Article

2004-08-10 Iraq-Jordan

Ali from Iraq reports on the beginning of "Moslems against Islam"

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Posted by mhw 2004-08-10 8:39:06 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I wouldn't say Moslems against Islam so much as the first rumblings of the long awaited Islamic Reformation.

Something must change to seperate the unapproving masses of Muslims from the psychos that use Allah's name for vile deeds. That something must come from the Muslims themselves or they will go down with the violent ones in time.

I think they need the reverse of the Protestant Reformation against the central authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church. Islam needs some central authority so that every tom, dick, or Sadr can't claim divine backing for their misdeeds.

It would be best if such a thing came out of Saudi Arabia but that's unlikely to happen until we have one, or possibly two, bloody revolutions there. I'm thinking the Turks should take up the ball, they should turn Hagia Sophia back into a Mosque and use it as a sort of St Peters for pronouncements and such. They should get the various Clerics and Mullahs in Turkey to meet on occasion so that the pronouncements come as one voice, at one time, and with force, and not have different announcements from different fellows.

Yeah as a non-Muslim I probably won't like all of those announcements but I have faith that Sufism is superior to Wahhabism in the court of ideals and is far more compatible with Democracy and I think it will be a stabalizing thing.

Forgive me for misspellings or whatever. Its early.

Posted by yank">yank 2004-08-10 10:36|| politicaljunky.blospot.com 2004-08-10 10:36|| Front Page Top

#2 yank
well other people have had this idea but I can't see how it could work in practice; also, I think the Turkish military would be very, very, very unlikely to allow a centralized Islamic authority to operate out of Istanbul.

Posted by mhw 2004-08-10 10:47|| 2004-08-10 10:47|| Front Page Top

#3 Historically the dominant forces in international islam, with the power to do what Yank is thinking of, have been major Islamic Universities. The most notable one, that COULD do what Yank wants, is Al Azhar in Cairo. I sincerely hope that the best people we've got are working VERY quietlyy to push Al Ahzar subtly in an anti-wahabi direction. I dont really follow Al ahzar closely, I must admit.

Posted by Liberalhawk 2004-08-10 10:54|| 2004-08-10 10:54|| Front Page Top

#4 Funny. These terrorist, can wait 100's of years to win thier battle, so what do they do? Start wars that kill more Muslim's then any other religion. Which turns even Muslims against them. Until these idiots started thier war, Islam was the fastest growing religion in the world. It would of eventually won a good part of the world. But not now.

Posted by plainslow 2004-08-10 11:20|| 2004-08-10 11:20|| Front Page Top

#5 I wonder if an Islamic Martin Luther would be allowed to live long enough to reform Islam. The islamo-facists are almost as hard on each other as they are on kufr.

Posted by Formerly Dan 2004-08-10 11:21|| 2004-08-10 11:21|| Front Page Top

#6 Plain - theyre not looking for the victory if Islam, but of their variety of Islam. What good is the conversion of millions of africans to Islam, or muslim pop growth, if the majority of muslims in muslim countries are accepting as normal life under more or less secular states like Egypt and Algeria and Indonesia, which they see as a heresy fatal to "true" Islam.

Posted by Liberalhawk 2004-08-10 11:28|| 2004-08-10 11:28|| Front Page Top

#7 You may be right Liberal. You'd hope that the secular Muslims would be more vocal in thier contempt for a group who is just making thier lives worse. At least Muslim's here.

Posted by plainslow 2004-08-10 12:30|| 2004-08-10 12:30|| Front Page Top

#8 Yank, Hagia Sophia is a mosque, converted when the Moslems conquered Constantinople. It was originally built (I think by Constantine) as an Orthodox Church.

That doesn't effect your point, though. On the other hand, Judaism has survived without any central authority; but we have records of long correspondence exchanges between rabbis thousands of miles apart, as they argued questions posed by the laity. I think that's one of the problems with Islam: each mullah, ayatollah, etc. heads his own little kingdom, with very little reference to what is going on -- religiously -- elsewhere in the Ummah.

Posted by trailing wife 2004-08-10 13:06|| 2004-08-10 13:06|| Front Page Top

#9 The Hagia Sophia was built on the orders of Justinian, some two centuries after Constantine. And the Turks are doing pretty well with their secular state, even under an Islamist PM. I seem to remember an Iranian taxi driver who observed that deeply religious people need strongly secular governments, pointing to the Americans as an example.

Posted by Mitch H.">Mitch H. 2004-08-10 13:37|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/ 2004-08-10 13:37|| Front Page Top

#10 tw - actually, IIUC there IS communication between different Sunni muslim authorities, analogous to what happens in traditional Judaism - with Al Ahzar playing the role of the greatest Yeshivas. (shia in this so far from the mainstream, it might be analogous to Karaite Judaism) I think the problems with communication in Islam ( as compared to Judaism) include the vast scope of Sunni Islam, the lower overall levels of literacy and cultural development, and the way that different local authorities are tied up with different governments. In particular the way Wahabi Islam got tied up with the Saudi state.

