Monday, November 30, 2015

Islam Sans Jihad? C'est Impossible!

Authorities in France are calling on Muslims to ix-nay the ihad-jay in favour of a more "enlightened Islam."

On minor hitch, though: how do you amend/edit/bowdlerize problematic aspects of the faith (jihad verses in the Koran; Islamic law extrapolated from the Koran and other sacred sources; some actions of Islam's founder, all of which Muslims are required to emulate) when, according to Islamic dogma, everything, including the problematic stuff, is said to be sheer perfection?

In brief: how do mere lowly mortals go about reforming that which emanates from Allah?

Hasn't that been the stumbling block all along in effecting an Islamic Reformation?

And let's not forget the many decades of bloodshed and division associated with the Christian Reformation--more bloodshed and division probably being the last thing Muslims (as well as infidels) need.

An "enlightened Islam"?

All I can say is bonne chance with that one, mes amis.

Update: I concur with this assessment:
The truth is that Islam has already had its own reformation of sorts, in the sense of a stripping of cultural accretions and a process of supposed “purification”. And it didn’t produce a tolerant, pluralistic, multifaith utopia, a Scandinavia-on-the-Euphrates. Instead, it produced … the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Exactly. Whenever Islam "reforms," it does so by harkening back to what is held out as being a better, "purer" time--the era of Islam's founder and the four "rightly-guided" caliphs who succeeded him. Even though, as we know, that period was marked by violence, assassination and internecine squabbling; indeed, it gave rise to the eternal--and eternally violent--Shia v. Sunni split.

Update: Re the impossibility of "reforming" sharia, Andrew McCarthy writes (my bolds):
Sharia rejects the touchstone of American democracy: the belief that the people have a right to govern themselves and chart their own destiny. In sharia governance, the people are subjects not citizens, and they are powerless to question, much less to change, Allah’s law. Sharia systematically discriminates against women and non-Muslims. It is brutal in its treatment of apostates and homosexuals. It denies freedom of conscience, free expression, property rights, economic liberty, and due process of law. It licenses wars of aggression against infidels for the purpose of establishing sharia as the law of the land.

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