The Search for Moderate Islam

A board on Islam: Islam Question and Answer.This is worth checking out.

No, you seem incapable of understanding the relationship between moderate Muslims and moderate Islam, and you have neglected to comment on it when I've described it. You are a complete moron. The people I am referring to do not oppress women. Try again, with less stupid this time. Yes, that would be something liberal Islam, therefore, concerns itself with.Moderate Islam is more conservative/traditionalist than liberal Islam though it is obviously a lot more liberal than extreme Islamism.You realize this paragraphs was about the distinction between the two, which has caused not a little confusion in this thread already? Yes, that's because they are a predominantly conservative group. I was using a cultural example that we're both familiar with. Showing that reform is a long and painful process that our own culture has not yet completed. If you aren't part of the solution, then why don't you try shutting the fuck up, instead? I'm not asking you to defend anything. If you want extremism to flourish and liberalism to be crushed then that's your concern. Personally, that world doesn't look good to me. I am more surprised that you claim to be looking for moderate Islam but you clearly aren't. I've shown it to you. You barely looked before the denial started being uttered. Yes it is.Fortunately if you actually read what I wrote, I was implying that you were educated. So suck it.Also - the implication came because you accepted the same argument as I do, not because you didn't accept it. So suck it twice. When you are ready to discuss the matter in good faith, maybe you'll find me a more pleasant discussion partner. But when I'm pointing you at what you are looking for and you won't acknowledge it is right there in front of you and instead keep pointing elsewhere and saying 'it's not there', it's a little irritating. So people following Moderate/Liberal Islam, people writing about moderate/liberal Islam, people speaking from the position of moderate Islam, all apparently can't convince you of its existence. Even though that is what a moderate religion IS.You just want me to write a essay that summarizes the work of Islamic scholars which is mostly in a foreign language (or relies on foreign language sources) into a post that you can be bothered to read that contains all the things you are looking for but not specifying for some reason which is obviously overly burdensome. What are you looking for, exactly???. Great, get working on helping out. Get politicians into office that'll pull the military out of the region so they can sort this out for themselves. Promote and fund liberals with books and cameras and TV slots, not opposing groups of Islamists with guns and bombs. Talk to Muslims, try planting some seeds of liberalism in terms they understand from al-Qemany or whatever. You're just some random dude, I know, but the more people we can get on board with this the better, methinks. You're options are:1) Several large scale genocides, and countless local pogroms/lynchings
2) Liberalise, dilute, and vanish.2) Will be a lot of hard work and I doubt I'll live to see its fruition even if it is to succeed. 1) is obscene.

But they're not following moderate Islam; they're trying to create it!Like I already said, making cookies is not the same as having cookies, and neither are the same as eating cookies.I don't believe that the efforts of moderate Muslims have fully developed into the existence of a moderate Islam. It is still a work very much in progress.Taking the stance you take, where you pretend that it is already done, doesn't help the cause of moderate Muslims at all.We should recognize the importance of what these people are doing by realizing that their goals cannot be met within a culture that considers them already achieved. The fight between moderate Muslims and extremist Muslims isn't our fight. We need to stop throwing away the lives of our own people attempting to police someone else's religion.Debates like we are having now is all the more involved we really need to be. Humanitarian efforts should be humanitarian efforts only; it is no government's job to further the cause of any religion or religious belief.And as a non-religious person I have no interest in furthering certain beliefs for the sake of furthering those beliefs. The only reason I see to further moderate Islam over extremist Islam is because it might mean a lot fewer people getting blown up.My concerns are purely practical and secular, as I'm sure most people's on this forum are.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Once again revealing your true motivations are to highlight the extremes of Islam^*, not discover the moderate or liberal ones. It's quite easy to find the moderate views on this. Since it's short, I'll compile it into a single narrative for you:Death to apostates comes from a single quote in an al-Bukhaari Hadith. We dispute the authenticity of this quote as it is uncharacteristically vague/general/terse for Muhammed given the importance of what he is saying {or some other reason for disputing it}. Even if genuine the statement is not backed up by the Qur'an, which being complete, would have mentioned such an important fact. Muhammed was a man talking to people at the time. In his time the Muslims were at war. There was worry the spies might convert to get information and leave as convenient, or that apostates might share military intelligence or other sensitive details for profit (no pun intended). So Muhammed thought apostasy should be treated like treason, which was culturally considered to be 'death'. This is why Muhammed told people not to write his words down, to avoid temporal statements being confused with more universal ones.