Imagine if there were 30 or 40 jewish states, mainly inhabited by illiterate and backward jews. Now imagine that in one of the most backward a family had attained power by alliance with followers of a Meir Kahane like figure, with his harsh attitudes towards both non-Jews and other Jews, and his willingness to defy other Orthodox authorities on certain questions. Now imagine said state became wealthy due to oil, and spread the Kahanist vision around the world, in a kind of supercharged, nasty version of Chabad, funding shuls and JCC's and Yeshivas, and infiltrating Kahanist thought into mainstream Orthodox institutions. Now imagine that some of the Kahanists decided that mainstream Kahanism was too moderate, and started blowing up building, etc, etc.

Imagine that some Orthodox rabbis feared physical attack by the extreme kahanists, all wanted to maintain good relations with the wealthy mainstream kahanist state, and all feared disunity in Orthodox Judaism. I suspect it would be difficult for a YU or a Lakewood, let alone a JTS, to solve the situation.

Posted by Liberalhawk 2004-08-10 13:52|| 2004-08-10 13:52|| Front Page Top

#11 "Hagia Sophia is a mosque, converted when the Moslems conquered Constantinople.".

That was true, but now it is a museum.

"Hagia Sophia served as a mosque during the early years of the Turkish Republic, then declared a national monument and converted into a museum by the order of Atatuk on 24 October 1934."

Posted by yank">yank 2004-08-10 14:50|| politicaljunky.blogspot.com]">[politicaljunky.blogspot.com] 2004-08-10 14:50|| Front Page Top

#12 islam has already had its reformation--its called wahabbism--and was a response to the loose living and morals permitted under the turkish caliphate and the mass of sufi oriented islam with its saints and whatnot--what islam needs is an ENLIGHTENMENT which is using the power of reason and science to reinterpret religious dogma--that's what happened in the west--the reformation led to countless religious wars until the treaty of westphalia in 1648--now the gates of reason [ijtihad] have been closed in islam since the 11th century-viz al-ghazali and the previous quashing of the muatazilites--and so the strict litralists and the four jucdicial schools comprise this fuckwit ideology--that's why islam sucks--mass movements are ideogenerated--by new ideas--and reinterpretation in light of new facts--when you have the perfect word of a scary tribal god handed down by his final prophet spoken in arabic telling you that you are the master religion--well-who needs to change--that's why you have to be persuaded at the barrel of an m16 and some jdams--works for me

Posted by SON OF TOLUI 2004-08-10 15:08|| 2004-08-10 15:08|| Front Page Top

#13 I think they need the reverse of the Protestant Reformation against the central authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church. Islam needs some central authority so that every tom, dick, or Sadr can't claim divine backing for their misdeeds.

yank, this is the one single problem with Islam. It is specifically decentralized and subject to nearly individual interpretation. An insistence upon not worshiping living or dead individuals is a central foundation and partial cause of the Sunni Shi'ia split, due to Shi'ite reverence of Imam Ali. It is unlikely that Islam will ever have a central authority.

This is why we have wingnuts like bin Laden trotting around declaring global jihad. It is also part of why so little cross-criticism happens within Islam. All of this bodes particularly ill for any reformation. There is no equivalent to a "Pope" or any form of excommunication. An absence of central authority or means of expulsion all serve to engender a plethora of splinter groups and little recourse against fanaticism.

For this reason, it is incumbent upon Muslims as individuals to both reject violent jihad and begin ejecting jihadists from their ranks. Unfortunately, the eschewal of any internal criticism so as to appear a united front works precisely against reform.

This may well result in the annihilation of all Islam unless its individual adherents purchase a clue and save their faith mosque by mosque. So little of such reform has manifested to date, that I hold little hope for such a thing. It is more likely that a series of Islam's unfettered fanatics will lay their hands on some ~~Iranian~~ atom bombs and spark the step-by-step obliteration of all Muslim countries.

This is the rhinocerous in Islam's living room and so few Muslims are bothering to take notice of it that a really bright flash of heat figures rather prominently in their future.

Posted by Zenster 2004-08-10 15:39|| 2004-08-10 15:39|| Front Page Top

#14 for what its worth, my hypothesis is that when there exists a mass movement of people leaving Islam, then and only then, will Islam have a chance to reform itself

Posted by mhw 2004-08-10 18:12|| http://]">[http://] 2004-08-10 18:12|| Front Page Top

#15 Reform what?
Charley Manson has a better chance to come clean.

