The Quiet Death of Moderate Islam

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Excellent article written by Mehrdad Amanpour, an Iranian Muslim:

the article tries to make false comparisons, by compromising all of Islam into a monolithic bloc even though it is inherently different in structure to the South African Apartheid ideology, which is a singular entity without difference in interpretation or practice.

This seems to be a theme offered by these Anti-Islam bloggers.

You didn't read the article, did you?

What he is saying is actually the opposite of what you suggest.

This man is a Muslim. He is comparing apartheid South Africa to Islamism, in that they are both bigoted and reprehensible beliefs that see non-whites (or non-Muslims in the case of Islamism) as inferior. One is rightly reviled for the racist and supremacist nonsense that it was, whilst another is encouraged and lauded by people like you.

What he's saying is that genuinely liberal Muslims like him are in the minority and hold very little sway. He - and the likes of Usama Hasan, who was violently chased out of the mosque he had prayed in for 25 years for promoting evolution (Hasan is a scientist) and speaking out against the niqāb - hold less and less weight in Muslim communities.

He's also saying that the police, politicians, the media and social workers are giving the bigots have all the power and are centre-stage, and that these craven public and private bodies see these religious fundamentalist types as 'authentic Muslim voices', instead of giving a view of Muslim voices across the spectrum - liberal, conservative, reformist, Salafist, Deobandist, secularist, Sufist and ex-Muslim, etc etc.

He also says that:

Do you read that quoted passage?

If you listen to Islamic jihadis, this Muslim is tafkir and should be killed.

[49.2] O you who believe! do not raise your voices above the voice of the Prophet, and do not speak loud to him as you speak loud to one another, lest your deeds became null while you do not perceive.
[49.3] Surely those who lower their voices before Allah's Apostle are they whose hearts Allah has proved for guarding (against evil); they shall have forgiveness and a great reward.

We need an apostle. Today, as is, then the prophet Muhammeds bloodline are caliming all rights of holiness. They demand khums, that is 1/5 of the peoples money which originally should go to the absent Apostle. They people are living in poverty while the "mullahs" are enjoying life, and it is they who guide it down for the rest of the people.



Sex and affairs are dangerous issues.
We need law to protect us from the dangers.


That is true.
Punishment of the indifdenls what Allah does.
But we need to regulate life. Sex prohibitions and such are ways of regulating life. Maybe they are going to far.

The only moderate forms of Islam are the ones that have reformed like Ahmadiyya, as they only believe in jihad of the pen. This part of their theology, that they make a break with the past, and the specifically mandate a different approach for these times, effectively turning a page on past Islamic code. There are other groups, but we are talking about very tiny, and ostracized by mainstream Islam.

It is not the case that moderate Islam declined within mainstream Islam, it is just that attempt to reform Islam have been hardly successful. The bulk of Islam history, the theology, has directly supports the result. Yes there may have lesser or great adherence, but the theology supports the violence.

Take the Ottomans for example, they didn't exactly behave according to the Quran in private. However they made sure that any group the broke from mainstream Isalm was persecuted. So they were supporting the continuation of this behavior in the general public.

You can only go on Mohamed's own behavior and example, it speak for itself. Anything else is excuses.

Btw there is a myth that the etymology of Islam means peace, it actually means submission to God. When people go around saying Islam means peace, one they aren't being literal, secondly they aren't being entirely honest with themselves.

I think you can behave like a moderate but if you still follow something that is not moderate, and explicitly won't denounce what isn't moderate about it, then you aren't really moderate, you are having your cake and eating it. Yes sure you aren't personally aren't acting and causing the acts of violence, but you are indirectly supporting it. Yes you may say it is not the 'real' faith to do that, but when it comes down to the nitity gritty of condemning the specific theology, you can't do that without being apostate in the eyes of majority of Islamic theologians,

In order to be different you have to have a your own reform mosque, that shows that that you don't support what others support that you don't agree with. That is what takes real guts.


There two problem in the Islamic world the overall victim complex, and the belief that Islam is truer the previous faiths that preceded it.

Now whist anyone with any common sense would realize that the are many blips in the archeological regarding regarding the biblical story, any we know it descends from polytheistic cultures in the region, Islam's version of this history is so vastly contradictory, it doesn't even get the basic narrative, which there are historical record from witnesses, many of them not even Christian or Jewish. Islam says all of that is wrong, and has been corrupted.

This is on top of the fact there is no archeological record of mecca as an ancient city the first great one in as is stated. There is plenty of archeology in Arabia. Whats more it is not on any trade route of the time. It was a barren valley in the middle of nowhere. there were civilization that surround it, which make no mention of such a place.

As there are question not only around Mohammad's historicity, but the lack a of a fully formed Arabic script at the time, itll in to question the immutable nature of the doctrine, which would be so largely open to error .

Unlike in the levant, archeological digs are specifically banned in Arabia.

The more we should and accept, that its not the religion, but the people themselves, that are responsible for them being fanatic or not. And start supporting and allying with those that are as moderate as we are to fight the fanatics, instead of in the opposite helping the fanatics by blindly islam bashing as it is often done.

^this