Google| Subject | Re:Republicanism still an offence in England? (wasRe: Queen mother |
| From | T.T. Arvind |
| Date | 2002-05-23 12:11 (2002-05-23 11:11) |
| Message-ID | <acif83$683$1@cpca7.uea.ac.uk> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | alt.fan.tolkien |
| Follows | Flame of the West |
Flame of the West <jsolinasNoSpam@erols.com>did boldly declaim:
Flame of the WestNot all Islamic fundamentalism endorses terror. In South Asia - and I include Pakistan in that - the majority of Islamic fundamentalists are much like Christian fundamentalists. They believe the Quran and the Shari'a form a source from which we can derive rules to govern all the fundamental aspects of our life. They believe that these sources are inerrant, and are the word of God. They try to live their lives in accordance with these sources, and believe that that is the only correct way to live. In effect, Islamic fundamentalists form the most conservative section of Muslims, just as Christian fundamentalists form the most conservative section of Christians.
I'm not against Islam so much as Islamic terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism which endorses terror.
AFAIK, the division in Islam between the fundamentalists who believe in terror and violence and those who do not began in the 1930s. Until then, many adherents of the Salafi school (the dominant school in contemporary middle Eastern Islam - the Wahhabi ideology subscribed to by the Saudis and bin Laden is classified as a part of this school) believed that western style governance was compatible with Islam - they used the Quranic concept of 'shura', under which the ruler was obliged to consult with the ruled - to justify this. The ending of the Caliphate (never mind that it was Kemal Ataturk who finally did this) and the carving up of the Ottoman empire amongst colonial powers (never mind that it really only had its own degenerate administration to blame), began to radicalise Muslims.
It was then that a group of fundamentalists - lead, IIRC, by Maulana Maudoodi, began proclaiming that Islam itself was in danger. They then went on to say that the entire modern western world is equivalent to 'jahiliya' (the word used in Islam to describe the savagery that existed before the advent of Islam), that it is opposed to Islam, and that it seeks to destroy Islam. Of course, once they'd characterised the world as 'jahiliya', they found plenty of material in the Quran and Islamic law to justify the use of violence - it'd be something like characterising the entire world as being filled with Canaanites, Moabites, and Philistines, and using sections of the OT like the story of Phineas to justify violent action against them.
What is a little harder to understand is why they found - and continue to find - people who were willing to listen to their views. One explanation could perhaps be that this justified the inherent belief of cultural superiority that many fundamentalists have, which belief was becoming increasingly hard to cling on to given the circumstances in which most Muslim nations found themselves in that time, and continue to find themselves in today. From these people are descended the fundamentalist groups who today condone the use of violence. They are still a minority of all fundamentalists in Islam.
It is interesting to note that people such as Sayyid Qutb (whose /Signposts on the Road/ is more or less the manifesto of the fundamentalist terrorists) began their lives as secular muslims, and were led to violent fundamentalism because of they became disgusted with modernity. At least in South Asia, most terrorists come from relatively secular families. People belonging to 'normal' fundamentalist families don't seem to end up as terrorists.
Cheers,
Meneldil
2002-03-30-
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