I'm not saying I agree with him, but he does have an interesting angle to this issue.
Maybe Islam is having some sort of reform, the first one in its existence. Christianity at one point was as violent as radical Islam today, and it has had a couple of bloody reforms since then and it helped it become somewhat more modern and less violent (but still has many problems).
Does it have this underlying "you're supposed to wage war against non-Muslims to subdue mankind and rule the earth"? I can't stress this enough: I'm not very well vested in Christianity or Judaism, so you tell me if you are and can answer my question. I'd say
no though; at least and that is the important thing here not through violence but peaceful missionary work.
I don't think we're ever going to get rid of religions, but if they can reform themselves to fit within democracy, then that's as good as we're going to get. Just think of all the scientific and social concepts that Christianity has slowly accepted (unwittingly and "à reculon" of course, but still), if that's how we can slowly make religion more tampered and rational, then why not?
Okay, I've spent a fair amount of time studying those "moderate Muslims" from whose ranks the "reformers" come and almost all of the time they are in denial or ignorant of core texts and mainstream interpretations and have a shaky fundament or none at all - as long as they're still Muslims that is. ex-Muslims are quite different. You can understand those "moderates" though; always in fear of getting shunned by the immediate family, community they live in or even killed by someone for being an apostate. This might also be why Aslan is full of rule 10: He wants to preserve his head, at least for now.
In this sense you see all these webpages about what Islam is and for example what Jihad is about. Some outright lie about it and say it has nothing to do with warfare and is
only this notorious "inner struggle", some say it's only defensive warfare. None I have seen openly admit it's more or less perpetual warfare.
You get page after page with stuff like "It is forbidden to cut down trees during Jihad" or kill women, and oh Islam's all so good because it has this strict set of rules laid out for it - just too bad Islam's history, Muhammad's biography and the ahadith run contrary to what they claim. And
they, those "moderate Muslims" or whatever, are at the receiving end when put against mainstream clergymen who got all the framework on their side. And this is where Aslan's notions become ridiculous. I'll quote the frontpagemag article:
How did this communal, egalitarian society lose its dedication to pluralism and tolerance? Well, you see, it was all the fault of a “clerical establishment” that, despite the fact that it fundamentally misunderstood Islam, “gained control over the interpretation of the Koran and the hadith: the anecdotes describing the words and deeds of Muhammad, passed on by his followers and their descendants.”
But maybe even the NY Times put a little sign in there that they think Aslan might be full of it:
Mr. Aslan looks to the first Muslim community in Medina, established by Muhammad 1,400 years ago, as a model for reform today. His Medina, though, is a communal, egalitarian society dedicated to pluralism and tolerance.
So instead of admitting there's a mainstream version of Islam that is garbage, with all the framework and texts supporting it, he goes after the clergy that somehow misinterpreted everything-Islam, got it all wrong but still has the power till this day and Aslan's fantasy of a happy, pluralistic Islam is the right, the true Islam. In other words he's doing what so many do so often: Attacking the messenger instead of the message, which is by now widespread. This is something you often see from moderate Muslims: They [the clerics] got it all wrong, what they do and dictate has nothing to do with Islam and so on.
I don't know if you remember but my sister's Muslim and it's shocking to see how ignorant they, she and her Muslim friends, are of their own religion. Unless you take those British Muslims - oh they can be of a different breed!
Since she's in London, studying, she was exposed to some more radical Muslimas she lives with. She told us they had some "shocking views" on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and probably other areas as well. You know, like "they should blow themselves up, they don't have tanks and no way is it suicide, they're just dying a marty'rs death for Islam".
Now, OBL might help foster this whole sentiment and the resentment and get some new fans like in the latter video you linked to like retarded and brain dead socialists and communists, but the framework is there and comes from Islam and is hardly only picked up by OBL but by mainstream clerics, depending on where they live and depending on how long they want to keep control of their mosque and not be deported back to the dumps they came from, if you know what I mean.
