But dafydd, ask yourself if Ms. Sultan's polemic will have any effect on the Islamic world? Except for eliciting death threats, that is.

here is a moderate muslim perspective on the two manifestos that came out last week.

So, what does this leave us with? A number of authors, either non-Muslim or Muslims who are perceived to be apostates wrote a fiery "warning against 'Islamic totalitarianism'". As if the "West" needed one ... after Khomeini, 9/11, and the recent "Danish Cartoon Protests". But now "Westerners" can point at the "courageous moderate Muslims" ... who happen to have no standing AT ALL in the Muslim World. And "over there" ... this pamphlet, just like the one by Akyol & Baran, will have no impact at all. If we're lucky, that is. Because, if we're unlucky, it might just be picked up and used as yet another example of how the "big, bad West" is using apostates and traitors to sow its vile ideology among the "good and true Muslims". And whoever will make that argument ... will be believed.

This just more echo chamber stuff, more triumphalism for the blogverse. "see, we toldja Islam was eeevil?"

Now in the Islamic world, it will skillfully be converted into counter-propaganda.
No wonder we're getting our asses kicked in the war for hearts and minds.
The DPW debacle is just another propaganda opportunity for the fundamentalists. "See? You are untrustworthy sand-n*****s to the great satan. you will always be despised and unequal."

How can we get some traction in the meme wars?

[Matoko, you know you can't use that word here! -- the Mgt.]

Matoko Kusanagi:

Contrariwise, I believe her interview and others like it will have a tremendous impact across the Moslem world. Here's why:

The bulk of the Moslem world likely believes more or less what she does about Islam: that it's backward, primitive, and has led only to disaster. They certainly can't say it out loud in many parts of the world... but it's human nature to want to be wealthy and healthy and at peace, and Islam has given its believers none of this in recent decades.

Even during the Crusades and the witch-hunting fervor and the religious wars, Christianity had the good sense to leave ordinary people alone nearly all the time: if you were a peasant or a burgher, farmer or craftsman, goodwife or child, you simply went to church on certain days, and you obeyed the normal laws of the land, and you were fine.

Life was hard, but religion didn't make it any harder.

You didn't have someone in your face screaming at you all the time. There were never any roving bands of thugs whose job it was to attack your wife or daughters because they dared show too much of their faces or appear without an escort. Apostasy was certainly not against the law, nor typically even low-level blasphemy: you wouldn't be arrested for cursing in public, for example.

You could be arrested for heresy, of course; but what ordinary person even bothered thinking about such things, let alone preaching them? It had nothing to do with your daily life... making locks and keys, repairing wagon wheels, sowing wheat, sewing gowns, herding flocks, herding children.

The ordinary man and woman lived in peace, or as much peace as possible in a fallen world... and the religion provided something interesting to look forward to -- a nice break in the work week, when you could sit and listen to some entertainment in a language you didn't even understand... nothing intrusive.

Even later, when services were conducted in the vulgar, they didn't command you to go out and kill your neighbor. They warned you against the things that made good sense and good public order: don't kill, don't fly into a rage; don't cheat or steal; don't commit adultery. Don't lie.

There were occasional witch hysterias or other cases of mass madness; but these were extraordinarily rare and did not affect many (Salem and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre were huge exceptions, which is why we remember them by name).

But modern Islam is very different: in many parts of the world, it gets in one's face every hour of every day. People are constantly afraid they'll be arrested for singing, eating, laughing, or conducting ordinary business.

They fear for their women; they fear for their sons, who are told to kill themselves so they can blow up other children like themselves. Islam has supported and been used as a prop by every modern totalitarian dictator in the Moslem world (which was not true of Christianity), even in secular Iraq; and that is the only contact many Moslems have with their religion: a beast that disrupts their lives, controls their every movement, and frightens them.

Five times a day -- which is a lot -- they must stop everything they're doing and spend a half hour bowing and praying and being yelled at. The sermons by many imams are filled with anger, bitterness, and hatred... especially in the parts of the ummah that we most want to change.

