Free Republic

Part three in a three-part series. Islamists fear any real ideological battle within Islam against Islamism and its clerics. To that end, they seek the removal of American and Western involvement from Muslim majority countries. Americanism is founded upon an anti-theocratic ideology that is a global ideological threat to Islamism. "Jeffersonian" Muslims who depart from Islamism are similarly the greatest threat to the influence of Islamists within the Muslim community. Disengage Islamism from Muslims and Americanism will flourish among Muslims. With the deconstruction of Islamism (the ends), Islamist terror (the means) has no cause. Muslim activists should find it commonplace...

A few cartoons involving Muhammad have generated a firestorm that refuses to go out. Just a couple of weeks ago, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina rented a jeep and drove it through a student plaza on the campus, injuring nine people, including a visiting scholar. Police are still investigating the crime, but one factor that may have contributed is that the campus paper printed one of the now infamous caricatures of Muhammad, arousing the anger of many Muslims. The driver, an Iranian Muslim, has plainly said he attacked the campus because it was the will of...

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, American Muslim leaders insisted that the terrorism had nothing to do with Islam. They cited Central Intelligence Agency reports showing that Latin Americans were responsible for more terrorist incidents than Muslims. They blamed Israel or American foreign policy, and their organizations focused on campaigns to convince non-Muslim Americans that Islam was a religion of peace. Nearly four years after the attacks, American Muslim leaders are changing their message. They are rolling out campaigns to persuade American Muslims - especially the young - to beware of preachers peddling extremism and terrorism. They say that terrorism...

LONDON: Salman Rushdie, whose Satanic Verses first revealed and exemplified to a shocked world the massed rage of a globally-vocal, possibly violent, fearsomely-networked, resurgent Islamist extremism, has led the West's call for an Islamic reformation that brings the planet's youngest, fastest-growing religion into the 21st century. Rushdie's new novel set in Kashmir details the transformation of a young Muslim boy from shy adolescent to Islamist terrorist under the tutelage of a bearded radical mullah. He launched his appeal for a "move beyond tradition...(for) the Koran to be seen as a historical document...not supernaturally above (history)" even as his book, 'Shalimar...

WHEN Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, admitted that “our own children” had perpetrated the July 7 London bombings, it was the first time in my memory that a British Muslim had accepted his community’s responsibility for outrages committed by its members. Instead of blaming US foreign policy or “Islamophobia”, Sacranie described the bombings as a “profound challenge” for the Muslim community. However, this is the same Sacranie who, in 1989, said that “Death is perhaps too easy” for the author of The Satanic Verses. Tony Blair’s decision to knight him and treat him as the...

When Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, admitted that "our own children" had perpetrated the July 7 London bombings, it was the first time in my memory that a British Muslim had accepted his community's responsibility for outrages committed by its members. Instead of blaming U.S. foreign policy or "Islamophobia," Sacranie described the bombings as a "profound challenge" for the Muslim community. However, this is the same Sacranie who, in 1989, said that "Death is perhaps too easy" for the author of "The Satanic Verses." Tony Blair's decision to knight him and treat him as the...

The London bombings have shocked the world and once again raised the question 'Why?'. But people who hurry to blame fundamentalists and poverty are missing the point: Islam itself. Today there is a lot of talk about the root causes of Islamic terrorism and how to deal with them. So what are these root causes then? UK-US foreign policy? The West’s lust for oil? Illiteracy and poverty in the Muslim world? The hijacking of Islam by a few extremists? These, amongst others, are the reasons most left-wing intellectuals and self-declared liberal Muslim thinkers, from British journalist Robert Fisk to Pakistani...

Driving back from the North Carolina mountains tonight, I heard an amazing commentary on NPR that fits into our discussion of the MSM’s heated search for a “moderate” version of Islam that it can hold up as some kind of majority viewpoint. This is part of the whole template that there are “fundamentalists” in all faiths who are equally dangerous in their often violent quest for the illusion of certainty and moral absolutes and then there are “moderates” who, if they all had their way, would all get along as they search for the Eternal Other.Here is the NPR link...

FALLS CHURCH The voice of the new imam at one of the largest mosques on the East Coast rang loud from the pulpit during Friday services: "The call to reform Islam is an alien call."

This is in response to the Point of View column by Parvez Ahmed. He quoted the Quran, which states that war should be purely "defensive." Islam started in the Arabian desert, expanding through North Africa very quickly. Were the Arabs "defensively" waging a war? Another point he makes is the Quran advocates kindness to people of other faiths. Yet Saudi Arabia, in the name of Islam, forbids building any churches in that country while financing the building of thousands of mosques throughout the world. The Quran incites the Muslims not to befriend Christians and Jews, and even to smite their...

