Understanding "True" Islam
Is Islam a religion of peace or does it promote violence and terrorism? In The New Republic, Reihan Salam trashes the latest book to address that inane question, Paul Sperry's Infiltration : How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington.
According to Salam, Sperry condemns Islam itself as a religion of violence (despite Sperry's inclusion of the obligatory disclaimers asserting that he's not doing so). Salam cites the following quotation from the book: "Bin Laden has not betrayed his faith. Quite the contrary, he has honored it like few other Muslims have over the past fourteen hundred years of Islam ... He is a deeply religious man and a mass murderer. Of course, these two things are hard to reconcile if you do not understand true Islam." Sperry apparently bases his own understanding of "true Islam" on his reading of the Quran, the Islamic holy book, which seemed to him "more like a manual of war than any religious tract."
Well, guess what? Unless you're a Muslim, you don't really have much of a say on what "true Islam" is or isn't. Like all religious texts, the Quran can be interpreted in multiple ways. Jewish religious texts, for example, also contain their fair share of passages that could be interpreted as condoning violence, but most Jews choose to interpret these passages in a non-violent way. In other words, Judaism isn't really based on what's in the Bible; it's based on what Jews say is in the Bible. Islam is the same way. If most Muslims today conclude that their religion requires them to, say, kill non-Muslims or bad Muslims or whomever, then it would be safe to say that Islam is a religion of violence, at least right now. Similarly, if they conclude otherwise, choosing, for instance, to apply a metaphorical or spiritual interpretation to passages of the Quran that seem to condone violence, then it would be correct to say Islam is a religion of peace. So we non-Muslims can read the Quran all day long looking for the "true" meaning of Islam, but we'll never find it because that task belongs to Muslims themselves.
According to Salam, Sperry condemns Islam itself as a religion of violence (despite Sperry's inclusion of the obligatory disclaimers asserting that he's not doing so). Salam cites the following quotation from the book: "Bin Laden has not betrayed his faith. Quite the contrary, he has honored it like few other Muslims have over the past fourteen hundred years of Islam ... He is a deeply religious man and a mass murderer. Of course, these two things are hard to reconcile if you do not understand true Islam." Sperry apparently bases his own understanding of "true Islam" on his reading of the Quran, the Islamic holy book, which seemed to him "more like a manual of war than any religious tract."
Well, guess what? Unless you're a Muslim, you don't really have much of a say on what "true Islam" is or isn't. Like all religious texts, the Quran can be interpreted in multiple ways. Jewish religious texts, for example, also contain their fair share of passages that could be interpreted as condoning violence, but most Jews choose to interpret these passages in a non-violent way. In other words, Judaism isn't really based on what's in the Bible; it's based on what Jews say is in the Bible. Islam is the same way. If most Muslims today conclude that their religion requires them to, say, kill non-Muslims or bad Muslims or whomever, then it would be safe to say that Islam is a religion of violence, at least right now. Similarly, if they conclude otherwise, choosing, for instance, to apply a metaphorical or spiritual interpretation to passages of the Quran that seem to condone violence, then it would be correct to say Islam is a religion of peace. So we non-Muslims can read the Quran all day long looking for the "true" meaning of Islam, but we'll never find it because that task belongs to Muslims themselves.
posted by Josh
at 9:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home