far more true picture of Islam's tenet's and a faithful Muslim's understanding of same ... as opposed to the media and our government's painting of all militantly faithful (like me or opponents of abortion) as the equivalent of "radical fundamentalists".
"Radical Islam" is just communist repression and terror masquerading under cover of Islam. It's the equivalent (only different) of the way perverted Liberation Theology and Social Justice turns heretofore Christian soldiers into peace & justice pansies.
In a purely deterministic universe suffused in but informed by the heresy of historicism, it's different strokes for different folks as you triangulate the People of the Book ... moving the Jews like abacus beads back and forth to "send a message" or mark the current weight of leverage points on the World Peace See-saw the globalists are riding to the World State.
Interesting parallel although unhelpful. "Radical Islam" is a phenomenon of historical continuity. It wasn't created as a phenomenon because of concurrent processes. Islam began with the sword and expanded at an unrelenting pace as Jihad not merely as militaristic and geo-political expansionism but as an intrinsic religious concept based on the Koran. There is no basis to suggest that "radical Islam" is an anomaly.
And I wish to God that Islam or a significant portion of it and its adherents would have moved to a Liberation Theology phenomenological expression. The fact that this was an outgrowth of panentheistic (or process philosophy re Whitehead and Hartshorne)thought on Catholic theology indicates that the West and Christendom was open to influences and reform (for better or worse). The same is not true in large part of Islam (remember that Bernard Lewsi quote?).
This is false in so many ways that I think, Aske15, as a Catholic you should not let this claim stand. All the way from the treatment of Jews to the Crusades it is based on the author's distorted Islamic historical perceptions. I think it wise you address this issue and dispel it because the author has lost enormous credibility in these statements alone. Of course, maybe you don't want to salvage his credibility.
Notice that the word 'was' is past tense. Of the 30 skirmishes around the world today, 28 involve Islamic countries ... so we know whom it is which no longer has tolerance nor cooperation.
LOL! Does the phrase "The Quran or the Sword" ring a bell?!
My wife's family fled Hungary in the 1950's. Hungarians still have vivid memories of the terror, rape, murder, and slavery inflicted upon Hungarian Christians, Jews and any other nonMuslim group by Ottoman Muslims.
Abraham NEVER married Hagar. Sarah did not believe the promise of God and decided to take matters into her own hands. Sarah convinced Abraham to go to Hagar and have a child by her. Hagar was a concubine, not a wife.
Does the religious fervor of the Crusades "linger" over the Western mind or shape our culture? I don't think so. In contrast, too many in the Muslim world seem obsessed by the Crusades.
There is a difference between learning from the past and living in it.
I would venture to say that the answer lies in the heart of Islam itself. In Islam, the belief is that Allah (God) dictated the words of the Koran to Mohammed. What Mohammed wrote was exactly God's word. So a translation from Arabic is not really a valid Koran. Compare this to Christianity: the King James Bible is considered just as valid as a Bible written in Norwegian or Tagalog. Since Allah supposedly spoke the exact words in the Koran, there's no room for reinterpretation.
If someone tried to follow the Old Testament to the letter, they'd get arrested. There are things in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that are just plain crazy. So we don't follow them. We don't stone our kids when they misbehave, we don't say you can go to the next country and grab a woman if you like her and bring her back here and make you her wife. But since we believe that God didn't write the Bible directly, it doesn't much matter.
There are those in the Islamic world who've ignored the more harsher parts of the Koran -- after all, this book is about 1500 years old. But many don't. It's not as easy for them to maintain their belief system while doing this. So you wind up with a sizable portion of Muslims believing in the most rigid form of Islam.
This most rigid form, however, isn't really compatible with the 21st century. The subjugation of women, the prohibition on interest rates, the polygamy, and all the rest essentially stop a modern society from functioning. There's no marketplace of ideas, no technological improvements, and without interest rates, no monetary system possible. This brings poverty (unless there's an overabundance of natural resources), which brings more fanaticism.
God didn't create man in His image, and didn't walk in Eden. Abraham offered Ishmael, not Isaac, as a sacrifice. Moses never struck the rock in anger, David never commited adultery with Bathsheba, and Jesus - who was not the Son of God - was not crucified. Just what divine revelation is he speaking of???
A brief study of the koran/qu'ran will demonstrate that he quoted the highest sounding, most kind and tolerant passages, while choosing to leave out the many passages that prohibit friendship with Jews/Christians, and encourage their slaughter instead.
He can speak of peace and tolerance and "can't we all get along" all he wants, but Islam has been violent and intolerant from the start, in the koran, in the hadith, throughout history, and into today's current events. Remember what Jesus said about the tree and its fruit.