The Islamic state that existed 1,400 years ago cannot be recreated, says a Muslim scholar Israr Ahmad. "The first Islamic state was created in a tribal setup; today the world has changed," said Ahmad. "So we can form a modern Islamic state based on the principles of our religion but cannot recreate what existed 1,400 years ago." Ahmed, who heads an orthodox Muslim religious party and campaigns tirelessly for establishing an Islamic government in Pakistan, made this observation during a debate on a private Pakistani television channel. The debate and Ahmed's admission both reflect the major change that the Islamic...

Does Islam Need a Luther or a Pope? Edward Feser 12/04/2003 It has become the conventional wisdom in the two years since 9/11 that the trouble with Islam is that, unlike Christianity, it never had a Protestant Reformation. The idea seems to be this: Christianity was (so it is held) rigid and authoritarian before Luther and company came along and paved the way for liberal democracy, science, and all things modern and good; Islam's problem is that it remains stuck in its "Medieval phase," still awaiting Reformers of its own. This analysis dovetails nicely with the conceptions most people have...

Prince Charles and others warned not to discuss the process of renouncing Islam Last month, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that Prince Charles was leading efforts to combat the Islamic law of apostasy, under which leaving the Muslim religion is at the very least illegal and is often punishable by death. Charles had held a private summit of Christian and Muslim leaders at Clarence House to discuss the issue. There was, however, one hitch: The Muslim delegation at the summit cautioned the prince and other non-Muslims not to speak publicly about apostasy laws, and some of the Christian leaders in attendance...

Compared with what was written and said by some of the most prominent Christian reformers of the past, such as Martin Luther of Germany, Pope Urbana II, Francis Voltaire of France, Queen Isabella of Spain or Queen Victoria of Colonial Britain, Charles Moore’s December 12 article in the London Daily Telegraph is a very mild attack on Islam. There is nothing new in his assertion that Islam is a barbaric faith that denies the freedom of all people, including its own adherents. There are no surprises in his attack on Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as a pedophile, or...

Can Islam change? Cover story Ziauddin Sardar Monday 13th September 2004 Beslan and 9/11 are leading millions of Muslims to search their souls. Even clerics now question the harshest traditional laws and look for a more humane interpretation of their faith. By Ziauddin Sardar The Muslim world is changing. Three years after the atrocity of 9/11, it may be in the early stages of a reformation, albeit with a small "r". From Morocco to Indonesia, people are trying to develop a more contemporary and humane interpretation of Islam, and some countries are undergoing major transformations. Much of the attention is...

Pundits have long been asking whether Islam is ready for a reform. The answer is that across the U.S., a quiet tide of Islamic reform is very much under way. In Chicago last year, the Downtown Islamic Center made room for four women on its board after they protested the design of a new mosque that would have given women inadequate space in which to pray. Instead, women got access to the main hall when the new mosque opened in July. In Dearborn, Mich., earlier this year, Imam Mohammed Mardini welcomed Christian women who weren't covering their hair, over the...

Muslims and non-Muslims have a role to play in the reform of Islam, writes Irshad Manji. I am a Muslim refusenik. That doesn't mean I refuse to be a Muslim; it simply means I refuse to join an army of automatons in the name of Allah. I have not walked away from my faith and become a secular North American as so many of my fellow Muslims have done. But I remain a struggling Muslim because of the many human rights abuses in Islamist - note that I do not say Islamic - regions: the treatment of women, the Jew-bashing,...

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Crown Prince Hamzah of Jordan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, urged reforms in Muslim thinking and criticized Islamic extremism Saturday, but he said fanaticism results from injustices and oppression being suffered by Muslims Hamzah, a half brother of Jordan's King Abdullah II and heir to the throne, said the Muslim world was facing pressures and challenges that "extend to every corner of the (Islamic) nation's potential and its sacred shrines." Hamzah, addressing scholars and religious leaders from 40 countries at a three-day conference here, did not elaborate on the pressures Muslims were...

"Muslims Should Reform Religion... Accept Democracy" The Middle East Media Research Institute MEMRI July 02, 2004 Iranian Intellectual: 'Religious Tyranny is Based on a Fascist Interpretation of Faith... Muslims Should Reform Religion... Accept Democracy' The director of the Association for the Defense of Journalism in Iran, Dr. Mohsen Kedivar, participated in a seminar titled "Towards Democracy" at the Law and Political Science Faculty of the University of Tehran. In a speech, he addressed the issue of tyranny and democracy in Iran, noting that Iranian society had experienced two types of tyranny: secular tyranny under the Shah's regime, and religious tyranny...

It has become the conventional wisdom in the two years since 9/11 that the trouble with Islam is that, unlike Christianity, it never had a Protestant Reformation. The idea seems to be this: Christianity was (so it is held) rigid and authoritarian before Luther and company came along and paved the way for liberal democracy, science, and all things modern and good; Islam's problem is that it remains stuck in its "Medieval phase," still awaiting Reformers of its own.  This analysis dovetails nicely with the conceptions most people have these days of the Reformation, of traditional Catholicism, and of...