Every few years the debate over reforming
Islam bubbles up from the depths of a
culture that largely censors any suggestion
that Islam needs reforming.

But Islam does not exist apart from
Muslims. It is not an abstract entity that
can be changed without changing its
followers. And if Islam has not changed,
that is because Muslims do not want it to.

Mohammed and key figures in Islam
provided a template, but that template
would not endure if it did not fit the
worldview of its worshipers. Western
religions underwent a process of
secularization to align with what many saw
as modernity leading to a split between
traditionalists and secularists.
The proponents of modernizing Islam
assume that it didn't make the jump because
of Saudi money, fundamentalist violence
and regional backwardness. These
allegations are true, but also incomplete.

If modernizing Islam really appealed to
Muslims, it would have taken off, at least in
the West, despite Saudi money and Muslim
Brotherhood front groups. These elements
might have slowed things down, but a
political or religious idea that is genuinely
compelling is like a rock rolling down a
hill.

It's enormously difficult to stop.
Muslim modernization in the West has been
covertly undermined by the Saudis and the
Muslim Brotherhood, but for the most part
it has not been violently suppressed.
It suffers above all else from a lack of
Muslim interest.

Muslims don't spend much time fuming
over a progressive mosque that allows gay
members or lets women lead prayers. Such
places occasionally exist and remain
obscure. They don't have to be forcibly shut
down because they never actually take off.

The occasional death threat and arson
might take place and the average ISIS
recruit would happily slaughter everyone
inside, but even he has bigger fish to fry.

The best evidence that Muslim
modernization has failed is that even the
angriest Muslims don't take it very
seriously as a threat. The sorts of people
who believe that Saddam Hussein was a CIA
agent or that Israel is using eagles as spies
have trouble believing modernizing Islam
will ever be much of a problem.

They know instinctively that it will never
work. Instead Muslims are far more
threatened by a cartoon mocking their
prophet for reasons that go to the heart of
what is wrong with their religion.
Islam is not an idea.
It is a tribe.
Talking about reforming the words of Islam
is an abstraction. Islam did not begin with a
book. It began with clan and sword.

Even in
the modern skyscraper cities of the West, it
remains a religion of the clan and the
sword.
The left has misread Islamic terrorism as a
response to oppression when it is actually a
power base. It is not the poor and
downtrodden who are most attracted to the
Jihad. Instead it is the upper classes.
Bin
Laden wasn't a pauper and neither are the
Saudis or Qataris. Islamic terrorism isn't a
game for the poor. It becomes the thing to
do when you're rich enough to envy the
neighbors. It's a tribal war.
To reform Islam, we can't just look at what
is wrong with the Koran or the Hadiths. We
have to ask why these tribal calls for
violence and genocide, for oppression and
enslavement, appealed to Muslims then and
why they continue to appeal to Muslims today.
The modernizers assume that Western
Muslims would welcome a reformation of
Islam. They are half right. The reformation
that they are welcoming is that of the
Wahhabis trying to return it to what it was.
It's hard to deny that ISIS touches
something deep within Muslims.

The gay-friendly mosques don't.
Understanding Islam only in terms of the
Koran makes it seem as if Muslims are
unwillingly trapped by a tyranny of the
text, when the text is actually their means
of trapping others into affirming their
identity.

There is no reforming Islam without
reforming Muslims. The reformers assume
that most Muslims are ignorant of their
own beliefs, but even the most illiterate
Muslim in a village without running water
has a good grasp of the big overall ideas. He
may hardly be able to quote a Koranic verse
without stumbling over it, he may have
added local customs into the mix, but he
identifies with it on a visceral level.
Its honor is his honor. Its future is the
future of his family.

Its members are his kinfolk. Like him, it ought to have been on
top; instead it's on the bottom. Its
grievances are his grievances.
The rest is just details.
The progressive diverse mosque is the
opposite of this tribal mentality. It is the
opposite of Islam. Its destruction of the tribe
is also the destruction of the individual.
The Western Muslim who already has only a
shaky connection to the culture of his
ancestral country is not about to trade
Islamic tribalism for anonymous diversity.
Islam tells him he is superior.
The progressive mosque tells him nothing.
Whether he is a Bangladeshi peasant
watching soccer matches on the village
television or a Bangladeshi doctor in
London, it is the violent, racist and
misogynistic parts of Islam that provide him
with a sense of worth in a big confusing
world.

That is how Islam was born.
Islam began in uncertain times as empires
were tottering and the old ways were being
displaced by strange religions such as
Judaism and Christianity, when its
originators mashed bits of them together
and then founded their own crazy wobbly
murderous empire built around a badly
plagiarized religion.

It was horrible and terrible for everyone
who wasn't a Muslim man, but it worked.
Islam is less of a faith and more of a set of
honor and shame responses. It's a cycle of
oppression and victimhood. It's the
assertion of identity by people who see
themselves as inferior and are determined
to push back by making themselves
superior. The responses are familiar. We
saw it in Nazi Germany as the defeated
nation became a master race by killing and
enslaving everyone else.
But it's not those at the bottom most driven
by such dreams. It's the desert billionaires
who have money, but no culture. It's the
Western Muslim doctor who still feels
inferior despite his wealth. It's a merchant
named Mohammed with a lot of grudges
who claims an angel told him to kill all his
enemies in Allah's name.
It's Islam. And it's Muslims.

