Posted: Apr 07, 2011 6:30 pm
by metacristi
jez9999 wrote:The way I see it, a 'moderate Muslim' is generally someone who doesn't obey everything in the Quran, whether or not they say they do.

They are therefore not a Muslim; they are an apostate, and Islam is pretty strict on that.

I therefore suggest we replace the term 'moderate Muslim' with 'pseudo-Muslim' wherever we see it. There's no halfway house. You're either a Muslim, or a pseudo-Muslim. Not my fault, blame the Quran. But don't try bullshitting me that you can believe part of it, ignore the rest, and claim it's the perfect word of God that you follow every part of.

Thoughts?



Frankly speaking I cannot see how can one be ‘moderate’ (in the western acceptation of this term) whilst still working within a traditionalist framework (centred around the view that the whole qur’an is the true word of allah). Moreover I'd say that a crucial condition for moderation is an open recognition that even large parts of sharia are obsolete, not applicable today (sharia out of public life; although valid in a past historical context), opening the way for full secularism.

Apart from a handful of intellectuals I do not know of others who to advocate this view…Not too many people for who to replace the label 'moderate Muslim' with 'pseudo-Muslim' :) (in truth many ‘progressives’ of islam are far from the Christian moderates; I would label them ‘passive carriers of the same dogmatic islam of the last 1400 years, always ready to become very aggressive again’).

But there are nonetheless some interesting attempts to reform islam (having some real justification, whilst remaining within a traditionalist framework) which deserve attention for, if accepted by a majority of muslims, they could indeed made islam much more desirable (offering also some guarantees that a return to the orthodox islam is difficult).

I have primarily in mind Ghamidi’s interpretation of islam*; frankly I think that his approach has enough problems of justification (I find the orthodox islam more natural) and when looking from a non-muslim perspective it fall short of offering moderation in the western acceptation (no real recognition of the indefensible errors of the past although the political part of islam is indeed downgraded): a much better idea is to cease to see the qur’an as the eternal and exact word of allah and to find capacity to think way beyond tradition (including advocating the view that the label 'islam' can be accepted even if non trivial reforms are made).


*http://www.al-mawrid.org/index.php