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^*Muhammad Al-Munajjid is a Salifist that you may know as Wahhabist, there may be some moderate thinkers in there, but there are the most extreme extremists in there too. This particular guy issued the death sentence on Mickey Mouse for enlisting in Satan's Army and issued a fatwa to allow hacking 'jewish websites'. He's a raving nutter, basically.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

They are following moderate Islam and they are writing about it.Or do you think these people don't believe the interpretations they claim to be using and are still secretly believing in stoning adulterers, flying planes into buildings, beheading infidels until such time as their work reaches some arbitrary point which Jon will call 'complete' and then they'll start practicing moderate Islam? There are cookies ready. The cooks are working on the next batch, we hope there'll be some improvements. The goal now is to spread the cookies around. Yes, my view exactly.I'm talking about the opposite of fighting. That's why I said 'no guns/bombs' and 'books' instead. But that's exactly how we're going to further the cause of moderate religious belief, by stopping the constant interference, just trying to make sure people are giving informed consent for their rule by sharing information. Correct. I'm all for getting fewer people blown up, how about you? Mine too. There are practicing Muslims with liberal interpretations. They exist and so do their interpretations. This is moderate Islam. It might not meet your peculiar standards, but it's there. Spread it around.

Not at all. And if you see that as my position, then it is understandable that you would disagree with me.I accept their claims on what they believe. I take them at their word; what they say they believe is what they believe. I'd certainly have no grounds for thinking otherwise.But something we might ask ourselves, and this goes to the point I've been making, is whether these folk are carrying on the traditions of reformers before them or whether they are coming to their conclusions separately and anew. My analogy regarded a single batch of cookies as the completed product. There's no 'next batch' in my analogy. But if you see the completed product as a bakery full of cookies, and admit that there are batches yet to be baked, then I think you've already accepted the notion that the goal has not yet been reached.But there's no point quibbling over possibly bad analogies. But there's a problem with this, and it was something I was hoping could be addressed with this thread.Your so-called 'moderate Islam' doesn't lend itself to spreading very easily because it is not complete. It is in its early stages; it is still the lofty ideas of a handful of moderate Muslims; and there is still plenty of disagreement about what moderate Islam should be.It's hard to spread the word when folks are having difficulty agreeing on what the word should be. It goes back to a point that dwise1 made:

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dwise1 in Message 106:

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Is there a moderate Islam? Yes, there is. It is what is practiced by moderate Muslims, who do exist, believe it or not. Is it an organized branch of Islam? Not that I know of.

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Is there a moderate Christianity? Yes, there is. It is what is practiced by moderate Christians, who do exist, believe it or not. Is it an organized branch of Christianity? Yes, but only because of the influence of humanism and secularism.

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If you want to simply define 'moderate Islam' as what is practiced by moderate Muslims, then, sure, that moderate Islam exists.But what good is that moderate Islam? It can't be spread by any reasonable means throughout the Islamic world; the people who arrive at their conclusions do so only after years and years of deep reflection.Perhaps it was my fault for working with the assumption that a moderate Islam should have some practical value and not only exist by definition alone.Or perhaps that's not such a ridiculous assumption.Our findings should have some meaning and value; they shouldn't just be the product of word play.