The things that we believe, bad or good,
reflect the bad or good inside us. When
Muslims support killing people, it's
simplistic to assume that they are
robotically following a text and will follow
any other text slipped in front of their faces,
instead of their passions and values.
Religions may make people kill, but it starts
when people make religions kill.
The good devout Muslim may kill because
the Koran tells him to, but he would not do
so if the Koran's justifications of violence
did not speak to him on a deeper level. The
Nazis were following orders, but they
wouldn't have followed them if Nazism
didn't connect with their fears, hopes and
dreams.

The text is only half the problem. The other
half is in the human heart.
Reforming Islam is not a matter of crossing
out certain words and adding others.
Religions carry a powerful set of values that
appeal to people on a deep level. To change Islam, we would have to understand why its ugliness still speaks to Muslims. To
change it, we have to change them.
When we talk about reforming Islam, what we are really talking about is reforming
Muslims.

www.raptureforums.com/FeaturedCommentary/youcantreformislamwithoutreformingmuslims.cfm?utm_source=ExpressPigeon&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Rapture+Forums+Newsletter+10%2F25%2F2014

Harmony upon you, OP.

Islamic reform hasn't met expectations for a number of reasons.

1. Poor co-operation among reformists, moderates and liberals

I am a reformist, ever since i commenced this mission of Islamic reform, barely anyone has stood by me. There a few others that share my discourse and aspiration. For instance, in this forum i know there is chyz, Anvaller, usisky and satmaniac. But let me tell you, they are too occupied with other activities to even create just one topic per month here.

2. Ignorance

I find majority of muslims to be 'yes men', guilty of naivety and ignorant of serious flaws in their ideology. For instance, they still have this fallacy that 'Islam' is peace, no compulsion bla bla bla unaware that there is compulsion in their ideology according to which Jews/Christian must accept 'Islam', else pay humiliating tax or face death, pagans get it worse, it is convert or die.

You cannot be reformed if you haven't woken up to reality, realizing your faults. Untill muslims stop raising false alarms of Islamophobia, untill they admit to the serious ills in their ideology codified in their Books of Quran exegesis and Oral traditions, untill they become vocal about it, Islamic reform is a pipe dream.

3. Western Government foreign policies in the middle east.

The western government couldn't care less of Islamic reforms. For their selfish interest, they ally with middle eastern governments like Saudi A, which often endorse a puritanical and extreme interpretation of Islam.

Consequently, Saudi government is able export her radical interpretation of Islam to the west, where muslims are supposed to be more civilized. More and more mosques are built in the west and run by extremists masquerading as moderates. These are primary avenues for radicalizing muslims, a major obstacle to Islamic reform. It is bad enough that many reformists had to flee to the west to escape persecutors in their country but it is worse that thanks to western government alliances with pro-radical Islam middle eastern governments, the radicals are gaining grounds in the west.

To be a muslim reformist require guts because the extremists won't hesistate to flatline you.
Yet the reformists have no pillar of support, there is not a single state pursuing Islamic reform.
And thus the radicals have it all, the supporters, the fianancers and of course, the tolerance of the western society.

Question01: Poor co-operation among reformists,moderates and liberals I am a reformist, ever since i commenced this
mission of Islamic reform, barely anyone has stood by me. There a few others that share my discourse and aspiration.

Sorry bro,you aren't a reformist but a 'deformist'.No one can stood by you because your ideology is wack.You keep tagging people as orthodox muslims,extremists,rejecting you are a 'muslim' and at the same time,trying to portrait yourself as person that is an Islamic 'reformer'.
The only person that share your views is an hatetheist,he's your pen pal.

lanrexlan:
Sorry bro,you aren't a reformist but a 'deformist'.No one can stood by you because your ideology is wack.You keep tagging people as orthodox muslims,extremists,rejecting you are a 'muslim' and at the same time,trying to portrait yourself as person that is an Islamic 'reformer'.
The only person that share your views is an hatetheist,he's your pen pal.

So, you chose to insult him rather than address his points.


Please, here is a thread on good islamic manners; https://www.nairaland.com/1943131/good-manners-islam

Read it, embrace it and practice it

lanrexlan:
Sorry bro,you aren't a reformist but a 'deformist'.No one can stood by you because your ideology is wack.You keep tagging people as orthodox muslims,extremists,rejecting you are a 'muslim' and at the same time,trying to portrait yourself as person that is an Islamic 'reformer'.
The only person that share your views is an hatetheist,he's your pen pal.

You cant even see how you prove his point;

Question01:

To be a muslim reformist require guts because the extremists won't hesistate to flatline you.
Yet the reformists have no pillar of support, there is not a single state pursuing Islamic reform.

JackBizzle:



So, you chose to insult him rather than address his points.


