The Global Islamic Civil War
Roy said the following in his last post:
Constructive criticism of Islam, however, should be allowed and encouraged. It is hardly Islamaphobic to assert that a great deal of its members seem to be against freedom of expression and freedom of speech (see the cartoon row), and a minute proportion seem to be so intolerant of people's actions they want to blow said people up. It is also surely not Islamaphobic to try and suggest ways of how this can be stopped.
The word Islam means, literally 'submission'. Islam is the most binding and absolute of all the 'mono'theisms (how anybody could give such schismatic and divided organisations a name like that is beyond me). Orthodox Muslims believed that the Quran (literally 'the recitation') is the word of God as dictated to Muhammad over a period of 23 years. Muhammad was declared the 'Seal of the Prophets', thus preventing any further revelation from occuring through another Prophet in the future.
The Quran, then, as Orthodox muslims would see it, is perfect and unchangable, it is also the source of the Islamic Sharia law. Combined with the Hadith (the sayings, life and example of the Prophet Muhammad), the Quran is the source of all Islamic law.
You can of course see the difficulty reformist Muslims have in changing their societies. When confronted by fanatics who can point to the text itself and lift directly from it many justifications for the atrocities they commit, the exercise can often seem futile. The West must engage with and support the progressive wings of Islamic communities across the globe. They must be helped to win the argument with the Quranic literalists.
The end goal for a truly progressive foreign policy would be the complete secularisation of the whole globe, but this cannot happen unless the globe is willing to listen. Liberal muslims can be reasoned with, debated with and eventually shown the way forward. Reactionary muslims give no rights to atheists in their societies (they do not even receive dhimmi or 'protected' (essentially 2nd class) status given to 'People of the Book' - Jews and Christians). Armed force should not be put aside in the war we are engaged in, but a more considered and prudent use of it in the future would, perhaps, yield more fruitful results.
-posted by Adam