No Aslan is going to change that as long as he treats Islam and the underlying theological problems in such a shallow and quite frankly retarded way by claiming the mainstream version is all based on forgeries and misinterpretation. As the NY Times article says:
"The fact is that the vast majority of the more than one billion Muslims in the world readily accept the fundamental principals of democracy," he writes. Like the reformers in Iran, they are committed to "genuine Islamic values like pluralism, freedom, justice, human rights, and above all, democracy."
This may be, but Mr. Aslan, in his polemical conclusion, tends to assert rather than present evidence.
His impassioned plea for an Islamic form of democracy, although moving, sounds sophistical.
It's usually what
sane people, sane Muslims,
think Islam is, what they'd
like it to be, only to be shocked into a state of denial. What
sane person would hate Joos based on irrational notions some book commands them to? What
sane person would like to give up all control over herself to the husband? What
sane person would like to wage perpetual war against the world because they don't believe what you believe in?
And here you got "a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University, a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa, and is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology of Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara" with the name of Reza Aslan telling us those Muslim theologian got it all wrong. Unless of course his idea of a pluralistic society is to have dhimmi, or 2nd rate citizens, population living under the rule of Muslims, always in fear of "violating" their contract in an Islamic state.
Pardalis said:
Well he does have a point that the core of the problem should be about the two nations, and not the two religions. If the problem simplified itself to these two nation entities, it would have been resolved a long time ago. But because of religious fanatics like Hamas, and some of the Jewish settlers, the problem has only intensified itself.
Yes, and he is offering no way of doing this other than maybe asserting that all those clerics got it somehow wrong yet they are in power. I'm pretty sure it's not the first time you heard about "al-Andalus" and how Muslims still claim it belongs to their Ummah. Well, why should it be else with Israel? Even worse there, they got Joos running the place pretty tightly!
Now how one will accomplish getting religion out of the equation is one problem in and of itself.
The problem is with religion, but as I said earlier, we're not going to get rid of it. We're not going to get rid of Islam. So better think of alternatives than all-out war.
An alternative would be to say it how it is. OBL's and al-Quaeda's
methods might be extreme and sometimes even un-Islamic and over the top, but the notion is there, supported by Islam's teachings and texts. Personally, I can't stand it anymore when Bush or other politicians go on about how wonderful Islam is, how OBL has perverted this "beautiful religion" or the whole "Islam is peace" BS, pandering to the "moderate majority" just to get another mosque of "peaceful, tolerant Islam" built into their midst preaching intolerance and hatred against non-Muslims, Jews and others, promoting their BS. Of course you won't make friends among the "moderates", whatever constitues being one, when you tell them Islam is full of it, but lying about it won't help anyone.
Fortuneately, I see a slight decrease of what some people label as "political correctness", or this notion of a happy dandy multiculturalism - because of the problems (do I need to insert a "some" here for the leftist tards?) Muslim immigrants create, and boy do they. A gloves-off treatment of Islam will help not only us, but those "moderates" as well.
Just think of Oliver, and his thread about OBL. OBL seems to be getting support from useful idiots like him because he's trying to expand his grievances to problems that are not related to eachother, in order to make his fatwa so large and accountable to America on a global scale so that anyone who has some grievance against America will recognize themselves in it.
I see. Yes, I agree, and Oliver really is worth a study by a psychologist, but in their view and from an Islamic viewpoint much of it
is supported and true - in their eyes. Hamas doesn't need to quote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to demonize and fan the flames of hatred for the Joos, nor does OBL have to create some BS out of thin air to get the job done, they can just go and get some quotes from the Koran. Which they're doing anyway.
What I don't see though, what has not been answered, is the part about "Jihadists like Al Qaeda are
distorting the issues into one big conspiracy against Muslims, in order to garner as much support from as much people as possible". Do you mean because there's Muslims who
don't want to follow or live under shari'a he's going against Muslims?
By making it so large in this way, people won't see what's at the core, and what's the real reasons behind his fatwa: it is clearly and unmistakably an ideological war based on his racist fanatical views on Islam. But people like Ollie don't see that (you saw how he completely avoids our questions about it) and he gobbles it up hook line and sinker.
And here comes in what I believe is the most crucial point: Islam's not
just a religion as we "westerners" perceive religions as.