That thing that they believe that you believe they believe? That's moderate Islam. Who'd have thought to look at the beliefs of moderate Muslims to find moderate Islam, eh? I'm not sure what point this is related to, but OK. Re-examining the interpretations of Islam is something that has been going on since its inception. Sometimes it moves towards the liberal, sometimes in the more conservative direction. Many of the principles used find roots in things like Sufism and Mu'tazilism. The ideas start to look like more modern moderate Islamic ideas around the 19th Century with the likes of Rashid Rida and Muhammad Abduh. There is no "completed product." when reforming a religion any more than there is a "completed product" on a given language. There is an entire religion you can believe in that is both liberal and Islamic. Still more conservative than you are, but probably on par with Christian conservatives. In that sense it is a completed product. But there'll be another product up soon that extends it or criticises it. Because: religion. No it's complete. You are confusing my incomplete knowledge of Islamic thought with the incompleteness of a religious view. The former should be apparent, the latter not. You can't read a few summaries and conclude it isn't a complete religion and I know you haven't read the books they wrote. So what on earth makes you think you have enough information in order to make this judgement?It's not perfect, but it's just as complete as Mormonism is, if not more so. It does lend itself to spreading, but only among the educated, and not perfectly there. It's hard to spread 'western values' in the current climate, but that's kind of a bit our fault. That's how Islam has always been built. Without a Pope or an Archbishop or a King or what have you, it's all about who can get what taught where and to whom. It's a culture war, and the ultra-conservatives are currently in power all over the place and control the education. That's why there is difficulty.It's easy to teach kids moderate forms of religion. It's difficult to persuade adults to change their mind. The conservatives have the children. I'm pretty sure that's the only way a religion can exist. So what are you looking for, an airborne variety? You realize that religion operates as a social thing, right? That it spreads and changes as believers contest and dispute meanings with one another, constructing new meanings and new interpretations of religious traditions. It's in the shisha bars, the markets, and spreading quite nicely on social media. How else is moderate Islam going to spread if people aren't believing it? These 'handful' of moderates with 'lofty' ideas have many followers and supporters, which is how they are able to speak and gain positions of influence. Remember Mohamed ElBaradei? The Wafd Party? Free Egyptians Party? El-Ghad Party? Democratic Front Party? The New Wafd Party? Egyptian Social Democratic Party? The people that supported and voted for them?It's an Abrahamic religion, the other two major ones and all the minor ones are disagreeing about the correct way to be a modern moderate and I don't see why we should feel different about Islam. Well the practical value is that they are numerous and organizing and making changes as they can. Say hello to Egypt.. Say hello to Iran. It's out there, it has value, it is not just in definition only. It has a modern tradition extending back to Darwin's day, and this itself was based on earlier ideas. There are enough liberals to create political parties that have some measure of influence in some Islamic countries. Some people predict a possible Velvet Revolution in Iran.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I still believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; that a religion is not simply a bunch of people with similar beliefs. It is popular for the west to blame itself; but that cannot happen, because it leads to people who ignore actual motives for bad behavior. Despite what some would like us to think, not everything that is happening in the Middle East is the result of economic or political difficulties (that is more western thinking); many of the people who are firing bombs and kidnapping children are doing so specifically and only on the basis of a religion they believe tells them they should.But I think you can agree with that. Obviously because people are getting killed in the name of Islam. Watch some of those debates I posted; the discussion is being had specifically because of the world we live in now where radical crazy Muslims are going around blowing up one another and sometimes other people too.Those are the times.

This doesn't seem to run counter to my belief. My point is that its the beliefs themselves that constitutes a religion. So when we see people holding moderate Islamic beliefs, we've got ourselves a moderate Islam.And let's be clear: The religion is Islam. It's been complete for over a thousand years. Liberal Islam is just a way of approaching Islam, interpreting it differently. You realize its the same religion, though, right? So you think that we should ignore our contributions to the problem and we should just blame the Muhammadans for their barbaric religion, while we try and eradicate their primitive religion? Is this the 11th Century or something? Feel better now?So anyway, as I was saying, the Middle Eastern countries are suspicious of the west's influence because of the negative impact it has had in the region and so trying to spread values which feel 'western' (ie., liberal and secular) is met with hostility, which contributes to the difficulty of getting these ideas spread around. This theory is presented in contrast to your 'moderate Islam is not complete' theory. I don't follow your argument. You said it can't be spread around easily because there isn't universal agreement. But a lack of universal agreement has never on its own hindered the spread of a religion with any other religion, so why do you think Islam, a religion without a centralised and universal understanding, should be different?'Because people are getting killed' is a reason we want liberalism to spread, not the reason why we should expect Islam to operate differently in contrast to the empirical evidence that this is exactly how Islamic ideas spread through the Islamic community: Different voices giving slightly different takes leading to a similar conclusion. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

That seems a bit simplistic.Previously, there were Christian communities within various Arab countries. It wasn't all wine and roses, but they were able to manage. But, following the US 2003 invasion, that has changed and it is far harder for Christians in that part of the world. The invasion seems to have stirred up a hornets nest.