Please, here is a thread on good islamic manners; https://www.nairaland.com/1943131/good-manners-islam

Read it, embrace it and practice it

Mister,you don't have to jump into conclusion if you don't know what's going on.Moreover,I am only stating the obvious about him,calling a spade a spade.And please point out the insult in my post or give us a new definition of insult.

lanrexlan:
Mister,you don't have to jump into conclusion if you don't know what's going on.Moreover,I am only stating the obvious about him,calling a spade a spade.And please point out the insult in my post or give us a new definition of insult.

You called him a "deformist". I do not believe that such a word is a compliment.

Were you not trying to say that he is trying to destroy islam and he is being a hypocrite by calling himself a "reformist"?




Still it would be better if you address his points about islamic reforms because he is the only one so far on topic.

Question01,

How about you address Op's notion of reformation?. Since you believe in Quran only, does Quran agree with Op?.

Muslims don't spend much time fuming
over a progressive mosque that allows gay
members or lets women lead prayers. Such
places occasionally exist and remain
obscure. They don't have to be forcibly shut
down because they never actually take off.

I am a reformist, ever since i commenced this mission of Islamic reform, barely anyone has stood by me.

No one would stood by you because your ideologies are quacked. Besides, what exactly you want to 'reform'?. You haven't clearly define that. There are many who talk about 'reforming' islam but when we listen to them closely, they tend to take away Islam from Muslims by introducing things that obviously against Quran itself like permitting homosexual, pork for example as op rightly said. And since you haven't define what you want to 'reform', maybe you should talk to your fellow non-believing reformists deformists, and then talk to us with one voice what need to be 'reformed'.

Poor co-operation among reformists, moderates and liberals

Of-course, there will be none amongst you because you people are agent of fitna. All over NL, you only attacking Muslims and ignoring those fellas who want Muslims tolerant of homosexual, n.a.k.e.d women etc. Since you claim to believe in Quran only, does Quran allows that?


JackBizzle, you just registered few days ago and then jumped to conclusion. Maybe you should be quiet and keep your eyes open. Fair enough?

Empiree:
JackBizzle, you just registered few days ago and then jumped to conclusion. Maybe you should be quiet and keep your eyes open. Fair enough?

I think you do not know the meaning of "jumping into conclusions".

I saw an issue and pointed it out. Please, you have no right to tell me to keep quiet.

JackBizzle:

You called him a "deformist". I do not believe that such a word is a compliment.
Were you not trying to say that he is trying to destroy islam and he is being a hypocrite by calling himself a "reformist"?
Still it would be better if you address his points about islamic reforms because he is the only one so far on topic.

The same way I don't believe that the tag 'extremist' is a compliment.Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) came to reform the people and he doesn't reform them by calling them extremists and venerating himself .
Question01(usermane) always find faults in everything muslims do and exempt himself as the only person doing the right thing.

Yes,he is trying to destroy his Islam with his ideologies.I know what I wrote,he is a deformist.For example,Islam says consuming pig is haram only for 'our reformer' to turn around and say only the meat is forbidden,the fat is halal(allowed).I don't know where the fat comes from if not from the flesh(Just the Jews that made halal what Allah(swt) made haram by twisting the name).Is this reforming right?

This is one among many of his and his folks twisted ideologies,clear facts from Qu'ran but trying to give it 'a modern meaning'.Just like Brother Empiree rightly said,you don't know what's on ground,you don't know usermane nor his folks but you are trying to be a gentleman who wants fairness.But you don't know who are defending,so dear brother just watch and don't jump into what you really don't know about.

lanrexlan:
The same way I don't believe that the tag 'extremist' is a compliment.Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) came to reform the people and he doesn't reform them by calling them extremists and venerating himself .
Question01(usermane) always find faults in everything muslims do and exempt himself as the only person doing the right thing.

Yes,he is trying to destroy his Islam with his ideologies.I know what I wrote,he is a deformist.For example,Islam says consuming pig is haram only for 'our reformer' to turn around and say only the meat is forbidden,the fat is halal(allowed).I don't know where the fat comes from if not from the flesh(Just the Jews that made halal what Allah(swt) made haram by twisting the name).Is this reforming right?

This is one among many of his and his folks twisted ideologies,clear facts from Qu'ran but trying to give it 'a modern meaning'.Just like Brother Empiree rightly said,you don't know what's on ground,you don't know usermane nor his folks but you are trying to be a gentleman who wants fairness.But you don't know who are defending,so dear brother just watch and don't jump into what you really don't know about.

Are you serious?

Question1 did not call you an extremist before you called him a deformist!


I do not need to know Question1's past to rightly discuss points on this thread. You and Empiree are behaving like bitter rivals that cant remove bias to talk about his point on reforming islam.

JackBizzle:

Are you serious?
Question1 did not call you an extremist before you called him a deformist!
I do not need to know Question1's past to rightly discuss points on this thread. You and Empiree are behaving like bitter rivals that cant remove bias to talk about his point on reforming islam.

Peace brother.

lanrexlan:
Peace brother.

Salaam