{"id":120,"date":"2015-01-08T11:54:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T17:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/01\/what-does-or-would-moderate-islam-look-like.html"},"modified":"2015-02-24T23:21:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T05:21:45","slug":"what-does-or-would-moderate-islam-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/01\/what-does-or-would-moderate-islam-look-like.html","title":{"rendered":"What does (or would) “Moderate Islam” look like?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019m writing this completely unsourced today, more to invite conversation than anything else. \u00a0Ideally, later on, I\u2019d look at some actual sources, so this may be a \u201cpart one\u201d post, to be followed-up on later.<\/p>\n

\u201cModerate\u201d Christianity means, to greater or lesser degrees, contextualizing the Bible. \u00a0For instance, Paul\u2019s injunction commanding women not to speak in church is understood as something Paul was saying to a particular congregation where there was dissention. \u00a0And churches which have signed of on gay marriage, or same-sex sex more generally, take the approach that Paul\u2019s injunctions on this were really against the \u201cpagan\u201d practices of the time, and he what wholly unaware of the prospect of loving same-sex relationships. \u00a0And in the Old Testament, of course, the creation stories are seen as story, rather than literal depictions of the creation of the world, but still expressing a larger truth, that God, in some less specific way, is the Creator.<\/p>\n

Which you can do if your scripture is \u201cinspired by God\u201d but written by men, but it\u2019s harder if, as is the case for Islam, one of your core beliefs is that your scripture was literally dictated by God.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also read on multiple occasions that the Koran itself contains contradictory statements \u2014 one set of statements encouraging peace among religions, and another calling for spreading Islam by the sword, and either demanding that those who reject Islam be put to death, or accept surrender terms in which they are legally inferior. \u00a0And, again, reportedly, the peaceful verses date from the time when Mohammed was hoping to convert Jews and Christians to his new faith, and the violent \u201cSword Verses\u201d from later, when he and his followers had set about conquering. \u00a0And the \u201cofficial\u201d way of interpreting such verses is that the later verses cancel out earlier contradictory ones. \u00a0Hence, violence and repression replaces tolerance.<\/p>\n

So what do \u201cmoderate\u201d Muslims believe, about those parts of their scriptures which are, well, not terribly moderate, not to mention the not-at-all moderate Sharia Law?<\/p>\n

I have the impression that many \u201cmoderate Muslims\u201d just gloss over this entirely. \u00a0A while back I read a book in which a Muslim woman from the United States spent some time working in Saudi Arabia, and describing her experiences, focusing on the positive, such as women she met who genuinely wanted to improve their country. \u00a0What did Islam mean to her? \u00a0The high point of her stay (about 2 years or so, I think) was her pilgrimage to Mecca, and what thoroughly impressed her was the universality of Islam (as she experienced it there, by, for a brief time, women from all walks of life and from many different countries participating together, their differences temporarily erased), and the impact the specific rituals associated with the Hajj had on her, again, especially as they were performed by just massive numbers of people together. \u00a0I don\u2019t really remember any description of her reading the Koran, or praying anything other than the prescribed prayers, but it seems to me the other thing that made an impression on her were particular religious practices or traditions or traditional stories that were told to her by others, along the lines of how to better serve God and lead a good life, in a generic way (that is, by observant, but non-confrontational people, who in any case didn\u2019t compel her to veil and submit to men).<\/p>\n

Does Islam, then, just boil down to \u201cGod is love\u201d? \u00a0I don\u2019t think so \u2014 it\u2019s my impression that that\u2019s a pretty Western view of God, to identify God as all about love and compassion. \u00a0In any case, in a book I read a while back<\/a>, about an American woman\u2019s experiences in Afghanistan, the Muslim women there certainly believed that God was angry and keeping score, on whether they had sufficiently fasted, for instance, to make up for missed past fasting times.<\/p>\n

But anyway \u2014 let\u2019s just say that \u201cmoderate Muslims\u201d explain away verses exhorting violence and ill-treatment of non-Muslims as \u201cjust not applicable any longer.\u201d \u00a0Does that mean that they say \u201cit was appropriate then, but not now\u201d? \u00a0Or do they essentially excise this from the Koran altogether, maybe saying \u201cwell, maybe Mohammed lost is way once he started to gain power\u201d? \u00a0And, if so, what do they believe about the Koran, more generally, and the Islamic claim that it is not just \u201cinspired by\u201d but genuinely the literal word of God, speaking through Mohammed as if dictating his words to a secretary?<\/p>\n

It would seem that, in this case, you have to boil Islam down to \u201cMohammed had some good ideas that we should follow\u201d \u2014 or, maybe, at most, \u201cSuras X, Y, and Z are inspired; the rest were merely composed by Mohammed.\u201d <\/p>\n

And if you do that, is that Islam? \u00a0I suppose there are two general definitions of Islam: \u00a0the first requires that you accept the Koran as dictated by God, and the Hadiths and Sharia, and the second requires that you be willing to make the Islamic profession of faith. \u00a0Can you, then, profess that Mohammed is the prophet of God, and intend by that, that he had some good ideas, what with monotheism and shared rituals and all? \u00a0But that\u2019s pretty slim pickin\u2019s for a religion. <\/p>\n

And, in any case, those clerics and organizations which are labelled as \u201cmoderate\u201d certainly don\u2019t do this.
From all reports, they believe in the Koran as the true word of God, just in a \u201cmoderate\u201d sort of way, y\u2019know.<\/p>\n

\u00a0But, again, this is unsourced and speculative \u2014 I have no idea if any of these \u201cmoderates\u201d are on the record with an explanation of how they understand the Sword Verses, because surely they do have an interpretation of them, if, after all, they\u2019ve studied their own theology.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: \u00a0according to Wikipedia, which I quickly turned to, the claim that\u2019s being made by some scholars is that these Sword Verses were a call for self-defense at that particular moment in history. \u00a0But this doesn\u2019t really sound credible \u2014 and yet, right now, I don\u2019t have the time to read more.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing this completely unsourced today, more to invite conversation than anything else. \u00a0Ideally, later on, I\u2019d look at some actual sources, so this may be a \u201cpart one\u201d post, to be followed-up on later. \u201cModerate\u201d Christianity means, to greater or lesser degrees, contextualizing the Bible. \u00a0For instance, Paul\u2019s injunction commanding women not to speak […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-islam"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat does (or would) "Moderate Islam" look like?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm writing this completely unsourced today, more to invite conversation than anything else.  Ideally, later on, I'd look at some actual 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