Kirbmarc wrote:Steersman wrote:Looks like a bit of an ipse dixit or weasel words or shading into some post-modernism: "it's all just narratives, man!" Issue seems less a question of interpretation than whether it can be construed as fact or not that Allah wrote the Quran.
It's more complicated than that. There are many different schools of interpretation in Islam. No one of that is particularly "modern", but they differ a lot in their interpretation of the "word of God". ....
You can lead a horse to water - and a skeptic to a syllogism .... The whole point though is that a rather large and problematic percentage of Muslisms still take the Quran to have been literally written by "God Himself". You might take a gander at an interview in
Slate of Shadi Hamad, these passages in particular:
Chotiner: What do you think it is about Islam that makes it resistant to secularism in a way that, say, Christianity and Judaism are not?
Hamad: I think you have to go back to the founding moment 14 centuries ago. Jesus was a dissident against a reigning state, so he was never in a position to govern. .... Prophet Muhammad wasn’t just a prophet. He was also a politician, and not just a politician, but a head of state and a state-builder. .... That’s one thing intertwining the religion and politics that isn’t accidental, and was meant to be that way.
In practice, what that means is that if you’re a Muslim secular reformer today, you can make arguments for secularism. I’m not saying that’s impossible. There have been a number of fascinating, quite creative, secular-oriented thinkers in recent decades. But the problem is they have to argue against the prophetic model, so it’s unlikely that those ideas will gain mass traction in Muslim-majority countries. ....
Hamid: Christianity without Christ loses its meaning; you can be culturally Christian or nominally Christian, but the theological content isn’t really there. It’s the same thing with Islam, and that leads to the other factor that I talk about in the book in regards to exceptionalism: Muslims don’t just believe that the Quran is the word of God; they believe it is God’s actual speech. That might sound like a semantic difference, but I think it’s actually really important. ...
'Rots of 'ruck trying to reform a "religion" that is so hermetically sealed against secularism - and against reason and science and humanity to boot - because of its literalism. But you too may wish to take a close look at a recent post -
Islamopologia on steroids - by Anjuli Pandavar where she rakes Hamid over the coals for his apologism.
Kirbmarc wrote:Steersman wrote:"You keep using that word [theocracy] ...." It's "a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god"; Islam is fundamentally not a religion but a totalitarian form of government. One that is intrinsically antithetical to the principles of democracy and human rights.
Since you love definitions so much, Islam isn't a form of government until it has institutions that support it. Would you call a group of three muslims of three different denominations "a form of government"?
You don't think that madrasas and sharia law qualify as "institutions that support" and are predicated on theocracy? Methinks you have an overly narrow if not self-serving definition for "government"; note: "the governing body of a nation, state,
or community". And, speaking of madrasas, you might pay particular attention to this comment by Pandavar in that same post:
Pandavar wrote:In a recent post, I discuss an interview with Professor Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari. I was particularly struck by his explaining how a young child’s mind is prepared for later receptivity to terrorism through the inculcation on its young brain of hatred for non-Muslims. I drew a connection to the madrassas, where the Qur’an is drilled into children, a central purpose of that book being to instil in Muslims an unshakeable hatred of non-Muslims.
And you think that should be condoned or allowed? You might think or argue that that is only characteristic of Salafist/Wahhabist madrasas, but I kind of think that is to be found in most if not all of them.
Kirbmarc wrote:Steersman wrote:Of course - we've discussed it many times and at some length. But it's still somewhat of a strawman when it comes to the issue of the compatibility between Islam and democracy - you and Nawaz and Rizvi and Aslan and Namazie and Ansar and innumerable others, although I'll concede there's a spectrum there, can blather on about "reforming Islam" till the cows come home, but it still doesn't address that question.
That's because the question itself ("Is Islam compatible with democracy?") is by and large impossible to answer, since it considers "Islam" as a monolithic whole and doesn't make it clear what "compatibility" means.
Seems pretty clear to me: can you believe in a state and communities within it that are governed by rather barbaric "laws" predicated on a belief in a clearly psychotic supposed-deity while at the same time believe in a state and communities within it that are governed by laws based on facts? Particularly when the latter rather clearly contradict the former. Reminds me of
Loyola's "Rules for Thinking with the Church":
"That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity[...], if [the Church] shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black.
You may wish to reflect on the
principle of explosion ["from contradiction, anything (follows)")].
Kirbmarc wrote:A better question is whether it's possible for muslims to accept the principles of liberal democracy, and I think that the answer to that it's possible, but very hard, and relatively easier if we uphold those principles, defend them from preachers of violence and subversion, teach them to everyone who wishes to stay in a liberal democracy and punish those who violate them.
Yea, well, let's all cheer for motherhood and apple pie and the American dream. Wan hopes, high-minded princples versus soft-headedness, and all that.
Kirbmarc wrote:Steersman wrote:... Although I'll concede that your recent "Islam based on Qu'ran literalism is incompatible with liberal democracy" is a commendable step in the right direction. But the crux of the matter there is that that literalism is an essential element of Islam, the sine qua non. Rizvi talks, presumably, a great game in his new book, The Atheist Muslim but that looks like an oxymoron, a "deepity", an egregiously false profundity that ignores if not tries to whitewash away that element. How else can "moderate" Muslims possibly "revere" a book that endorses "misogyny, murder or homophobia" unless they see it as literally written by Allah "Himself"?
It's not "a step in the right direction", it's what I've always said. Whether literalism is an "essential" element of Islam depends on what people think about it. Religions have no unchangeable "essence", they change through time. ....
Seems rather clear that Hamid, who seems to have his finger on the pulse of Islam - though it seems more like a zombie than not, among many others such as Erdogan, thinks that that literalism is the essence of it - and for a rather large percentage of all Muslims, "moderates" and "extremists" both.