Not at all. But I can see how you might think that since you broke my paragraph apart and took pieces of it out of their context.My point: It is very 'western' to see the world in terms of economics and politicsthese are pretty much the driving forces behind individual decision making in the west; it's part of our culture. This is not part of everyone else's culture though. Where does that leave us? Whole cultures deciding to live in Backwardsville where governments are theocracies and human rights don't matter just to avoid accepting ideas they perceive as coming from the 'enemy'? Are they that stupid?I don't think so; instead I think the problem is that the area is so entrenched in its religious delusions that absolutely nothing else in the world matters beyond maintaining those delusions. 'Western' ideas are bad not because they are 'western' but specifically because they threaten to shatter the delusion.It's why we have fools in our own corners of the world working to bring religion into government. Their delusions are of utmost importance to them. It is obvious to everyone else that when religious sects run the government you end up with societies that look like the Middle East; but these people are fueled by their delusions beyond the capacity of common sense and basic observation to restrain them. You asked me why I felt different about Islam, not whether I expected it to behave differently.I do not expect it to behave differently. I do feel different about it though, for the reasons that I mentioned.I don't tend to hold strong feelings about the need for Christianity to become more moderate, or Taoism, or Buddhism, or...People aren't being murdered en masse in the name of any of those other belief systems, so they understandably give me less reason to be concerned than Islam, a religion in the name of which many people are being slain every day.Given this, I think it is understandable why anyone would feel different about the need for reform in Islam versus other religions.

Yes, "moderate" Christianity won out, by and large, but not before many bloody, protracted wars, and fundamentalist and authoritarian Christians still have blood on their hands both in Western countries and throughout the world. Like the "intellectual arguments" between the Burmese Buddhists and religious minorities in that nation? Like the "intellectual arguments" between Hindus and Muslims over Kashmir and other areas in the subcontinent? Like the "intellectual arguments" between Christian militias and Muslims in the Central African Republic?. Like the "intellectual arguments" about condoms and birth control which have killed millions due to AIDS and other related tragedies. Besides, Western, Christian hands are not at all clean when it comes to any of these situations. Would ridding the world of Islam save more lives than are spared? Would the world be better off if Islam was eradicated? Of course, ridding the world of Islam means ridding the world of Muslims. How would you go about that and still feel that you had the moral high ground?I abhor most religious thinking and I agree that Islam, at its core (along with most other religions), is not at all conducive to human rights and progress, but this part of your argument is equally repellent to me. If we cannot bother to acknowledge and work with a moderate Islam (which is what moderate Muslims practice, IMO), then the alternative is just as barbaric as that which we are ostensibly against.

I wholeheartedly agree, but the next question then becomes: how do we go about not being complacent with human rights violations without violating human rights and/or without potentially creating even bigger problems?

I don't think anyone in this thread argued that the anti-Western views of many in the Islamic world are based on economics or politics. However... ...the people in power in many Islamic states are able to weave religion, economics and politics together quite well. The people in power are the ones trying to maintain the delusion and are able to get away with it because of the sway of religion and the threat if both mortal and eternal punishment, which has historically been a very powerful tool for control. Moderate Muslims in fundamentalist controlled areas are forced underground. You seem to be suffering under a different illusion - that fundamentalist controlled areas are entirely populated by extremists and that everyone who lives there are "that stupid."If you were living in a rural area with limited or no internet access, religiously controlled schools and the threat of violence over any deviation would you consider yourself stupid for believing or pretending to believe whatever information you were given about the larger world? Would you have "decided" to live "in Backwardsville" under theocratic rule?Would you stick your neck out so that some American on a debate board could find moderate Islam? Maybe their definition of a successful society is different than yours or mine? You chided Mod about cultural assumptions, but you seem to be doing just that.

So what we need are more militant moderates willing to fight for their pacifist beliefs.