Posted by Shipman 2004-08-10 18:23|| http://]">[http://] 2004-08-10 18:23|| Front Page Top

#16 mhw, the only "mass movement of people leaving Islam" that is all likely to happen any time soon involves a strong and very hot updraft carrying ~~their ashes~~ them skyward. Cynical? Yes, but there is simply no other indication that anything short of nuclear war is going to make Islam see the error of its ways.

Posted by Zenster 2004-08-10 18:34|| http://]">[http://] 2004-08-10 18:34|| Front Page Top

#17 The problem is that the Islam as it is practiced is definitely forcused toward establishment of the Imamas, not in unity of faith.

Much like US fundamentalism, the very seperation dives the elements on the fringes to further extremes in an attempt to be "holier" than the others - and misinterpretations and outright heresies are not corrected by either the central Church (liek ti is with Catholicism) or the mass of worshipers (mainstream protestantism).

Fundamentalism of any stripe tends to get loonier and loonier until it gets to where its unsupportable. Witness the stuff going on now in the ME with the boomers, and the problems we had here in the US with the snipers against the abortion clinics.

The difference in degrees is due to the moderating influnce our culture of "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator win inalienable rights" - problem is there is no similar moderation in a master-slave (bascially feusdalism with peasants and rulers) cultures like those of the middle east - so their fundamentalists tend to be wilder and more of them.

Posted by Oldspook 2004-08-10 19:00|| 2004-08-10 19:00|| Front Page Top

#18 Zenster,

I grant that it seems a long shot at this point but there are ex Muslims, there are non violent Islam like sects that are attracting a long of other Muslims (the Admiyaddi in Britain and India), there is scholarly research which is demolishing the 'Koran is Unchanged from 600' belief, there are a few other things happening. Don't give up completely.

Posted by mhw 2004-08-10 21:27|| 2004-08-10 21:27|| Front Page Top

#19 the weakness of Islam is shown by the vehement punishment ascribed for those who stray. If this religion was so strong and vibrant they wouldn't have to enslave infidels, force conversions, subjugate women and kill the stray flock. Surely a religion dominated by weak males concerned about their numerous failings as people and a culture, women beaten into submission and chattel. F*&k em! Now I'm gettin riled up, dammit!

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2004-08-10 21:46|| 2004-08-10 21:46|| Front Page Top

#20 Don't give up completely.

mhw, I'm sure you've already seen the brickbats delivered to me here at Rantburg over my assertion that there really are moderate Muslims in this world. The thundering silence coming out of Islam regarding terrorism is nothing short of damning. I am losing all patience with how our world is currently forced to divert billions, if not trillions, of dollars into fighting this scourge instead of battling famine, genocide and illiteracy.

At some point it will no longer be worth lavishing these immense resources on such an intractable problem. Some houses become so infested with vermin that they simply must be demolished. Such is the case with Islam. It is rapidly approaching the point where some inexpensive nuclear weapons will provide an expedient solution to an otherwise insoluable problem. I do not relish such a thing, but I'll be triple d@mned in he|| if I'm going to sit around and watch some fanatics derail centuries of progress to please their theocratic leanings. After the first nuclear terrorist attack, I will cheerfully advocate sterilizing some Middle Eastern countries as a brief but vivid object lesson for all Islamists. I doubt I shall be alone in doing so.

Posted by Zenster 2004-08-10 22:21|| 2004-08-10 22:21|| Front Page Top

#21 Thanks for all the corrections, guys. I come here to learn, and y'all have broadened my thinking tremendously.

LH, I understand the analogy, but you know its completely unthinkable -- thanks be to God!

Zenster, I pray that your scenario never comes to pass...in the darkest nights I fear that it will. On the other hand, I doubt we would have to repeat the lesson more than twice.

Posted by trailing wife 2004-08-10 23:04|| 2004-08-10 23:04|| Front Page Top

#22 Zenster, I pray that your scenario never comes to pass...in the darkest nights I fear that it will. On the other hand, I doubt we would have to repeat the lesson more than twice.

trailing wife, have you read the Belmont Club article titled "The Three Conjectures?" It makes a substantial and credible case that even a single nuclear terrorist attack will result in a cascade of total obliteration for all Islamic countries. I find little to argue with in the piece and hope that Muslims everywhere get a chance to read it. Islam is playing with matches in a powder magazine. It is simply incomprehensible how Islam completely ignores the wolf at their door. Jihadist fanatics threaten to bring total ruination upon their faith and all most Muslims do is sit back and cheer them on after each atrocity. After a while, it becomes just plain disgusting. One single terrorist nuclear bomb will likely be all it takes to wipe Islam from the face of this entire earth.

Posted by Zenster 2004-08-10 23:37|| 2004-08-10 23:37|| Front Page Top

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