"... or primarily a system of religious law or a set of orthodox beliefs, as many contemporary Muslims have come to believe. Islam is rather a welter of contradictions -- including at the same time the tradition of orthodoxy and law and the contrasting, sometimes heterodox traditions of philosophy, poetry and mystical thought. Today’s Salafis miss the contradiction and complexity because they see Islam as only rule and creed... Defined this way, Islam contains multitudes. It incorporates the scientific study of nature, the philosophical inquiry into reality, and the mystical experience of seeking after the divine -- understood in its deepest sense of true love. Indeed, Ahmed described what he called a sixth madhhab, or school of Islamic law, beyond the orthodox five: the madhhab of love."
Writes Noah Feldman in "An Extraordinary Scholar Redefined Islam."
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Islam is force, submission, domination. Allah does not love you (except perhaps the love of the owner for his dog). Allah is the anti-thesis of a loving Lord, one who would give own His life to bring us to closer Him.
Pooh.
Fine fellow probably, but its all really beside the point. One doesn't sway multitudes or recruit armies with this melange.
And the Islamic mix of non-textual traditions contains such things as the tribal bigotries of Moro clan warfare, the Kashmiri-Rotherham degeneracy, and Pashtun generalized murderousness. Even unorthodox Muslims can be hard to live with.
No true Scotsman!
Islam is the religion that, rather than incorporating the scientific study of nature and philosophical inquiry into reality, declared Ibn Rushd a heretic and exiled him to live among Jews. The great minds who picked up where Ibn Rushd (Averroes) left off were Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas, whose work defined orthodoxy for Judaism and Catholicism; there was no heir among the Muslims to him.
Islam is rather a welter of contradictions
Could it be worse than any land use planning commission?
The entire area of the former Ottoman Empire plus now the resurrection of Persia make for quite a "fringe."
All religions require a process of interpretation. Who is to do that? I think it's really strange to make absolute statements about the meaning of a religion that is not your religion. Even when it is your religion, you should see that there are many interpretations. I think we all have an interest in encouraging interpretations that are benevolent and helpful to humanity.
"Ahmed described what he called a sixth madhhab, or school of Islamic law, beyond the orthodox five: the madhhab of love."
Sounds nice, but Christ taught love, Islam submission -- making Jesus a prophet but rejecting his core teaching.
"Even when it is your religion, you should see that there are many interpretations"
Preach it in Cairo and Tehran and Mecca and . . .
And Africa down to the equator and some areas south of it.
I agree "we all have an interest in encouraging interpretations that are benevolent and helpful to humanity," but No. 1 right now is the immediate clear and present danger from interpretations that are not benevolent and helpful to humanity.
Yes, "we all have an interest in encouraging interpretations that are benevolent and helpful to humanity," unless you're Muslim, in which case you don't.
Contemporary Islamic "scholarship" is about trying to divine the most literal interpretation of the Quran possible, and to obliterate the record of interpretive views of the text. This is in keeping with the notion that the book is the directly revealed word of Allah faithfully and unerringly transcribed by Mohammed; in spite of the fact that there were multiple competing documents of Mohammed's teaching early in Islam's history.
"All religions require a process of interpretation. Who is to do that?" In the case of Islam, if you're one of them, there are lots of people out to kill you.
Islam is rather a welter of contradictions -- including at the same time the tradition of orthodoxy and law and the contrasting, sometimes heterodox traditions of philosophy, poetry and mystical thought. Today’s Salafis miss the contradiction and complexity because they see Islam as only rule and creed..
I think historically that Prof Ahmed is probably correct. Much of the Islamic world lived an Islamic life very different from that of the Salafist Arabs.
But, what I can't understand for the life of me, is why the thundering silence from the non-Salafist parts of Islam in the face of an Islamic variant (Salafism) that not only brings opprobrium on Islam in the eyes of the world, it also targets the laxists as either heretical or out & out malefactors.
Unlike many others here, I believe that there are within the history of even Arabic Islam, proponents of moderation. I just believe that those strains of moderation have little to no voice in contemporary Islam. It's almost as if the vocabulary of moderation just doesn't exist anymore.
The people who interpret it are the strongest ones. That's the way it works.
Hit people on the head and take their stuff is a stable system. It just doesn't have a very high standard of living.
That's why it's stone-age.
Human rights are a Western gift to the world. Islam never made the transition.
My approach is simple observation, Ann. When a religion rejects a school of thought as heresy, and then that school of thought dies out completely within that religion, it's very obviously not part of that religion, whether or not it would be helpful if it were.
There were no students of Ibn Rushd among Muslims from the period shortly after his death to when the West conquered the Muslim world. And even after that reintroduction, Ibn Rushd never gained the level of influence among Muslims that, say, John Calvin currently has among Christians.
I am perfectly willing to endorse the idea that Islam should follow the path of Catholicism and Judaism by incorporating Aristotle into theology on the theory that scientific and philosophical inquiry grant insight into the nature of God. After all, that's what made it possible for the West to birth the Enlightenment and make the world safe for my brand of atheist scientific materialist philosophy. But as my brand of philosophy values clarity and accuracy of thought rather than accepting obscurantism, I'm not willing to pretend Islam ever actually has, as a historical matter.
Ann, are you trolling your Althouse Hillbillies again?
@Once written,
Ann, are you trolling your Althouse Hillbillies again?
Because hillbillies always talk about Ibn Rushd, the history of the Ottoman empire, early Islamic textual variants, etc. right?
