Hi Billy, On May 21, 2009, at 6:09 PM, [email protected] wrote:
We could go round and round about this forever. But let me simply say that my argument follows Ibn Warraq's scholarship in his 1995 book, "Why I Am Not a Muslim."
Fair enough, though even his book seems to make one of the same arguments I'm making -- at least from the review I read:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ibn_al-rawandi/review.html
The fanatic who thinks that all unbelievers should be killed has just as much authority as the Sufi who thinks that all religions are true and that even atheists go to heaven. Both parties could adduce Quranic texts and hadith to support their positions, and both would be drawing, in their own minds, upon the immutable word of God. As Ibn Warraq observes: `Even if we concede that Muslim conservatives have interpreted the sharia in their own way, what gives us the right to say that their interpretation is the inauthentic one and that of the liberal Muslims, authentic? Who is going to decide what is authentic Islam?'
Doesn't that argument also work in reverse: who is to say that the fundamentalist interpretation is correct, and the liberal interpretation inauthentic?
If Islam is really so self-contradictory, then it seems that exogenous cultural factors and tradition may play a huge role in how it is interpreted in practice -- and those are amenable to manipulation even if the Quran itself is not.
I completely agree that Islam is not "self-redemptive". Unlike you, though, I see traditional Hindusm as having been equally static and corrupt (albeit in different ways). I realize that widow burning, child prostitution, and casteism may not seem like real "Hindusim" to you, but the brutal truth is that Hinduism condoned and reinforced such practices until Christianity came to Britain. It is only after conquest and exposure to Christianity that Hinduism experienced major social work and reformers like Gandhi.
Maybe Islam is more deeply corrupt that Hinduism was, but that doesn't mean it is impossible for some level of redemption.
To be sure, it may well be true that the time and effort involved may be prohibitive. But then again -- given my Mafia analogy -- it is hardly obvious that your propposal is a guaranteed success, so it seems at least worthwhile to ask the question.
-- Ernie P. _______________________________________________ Centroids mailing list: [email protected] http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com Archives at http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/
