Sunday, January 20, 2008
Muslims Against Sharia
The title refers to an organization, Muslims Against Sharia (MASH), that has a website.
One cannot help but feel their name is a grievously naive oxymoron, sort of like “Nazis Against National Socialism” or “The KKK against racism”.
Since I discovered their website a couple of weeks ago, they have been gracious enough to publish my comments and leave them there—most of them rather critical of them. However, I posted a question recently that they apparently saw fit not to publish. My question proposed one “litmus test” to prove the sincerity and substance of any Muslim who claims, as they do, to be really “moderate”.
My question in a nutshell is: What would you Muslims of MASH do if, in the society you live in, certain people started going around publicly mocking Mohammed? Would you believe in allowing them under law to continue and to protect them under law, because you value the principle of free expression? Or do you believe in punishing the mockers in one way or another?
This would not be the only question for the litmus test. A whole battery of questions would be necessary. But it’s a start. My question was prompted by reading one of the MASH individuals respond on their site to a commenter skeptical of their authentic moderation, by offering their own litmus question, phrased rhetorically: Would we say that Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha at age 6 and consummation of that marriage when she was 9 constitutes pedophilia, if we were not really moderates?
There is a problem with their rhetorical question, however. The MASH movement is a Koran-only movement, and they consider the Sunna and giant chunks of Islamic tradition to be so much bad trash to be thrown out. The story of Mohammed marrying Aisha comes from the Sunna, not the Koran. So the MASH people are not really condemning Mohammed at all with their rhetorical question—they are simply condemning what they deem to be a false construct of Mohammed created by later Muslims (in the Hadiths).
Their fanciful project of throwing out most of Islamic texts and history, thus, brings to mind another litmus question (and its radiating sub-questions): How precisely do they maintain a good and worthy Mohammed and how would they, using reason applied to actual history, defend this good and worthy Mohammed? Or are they simply constructing a mythically good Mohammed to be placed in opposition to the mythically bad Mohammed of the Sunna?
I hope their attention meanders its way through the interstices of the Internet to my site here (as it already has in at least one charming comment they made recently on my other blog; to wit, when they posted a tart riposte—“won’t you please just shut the fuck up!”—to one of my essays there about how the term “moderate Muslim” has lost its usefulness), and I hope they see fit to answer these questions to my satisfaction.
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4 comments:
‘“Nazis Against National Socialism” or “The KKK against racism”’
You’re comparing apples and oranges. The proper analogy would be “Christians against the Inquisition”. Racism is a founding principle of any white supremacy movement, but Sharia is not an integral part of Islam, but rather a reviled relic of the past.
“I posted a question recently that they apparently saw fit not to publish.”
You are mistaken. Your question was published and so was our answer.
‘“Nazis Against National Socialism” or “The KKK against racism”’
"You’re comparing apples and oranges. The proper analogy would be “Christians against the Inquisition”. "
That would be the proper analogy, if it were already established that Islam itself is not an intolerant and racist system of supremacist and expansionist imperialism. That Islam is not any of those things needs to be established, before my analogy is repudiated. So far, 1400 years of history of Islam right up to the present day news + the foundational texts of Islam tend to support the appropriateness of my analogy.
"Racism is a founding principle of any white supremacy movement"
No: Racism is a founding principle of any supremacy movement -- white, black, brown, yellow, red or purple.
"Sharia is not an integral part of Islam, but rather a reviled relic of the past."
This has to be established in two ways:
1) theoretically with internal consistency
a) using core texts that constitute the belief system of Islam
and
b) offering cogent and well-documented arguments for why certain Muslim scholars and certain Islamic texts are to be rejected as "un-Islamic"
And
2) Pragmatically, as a viable alternative to the views of Muslims who disagree with you. I can tell you right from the get-go that if you try to frame your Muslim opposition as anything LESS than a vast majority who present an extremely formidable force, you will not be taken seriously by intelligent non-Muslims. You can't even begin to mount an effective opposition to something, if you delude yourself about the actual dimensions of that opposition (as you demonstrated recently on your site by referring to Muslims who would oppose changing the Koran as "Some Muslims"...! Similarly, to underestimate the number of Muslims who revere the Sunna is also to be indulging in unreality, and will only undermine your effectiveness in the long run.
"You are mistaken. Your question was published and so was our answer."
I'll check it out, thanks.
“Islam creates a functional race”
It is really difficult to argue with someone when they start pulling new definitions out of their asses. What’s next? Functional gender? Male, Female, and Islamic?
“Islam harbors a tendency toward racism among Arabs feeling they are superior to other races”
First, “Arab” is not a race either, it’s an ethnicity. Second, Arabs comprise about a third of Muslim population and some of the Arabs do not practice Islam.
MAS
This is an exercise in semantics - whether Arabs are a race or an ethnic group is tangential to this argument. Erich's point - that Islam creates a group - called Believers - who are then branded as superior to everyone else - is the functional equivalent of what racist groups - be they white, black, brown, grey, pink - do when they declare their own races as superior to others.
The only difference between Islam, and something like, say, Aryan Nation, is that a non-Muslim, can simply by reciting the Shehada, instantly join this group, and then has to start engaging in activities that undermine his former religion, whereas no non-Aryan can join the Aryan Nation. I guess that when the question boils down to whether the non-member in question lives or dies, one could arguably state that Islam is an improvement. Nonetheless, despite the fact that Islam isn't a race, the fact that it creates a group that is deemed superior to all others by mere virtue of membership, and nothing else.
Also, given the fact that non-Arabs, such as Kurds in Iraq and Syria, Black Muslims in Darfur have been persecuted by Arabs on the grounds of not being 'true Muslims' (since they're not Arabs, in the eyes of these governments), he is not wrong in stating that Islam inspires Arab racism towards non-Arabs.
Your point - that only a third of Muslims are Arabs (actually, much less than that) - is irrelevant to the question of whether Islam inspires Arab supremacy. The fact that Arabs constitute a minority might make that supremacy more difficult to practice in non-Arab countries such as Turkey or Iran, but it is certainly alive and well in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and even in non Arab countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, being Arab like is considered a status symbol.
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