18AR23-19

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AR 23:19 - "Head-spinning changes" bring relief from radical Islam

In this issue:

ISLAM - after festering over four decades the global virus born of Saudi Arabia's radical Islam is now in retreat

+ "empowering Muslims to work within the system to improve it"

+ how abuse in the name of Islam is "alienating people in almost every Muslim-majority nation"

Apologia Report 23:19 (1,385)

June 14, 2018

ISLAM

"The Saudis Take On Radical Islam" by Adel Al-Toraifi (former Saudi minister of culture and information, 2015-17) -- writing for the Wall Street Journal (Mar 19 '18), Al-Toraifi begins: "The year 1979 was a watershed for the Middle East. Iranian revolutionaries overthrew the shah, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and Sunni Islamic extremists tried to take over the Grand Mosque of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Islam's holiest shrine. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hadn't been born, but he is fighting the ghosts of 1979 as he dramatically reforms the kingdom. ...

"In Saudi schools, education was largely in the hands of foreign nationals, many with Muslim Brotherhood backgrounds. ... But the combination of the brotherhood's political outlook and the rigid Salafi doctrine <www.bit.ly/2kP7ff5> injected a virus into the Saudi education system. That virus allowed Osama bin Laden to recruit 15 Saudis to take part in that terrible deed on Sept. 11, 2001. We Saudis failed those young men, and that failure had global implications.

"The Salafi clerics and Muslim Brotherhood imports also worked in concert as they were given unsupervised access to private donations to fund mosques and madrasas from Karachi to Cairo, where they generally favored the most conservative preachers.

"The policy makers' idea was simple: Give the political Islamists and their Salafi affiliates room to influence educational, judicial and religious affairs, and we will continue to control foreign policy, the economy, and defense. Saudi rulers were handling the hardware, while radicals rewrote the nation's software. Saudi society, and the Muslim world, is still reeling from the effects.

"Crown Prince Mohammed's critics describe him as a young man in a hurry. They're right - and he should be. As he told all of us in his cabinet constantly: 'Time is our enemy. We cannot wait any longer to reform our country. The time is now.'

"He is clear about the problem. 'Political Islam, whether Sunni or Shiite, Muslim Brotherhood or jihadi Salafist, has damaged Muslim nations,' he once told me. 'It also gives Islam a bad name. Therefore, it is the role of Muslim countries to face these evil ideologies and groups and to stand with our world allies in the West and East to confront them once and for all.'"

Al-Toraifi briefly reviews some of the "head-spinning changes" that the Crown Prince has already started. "At an October 2017 conference for international investors, Crown Prince Mohammed laid out his ideas for moderate Islam. 'Saudi Arabia was not like this before 1979,' he said. 'We want to go back to what we were, the moderate Islam that's open to all religions. We want to live a normal life . . . coexist and contribute to the world. . . . We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with these destructive ideas.'

"During my time in office, I came to realize that while Saudi Arabia will continue to face challenges, for the first time in four decades the ghosts haunting Saudi Arabia are in retreat." <www.on.wsj.com/2sxyBe4>

Sharia Compliant: A User's Guide to Hacking Islamic Law, by Rumee Ahmed [1] -- "In this well-reasoned book, Ahmed ... argues that Islamic law can be made more modern to address contemporary concerns. Ahmed suggests that Muslims need to 'challenge common assumptions about Islam' to adapt Islamic law to the challenges of 21st-century life. For Ahmed, 'hacking' is about revitalizing Islamic law and restoring its inherently innovative nature. He wants to do this by empowering Muslims to work within the system to improve it. Ahmed shares examples throughout history of how hacking Islamic law has helped free slaves, revolutionize financial relationships, broaden women's rights, and make Muslims stand out in the 'selfie-culture' that has developed over the past decade. He coaches readers to plug into online Koran chat rooms and mailing lists to reread and freshly apply verses about women and the family in ways that are both faithful to the text and liberating for Muslims. Though lay readers may have difficulty following more nuanced discussions, they will still come away with an understanding of the traditional mechanics of interpreting and applying Islamic laws. Ahmed's in-depth book demonstrates how flexible Islamic law can be as it evolves to tackle the issues of 21st-century life and will appeal to lay readers interested in the textual origins of popularly held beliefs about the Koran." Publishers Weekly, Mar '18 #4 [2]

"How Islamism Drives Muslims to Convert" by Mustafa Akyol -- finds that "there are signs that quite a few Iranians are now also disenchanted with Islam itself. Often silently and secretly, they are abandoning their faith. Some opt for other faiths, often Christianity.

"This trend is being observed and reported, with understandable excitement, by Christian news sites. [However,] it is hard to know the exact number. But the trend seems strong enough to worry Iran's religious establishment - and make it turn to a solution it knows well: oppression. ...

"As a Muslim who is not happy to see my coreligionists leave the faith, I have a great idea to share with the Iranian authorities:

"If they want to avert more apostasy from Islam, they should consider oppressing their people less, rather than more, for their very oppression is itself the source of the escape from Islam.

"That truth is clear in stories told by former Muslims.... suffering from the oppression or violence perpetrated in the name of religion is cited very often. ...

"This trend is certainly not limited to Iran. Authoritarianism, violence, bigotry and patriarchy in the name of Islam are alienating people in almost every Muslim-majority nation. ...

"Even in officially secular Turkey, my country, the growing assertiveness of religious conservatives pushes the young generation toward deism - belief in a god, but no religion....

"The core problem is that traditional Islamic jurisprudence, and the religious culture it produced, were formed when society was patriarchal, hierarchical and communitarian. Liberal values like free speech, open debate and individual freedom were much more limited. Hence Muslim jurists saw no problem in 'protecting the religion' by executing apostates and blasphemers, and by enforcing religious observance. Some of them, like Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, whose ninth-century teachings were a precursor of modern-day Wahhabism - also championed blind faith, a notion of believing 'without asking how.' ...

"[I]f Islamic authoritarianism persists, it is likely to produce mass secularization in Muslim societies. Islam may still count as the fastest-growing religion in the world, thanks to high birthrates, but it will lose some of its best and brightest. Worse yet, such influential apostates will probably become not merely post-religious but anti-religious, bringing more conflict to Muslim societies and deepening the crisis of Islam. ...

Akyol believes a solution can be found in civil traditions like the "medieval Muslim theologians and philosophers [who] employed reason to articulate the faith, and wrestled with foreign ideas like Greek philosophy, rather than banning them. Meanwhile, the mystical Sufi orders focused on developing virtue, which allowed them to spread the faith through inspiration and example.

"It is those civil traditions that the 'ummah' - the global Muslim community - needs to revive today, while putting an end to religious violence, bigotry and dictatorship." New York Times, Mar 25 '18, <www.nyti.ms/2xM5bhh>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Sharia Compliant: A User's Guide to Hacking Islamic Law, by Rumee Ahmed (Stanford Univ Prs, 2018, paperback, 272 pages) <www.amzn.to/2JvMXFq>

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