I suspect that a huge percent of Moslems desperately want Islam itself to reform, to modernize -- to become more like modern-day Christianity and Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism. In other words, to just leave ordinary people alone to their potty, little lives.

Now here comes a woman seen by literally tens of millions of Moslems. She isn't a supermodel; she looks just like a wife and mother (which of course she is). She speaks Arabic as a Syrian. She isn't shrouded in a burka.

And she is smart, articulate, and unafraid, like a daughter you're secretly proud of but are terrified for at the same time, because she might say something where They can hear... the Men in Black who are everywhere in Islamic countries.

And Dr. Sultan is saying all the things you've thought for years and years, right out loud! And she is speaking without fear, just as you've dreamed of someday being able to do.

Matoko, I think Dr. Sultan will create an absolute sensation in the Moslem world, especially the Moslem Arab world. There will be concerted efforts to kill her by those who understand what a threat she poses.

But she is here in Los Angeles, not in Damascus or Teheran or even London. The efforts will fail, and we may even bust a sleeper cell when they foolishly leave off their previous mission to go after her (perhaps at the orders of Ahmadinejad, who used to do this sort of work).

The entire ummah will be following her story to see what happens to her. When she is allowed to live without being destroyed, they will start to believe that the enforcers of barbarism are not all-powerful, as they claimed.

I agree with you that the "manifesto" will likely have no legs, because it's too esoteric and it won't be seen by many. But the impact of Dr. Wafa Sultan will be huge.

Keep watching the skies!

Dafydd

I suspect that a huge percent of Moslems desperately want Islam itself to reform, to modernize -- to become more like modern-day Christianity and Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism.

Is this possible? I was quite sobered a few weeks ago when the new pope reportedly expressed the view, through a spokesman, that the Koran was structured in such a way that only one real interpretation was possible: the absolutist one we see now that keeps Islam mired in a 7th Century mentality.

If this is true--and I have no reason to believe that this pope isn't sharp as hell when it comes to comparative theology--then there is no chance for reform.

With the secular, totalitarian "religion" of Communism dead, that means this century looks like another decades-long conflict between Western freedom and an even more virulent ideology of oppression, this time "with God on its side."

Frankly, I know nothing about Islam other than what I've read in Robert Spencer's "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades" so I'm not sure what to think about the Pope and Spencer's opinions. I also have no clue why Islamo-fascism (I do like the term) sprang up now after being dormant for ages like that bad egg in the original "Alien" movie. Perhaps it's simply that totalitarianism abhors a vacuum.

What do you think, oh Hissing One?

oh, pardon, dafydd.
i guess i listen to so much hiphop anymore that i don't even hear that word. It has lost all negative force for me.
sorry.

i dunno. i have muslim friends and read lotsa muslim blogs. i don't see Wafa being a huge hit with them. Here's what the Lounsbury at Aqoul said about Irshad Manji.

Irshad Manji (who besides being an annoying ill-informed whanker of a commentator, also is well on the bleeding edge of social liberalism even by rather liberal Western standards) as "the model of Moderate Islam" when I would argue she's nothing close to the sort; at best she is a tolerable apostate to most reasonable but pious people, with near zero attraction. She represents, on the contrary - if she is "Moderate Islam" - the idea that the Islamic world has to abrogate its current core pious values and enter an utterly alien world. Leaving aside the good or bad of that (I am an across the board classic liberal, but also hard core pragmatist in these things), that looks not at all like an invitation to "Moderate Islamic values" but an renunciation of the religion.

my muslim friends profess admiration for Sistani, Sadr, and for Tariq Ramadan who is considered to be a reformer and sorta progressive in the muslim world.

Redhand:

I conclude two things about the pope: first, he is being too logical-minded (Western logical); second, he is forgetting the history of his own faith.

Today we find many ways to interpret the Bible because we decided, centuries ago, that we would no longer be bound by the original interpretation, which was hard-line literalism: "when Genesis says six days, it by-God means six literal twenty-four hour periods!"

Now we can say, "obviously that's a poetic metaphore for six stages of creation, and you know, it actually tracks pretty well with what we know scientifically about the 'genesis' of the world."

