29 Sep 2004
Maybe It's Happening

I've been thinking alot about this post over the past couple of days. It's seemingly generated a large number of hits, despite the lack of writebacks (although I must thank Kathryn for the trackback - I wish I knew how those things work! Maybe it's just an Moveable Type thing ...).

What I didn't mean to imply was that Islam should be banned or immigration restricted on the basis of religion. We can't ride this thing out by becoming like our enemies, and if we do, they will have won the battle.

Nor did I mean to imply that the Koran was in any way different from the Bible. In my mind, those books are simply two sides of the same coin, and for every instance of divinely commanded terror in the former, I can find one in the latter to match it (see Numbers 31).

My point was that Christians today do not routinely demand adherence to the laws of Moses: but many, if not most, Muslims would happily accept, and some demand, the imposition of Sharia law on civil society.

I posited my belief that this is because Islam has not undergone a process of religious reformation, and as such, still has an almost medieval attitude towards civil political discourse: it is infused with religion to the point where the two are almost inseperable.

This can lead not only to terror attacks on non-believers, but to "honor" killings, and outrages like allowing young girls to burn to death because they weren't wearing headscarves.

But apparently, these outrages and the actions of the Islamic terrorists are having a serious impact on the theology of Islam: the link below is to an article where a distinguished French Arabist named Gilles Kepel argues that the terrorism is failing, and is creating a climate within Islam ripe for the kind of reformation that Christianity underwent centuries ago.

Expanding on this for a moment, perhaps that's really what we're witnessing right now: the reaction of extreme religious elements within Islam to the "Westernization" of their countries is creating a backlash, slow to ignite but sure to spread as the outrages continue. Starting with the Iranian Revolution in 1980, the whole Islamic world has been in a near constant state of ferment: imposing Sharia, revoking Sharia, issuing fatwas for the death of authors, screaming that the world doesn't understand them, declaring that they're a religion of peace.

Maybe we are living through history: maybe we are seeing the beginning of the Islamic Reformation. I've gotta wonder what England and Germany looked like from Rome in the early 16th century: remember that both side in the Christian Reformation were trying to outdo one another in religiousity: Calvin burned as many "heretics" in Protestant Geneva as the Inquistion did.

This period of extreme violence and "piety" lasted until both sides were exhausted and their countries decimated. Only then was an uneasy "truce" declared, and only then did they gradually excise the demon of religion from politics.

If it took centuries for Christianity to reform, why should we expect Islam to do it overnight?

Rather than waging a successful jihad against the West, the followers of Osama bin Laden have created chaos and destruction in the house of Islam. This internal crisis is known in Arabic as fitna: "It has an opposite and negative connotation from jihad," explains Kepel. "It signifies sedition, war in the heart of Islam, a centrifugal force that threatens the faithful with community fragmentation, disintegration and ruin."

(link) [Washington Post]

via Tacitus

00:00 /Asatru | 4 comments | permanent link