God, yer a fuckwit, Once!
"Defined this way, Islam contains multitudes. It incorporates the scientific study of nature, the philosophical inquiry into reality, ..."
Yeah, its been a thousand years since Islam contributed to mankind's understanding of that.
"All Nazis require a process of interpretation. Who is to do that? I think it's really strange to make absolute statements about the meaning of Nazis that is not your religion. Even when you are a Nazi, you should see that there are many interpretations. I think we all have an interest in encouraging interpretations that are benevolent and helpful to humanity.
Godwin: Feisty!
I am Laslo.
"It's almost as if the vocabulary of moderation just doesn't exist anymore."
Barely. But here's one who's trying: Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`I'm, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari`a. Wish him luck.
There are Fascists and there are Fascists.
If Laslo meant Fascists there's an argument there.
D'Annunzio was not Mussolini of 1922, who was not Mussolini v1943, who wasn't Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (who my great aunt dated @1935), etc.
Any bets on Shahab's life expectancy? (To be fair, Rushdie has far outlived expectations, but some people take that apostasy stuff seriously.)
Now if we can just get this book into the ISIS book club...
1. Islam is NOT a religion; But, is a criminal-terrorist movement-or-ideology not far different from the KKK or Nazi-Party (Sharing the same principles of hate-of-Jews and all real religions, use of violence and the other horrors taught in Mein Kampf and the Koran);
2. Islam (Like the KKK, Mafia and the SS brand of Nazism) has/had a very thin veneer of religion;
"All religions require a process of interpretation. Who is to do that? I think it's really strange to make absolute statements about the meaning of a religion that is not your religion. Even when it is your religion, you should see that there are many interpretations. I think we all have an interest in encouraging interpretations that are benevolent and helpful to humanity."
Yeah, but try that "interpretation" stuff with Islam, and if you have any audience at all, you'll need bodyguards for life. Which is why RIGHT NOW Islam is a religion with uniquely dangerous properties.
If Ahmad thinks that "a welter of contradictions" does not define religion in the "usual western sense", he's incredibly ignorant of Western religions.
Redefined Islam
How many legs does a dog have if you redefine the tail as a leg?
Laslo Spatula said...
"All Nazis require a process of interpretation. Who is to do that?"
Only other Nazis are qualified to do so.
U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies’ Abuse of Boys
"Dan Quinn was relieved of his Special Forces command after a fight with a U.S.-backed militia leader who had a boy as a sex slave chained to his bed."
Islam is the official state religion of Afghanistan, with approximately 99.8% of the Afghan population being Muslim.
Interpret and redefine all you want.
I think it's really strange to make absolute statements about the meaning of a religion that is not your religion,
except of course to say
All religions require a process of interpretation.
" I think we all have an interest in encouraging interpretations that are benevolent and helpful to humanity."
Except when the interpretation encourages you to disarm.
Islam is suffering from a ferocious inferiority complex ever since the Ottomans chose the wrong side in WWI.
When Napoleon invaded Egypt they got a tremendous shock with the first contact with European technology. Then came the gas engine and oil revenues so they relaxed, at least the Saudis did.
Then came the atomic bomb and cell phones and the internet. The inferiority got much, much worse.
Fundamentalist Christians are upset about evolution but they don't kill anyone over it.
Muslims kill those who they think insult them. Even if the insulter isn't aware of it.
Christianity, with its give to Caesar what is Caesar's clause, is the exception. Most other religions are all-encompassing moral, political, mystical, social, pseudo-scientific, philosophical, pseudo-historical systems.
There is no Golden Rule in Islam.
Mohammed gained about 100 converts when he was trying to make Islam a religion. When he started advocating slaughtering people who would not convert, and stealing their goods and property (with his adherents becoming rich in the process) Islam really took off. So, that's what they ran with, and still do today.
That's why it's Istanbul, not Constantinople.
There are forty-seven mentions of "love" in the Koran, analyzed by Bill Warner. Worth reading, or watching. One thing is certain. Muslims are forbidden to love Kafirs (that's a really rude term for "non-believers").
Just for fun, watch his 5-minute video comparing Jihad vs. The Crusades.
I think it's really strange to make absolute statements about the meaning of a religion that is not your religion. Even when it is your religion, you should see that there are many interpretations.
That should seems rather absolute.
MathMom said: "When he started advocating slaughtering people Islam really took off."
No, that's not what happened at all. Let's be fair here. It was self-defense.
Mohammed had gone to Mecca and started preaching his new gospel. Mecca was a cosmopolitan city, and the establishment there thought that Mohammed's rants were bad for business.
So they kicked him out.
Mohammed, angry, traveled to Medina, where he raised an army of followers. He went back to Mecca and conquered the place.
Then their neighbors saw Mohammed conquering Mecca, and they raised an army and went to Mecca and threw Mohammed out again.
So Mohammed raised an even bigger army and....
That's sort of how it's been.
See, unlike Jesus, Mohammed had no intention of being executed and his people oppressed. He fought back. Successfully.
All religions require a process of interpretation. Who is to do that? I think it's really strange to make absolute statements about the meaning of a religion that is not your religion. Even when it is your religion, you should see that there are many interpretations. I think we all have an interest in encouraging interpretations that are benevolent and helpful to humanity.
Postmodern dead end. Per usual. Go back to your Sartre, professor.
Oh, and this may help you understand how and why the postmodernist intellect is digging its own grave.
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