But that is because we already have a modern mindset. I assure you that in AD 800, the Church (there was only one then, the Great Schism being still two centuries away) would have allowed no such latitude.

There was an earlier interpretive dynamic, where numerous readings were allowed and debated; but that was the Jewish tradition, where arguing over what the Bible really means is the national pastime.

But within the early Christian Church, any deviation from the current orthodoxy -- whether Arianism or Manicheanism or Lutheranism -- was considered heresy, and they had to convene an ecumenical council to condemn it.

After the Enlightenment, the various churches tended to mellow out. They more or less accepted the idea that any creative interpretation of the Bible that kept the holy "spirit" of the thing (sorry about that!) was acceptable, especially if it smoothed over differences between sects.

Thus, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Unitarians rarely go around killing each other these days, and none of them has been burnt at the stake by the Catholic Church for centuries. Even the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches keep lurching towards rapprochement.

The problem is that Islam has never had an Enlightenment. As I put it a while back, what we need are more Moslem Methodists (sequel here) -- Moslems for whom religion takes a back seat to living within the modern world. (It's hard to imagine Fundamentalist or Charismatic Methodists driving the moneychangers out of the country club.)

That's where the pope was wrong: any intelligent person can read any book like the Koran, locate the "problematical" verses, and "interpret" them until they fit reasonably well into modernity; all it takes is the determination to do so.

Give me a passage, and I'll do it for you right where you are reading now. (I don't own a Koran, so I can't do it myself.) I'm serious: find me the most troublous passage in the Koran, and I'll bet I can interpret it into something that does not require blowing oneself up to kill Jewish children.

I mean, Christians have managed to weasel their way out of this one:

Exodus 22:18 or 17

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (KJV, 1611)

You shall not let a sorceress live. (NewAmB, NewCath trans, imprimatur/nihil obstat, 1986)

You shall not tolerate a sorceress. (Tanakh, JPS trans 1985) (The word rendered "tolerate" literally means "let live.")

Yet neither Protestants nor Catholics nor Jews are out busily executing witches (or sorceresses). So obviously some pretty fancy interpreting is going on here!

Dafydd

their religion: a beast that disrupts their lives, controls their every movement, and frightens them.

Five times a day -- which is a lot -- they must stop everything they're doing and spend a half hour bowing and praying and being yelled at. The sermons by many imams are filled with anger, bitterness, and hatred... especially in the parts of the ummah that we most want to change.

i don't...don't think that is how most pious muslims view dhikr, or remembrance. Instead of original sin, Islam teaches that man is forgetful. five times a day man is reminded.

I asked my friend Aziz for a definition of a moderate muslim, and he said,

"someone who just wants to be left alone in the parking lot at sunset so he can finish praying and get back home to watch Elmo with his four year old."

Matoko Kusanagi:

I hope the "Sadr" your friends admire is pere, not fils!

But Lounsbury at Aqoul is more or less correct: a Christian of AD 800 would not recognize a modern Catholic or Protestant as a "Christian." He would rail that they had abandoned their "core pious values," creating an "utterly alien world."

And of course, we do have problems, as a society, when Christians go too far in abandoning faith: witness the staggering rate of out-of-wedlock births.

On the other hand, we cannot live in a society that condemns the modern world in its entirety, either; there are no solutions, only trade-offs. What we seek is the most advantageous trade-off we can find.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani would not recognize a "Moslem Methodist" as a Moslem; but even his Quietism has been used by Shia to justify suicide bombings.

Islam must compromise... and it must indeed renounce the barbaric part of its religiosity, if it is to survive and thrive. Because as it stands now, Islam has ground civilization to a halt wherever Moslems have taken control.

Dafydd

no, it is moqtada. he was very popular in the recent elections. Have you seen Sadr's website though? it is mostly a tribute to his father, (who was a very great man), with paens to him by Khameni.
we argue sometimes about the different perceptions of Sadr, here and there.

I think Islam is changing. but what is dy/dx ?
;-)

and, Dafydd, i see my muslim friends being defensive of their piety in the same way that my christian friends are defensive of theirs.

