Rescuing the Real Islam
Here's a real breath of fresh air. Someone finally coming forward to make himself heard in defense of Islam. Yes, I know Islam has its defenders, multitudes. They are either Muslim in origin and practise or defenders of religion, all of whom claim that the dark and ugly fanaticism the world has been privy to through the advent of guerilla-jihadists of fascist allegiance is not the true face of Islam. Of course they're right. Millions of people the world over would not succumb to worshipping a religion that preaches hate and murder as its central tenets.Somehow, Muslims outraged by the mental picture which many in the West have drawn of their sacred religion as a result of the mind-numbingly brutal assaults against both innocent and ordinary Muslims and Western targets, have failed singularly to impress the rest of us. For one thing, they're too ready to resent the West, to blame it for their own backwardness rather than to look within for the problems that assail them.
Steered and instructed by imams, mullahs and ayatollahs with their own agendas who interpret the Koranic scriptures to please their own warped views of the world and their place in it.
Along comes Khaleel Mohammed, professor of religion at San Diego State University who is taking great pains to explain the root of some of these problems to any who will hear him out. Finally, a person with authority, who has the academic background, the interpretive skills, and the passion for his religion to no longer sit by and allow it to be sullied and corrupted by chronic fantacists who dream of a world-wide Islamic revolution, who feel no compassion toward those whom their deadly targets expunge from this lifetime.
Imams, he points out, who come from Bangladesh, South Africa, Guyana, Egypt and Syria (and more) bring with them their ethnic/cultural/social/traditional baggage when they arrive at the shores of another country: Europe, North America, Australia. They view the new society through the narrow lense of their old familiar one with its burden of strictures unapplicable to that of a free democracy. They are largely unschooled, with few if any religious-academic credits.
The Koran was written in Arabic script, it is read by those who are familiar with the language; Islam itself is said to be so dependent on Arabic that the two are indissoluble; a religious synergy exists between the language and the worship of Allah. But not all Muslims read or even understand Arabic; they are dependent upon the interpretations their imams choose to place upon the scriptures.
Mr. Mohammed (blessed be his name) says that despite what Muslims are being taught, Islam's holy book supports the right of Israel to exist and for Jews to live there. Little wonder he has been the recipient (and continues to be), of a tsunamui of hate mail and threats. Too many imams, he asserts, are not qualified to teach the religion; they wilfully misinterpret Koranic passages.
He points out that the large majority of mosques he has visited use an overwhelming amount of Arabic speech incomprehensible to the people listening. He can, he asserts, visit any mosque he wishes and begin reciting the Koran in Arabic, quoting a specific verse, then tell his listeners that it means something entirely different, and no one present will know enough to challenge his interpretation, or offer to correct him.
Mr. Mohammed, born in Guyana and brought up as a teen-ager in Canada, is a Canadian citizen. He has studied in Montreal, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Syria and Yemen and was a practising imam in Montreal in the late 1990s. It is impossible, he emphasizes, for an imam with little knowledge of the Canadian way of life and society to adequately counsel people.
Do a random survey, he suggests: "choose a church, a synagogoe and a mosque. The average church has a priest who speaks English with a Canadian accent and can relate to Canadians because he has grown up in this country and understands the outlook and cultural values. Go to a synagogue and you'll find the same thing. Go to a mosque and it is not the same. And Muslims can't use the argument that they often use that they are new immigrants, because it is not necessarily true. Muslims have been here for a long, long time.
"The average imam has not taken a course in Christianity. What he knows, or presumes he knows of Christianity, comes from some medieval Muslim interpretor. So he comes to the mosque and tells Muslim youth this is what the Christians believe and this is what the Jews believe and it's all distorted. It is a widely held misunderstanding that imams are on the same general level as priests, ministers or rabbis. There is no ordination system.
"The imam might not be intelligent or particularly knowledgeable of the Koran. It is a problem in Canada that Muslim leaders have not traditionally been chosen for their Islamic knowledge but for their stature in society - a medical doctor, a compuer scientist. So he gets to speak wearing the mantle of a scholar either in the mosque or as the representative of Canadian Muslims."
Much of the hatred is spread by radicals because of the oral tradition of Islam, the Hadith, which has been accepted as a legitimate counterpart to the teachings of the Koran. No one, he says, disputes the primacy of the Koran as the authoritative source of Islamic precepts. It is over what the Hadith contains that the difference of opinion arises. Both the Sunni and the Shia version of the Hadith claim to be authentic, authoratitave.
The Hadith has become the fount of critically-hate-filled information spread among fanatical and gullible Islamists. Through it comes the moral authority to foment violence.
Labels: Religion
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 06, 2007
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