Christians are often attacked for being backwards and foolish and believing in the supernatural too.

i see the islamic fundamentalists as being vastly different from most muslims. Like GW does. ;)

Matoko Kusanagi:

It's not their belief in the supernatural they have to give up; that's no problem. What must change is their vile habit of listening to the little voices in their heads that tell them to kill.

They must change the outward manifestation of their religious beliefs, not the beliefs themselves. I don't believe anyone doubts the sincerity of Joan of Arc's belief that the voice in her head was God; and if your country is under foreign occupation, and you have to rally the faithful to expel the invader, that might be a valuable insanity.

But Joan of Arc in the modern world is a disaster looking for a victim.

She can believe what she wants. What she cannot do is talk a bunch of people into killing all the people she personally considers bad or wicked, no matter what the little voice says.

(And you can tell your Moslem friends that Muqtada Sadr is a venomous, retarded, illiterate psychopath who would cheerfully kill every Moslem in the world, if that would make him king of what's left.)

Dafydd

Dafydd, that is how you view al-Sadr and Ms. Sultan. You may be right. But I am interested in how muslims view them.

Like i said, it is simple math. If the rate of change is large in relation to the time required, we'll win the war for hearts and minds.
1.5 billion muslims is a lot of people to expect to experience some sort of simultaneous epiphany about a faith they've been practicing for 100's of years. I just wonder all the time what sort of benevolent memetics we can use to accelerate change. What we're doing now seems pretty ineffective.

The RCC put the heathen to the sword and burned heretics in the bad old days.
They changed.
But it took a really, really long time.

Dafydd from Redhand:

To be sure Christianity has had its violent religious wars in centuries past, along with inquisitions and pograms against Jews. I agree also that it has evolved a mature consensus that basic doctrinal difference can co-exist under the Banner of Christ, so to speak. (Ireland is the only place I can think of where religious differences between Christians have driven armed conflict in the last century. Perhaps the Balkans too, where there remains a great divide between Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism.)

But the real question is why Islam hasn't evolved, isn't it? As you point out, it hasn't had an enlightenment. Why do you think that is?

And what does your pseudonym mean or refer to, BTW?

redhand, dafydd ab hugh is dafydd son of hugh. a welshman.

dafydd,

The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?" He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.
Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail.

Right, playing the Rushdie card for well-meaning but naive Westerners by calling statements made during a TV debate a "formal fatwa" because the immediate association is "death sentence". Fatwas are legal rulings in Islamic jurisprudence and are issued as a response to a specific legal question.

A quick overview of what is and is not a fatwa can be found here: Every Muslim may be entitled to declare an opinion on whatever he or she wishes. But a fatwa is not a point of view; it is a legal opinion. A fatwa is not personal advice given in response to a personal problem and it is not simply an answer to a question. A fatwa is a non-binding legal opinion issued in response to a legal problem. For instance, if one asks, "How many times a day do Muslims pray?" The answer to this is not a fatwa. If one asks: "Do you think it is a good idea to marry someone older than myself?" The response to this is personal advice but not a fatwa. However, if one inquires about a problem that is the proper subject of a legal inquiry, then one is asking for a fatwa. For example, if one asks, My father is opposed to my marrying this man, but legally, could I still marry him anyway?" This question solicits a fatwa. A fatwa assumes a conflict of evidence and a need to weigh and evaluate the evidence. In the language of fiqh, a fatwa is issued in response to a problematic matter (amr mushkil).

The point is well-illustrated by the following incident: A man asked al-lmam Malik about a matter. Imam Malik responded by saying, "I don't know." The man retorted, "But this is a simple and easy matter." Irritated Imam Malik said: "Nothing is easy in knowledge and fatwa. Fatwas are not religious condemnations, they are formal legal opinions. Dismissing someone in a TV debate by calling them a blasphemer does not mean you have issued a fatwa calling for their death. It is extremely important that Western readers understand this distinction, as it is obviously being glossed over in the media.

another perspective.
ms. sultan cannot possibly believe she has actually had a fatwa issued against her, unless she is completely ignorant of Islamic jurisprudence.

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