Re: NYTimes article What the author overlooks is the indisputable fact that the Salafi interpretation of Islam follows directly from a literal reading of the Koran. That is, all of the barbaric punishments, etc, carried out by ISIL and other groups are based on direct quotes from the Koran, a book claimed to be God's exact words incarnate on Earth; the words themselves are regarded as sacrosanct not merely as holy. Through these words Allah is literally present on Earth, is the theory. This is different than the reverence given words in the Bible even though Biblical texts have the deepest possible meaning for Jews and Christians. But while it may be unfortunate if a Bible is damaged or burned, etc, there is no unforgivable loss. Just go out and buy another copy. Not so for Muslims, for whom the Koran IS God on Earth -as absurd as this seems for anyone who has actually read this sick excuse for a book of scriptures. It may be that for reasons of local culture and the influence of the modern world -and practicality- most Muslims have a more latitudinarian view of the Koran, but nowhere that I know of has a "moderate" interpretation of the Koran or of Islam been sanctioned by religious authorities. Hence some form of strict Islam predominates throughout Dar Al-Islam whatever the author of the following article says. There is no analog to the reinterpretation of the Bible and of Christian faith brought about by the Renaissance and the Reformation, nor does this seem likely anywhere. These things said, the article includes a good deal of valuable information that can be put to good use. Billy ----------------------------------------------- NYTimes Saudis Must Stop Exporting Extremism ISIS Atrocities Started With Saudi Support for Salafi Hate
By ED HUSAINAUG. 22, 2014 ALONG with a billion Muslims across the globe, I turn to Mecca in _Saudi Arabia_ (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/saudiarabia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo) every day to say my prayers. But when I visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the resting place of the Prophet Muhammad, I am forced to leave overwhelmed with anguish at the power of extremism running amok in Islam’s birthplace. Non-Muslims are forbidden to enter this part of the kingdom, so there is no international scrutiny of the ideas and practices that affect the 13 million Muslims who visit each year. Last week, _Saudi Arabia donated $100 million to the United Nations_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/world/middleeast/saudis-give-100-million-to-un -fight-on-terrorism.html) to fund a counterterrorism agency. This was a welcome contribution, but last year, Saudi Arabia rejected a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council. This half-in, half-out posture of the Saudi kingdom is a reflection of its inner paralysis in dealing with Sunni Islamist radicalism: It wants to stop violence, but will not address the Salafism that helps justify it. Let’s be clear: Al Qaeda, the _Islamic State in Iraq and Syria_ (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda_in_mesopo tamia/index.html?inline=nyt-org) , Boko Haram, the Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism across the globe. Most Sunni Muslims around the world, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim population, are not Salafis. Salafism is seen as too rigid, too literalist, too detached from mainstream Islam. While Shiite and other denominations account for 10 percent of the total, Salafi adherents and other fundamentalists represent 3 percent of the world’s Muslims. Unlike a majority of Sunnis, Salafis are evangelicals who wish to convert Muslims and others to their “purer” form of Islam — unpolluted, as they see it, by modernity. In this effort, they have been lavishly supported by the Saudi government, which has appointed emissaries to its embassies in Muslim countries who proselytize for Salafism. The kingdom also grants compliant imams V.I.P. access for the annual hajj, and bankrolls ultraconservative Islamic organizations like the Muslim World League and World Assembly of Muslim Youth. After 9/11, under American pressure, much of this global financial support dried up, but the bastion of Salafism remains strong in the kingdom, enforcing the hard-line application of outdated _Shariah_ (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sharia_islamic_law/index.html?inline =nyt-classifier) punishments long abandoned by a majority of Muslims. Just since Aug. 4, 19 people have been _beheaded_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-executions-draw-rebukes.html) in Saudi Arabia, nearly half for nonviolent crimes. We are rightly outraged at the beheading of James Foley by Islamist militants, and by ISIS’ other atrocities, but we overlook the public executions by beheading permitted by Saudi Arabia. By licensing such barbarity, the kingdom normalizes and indirectly encourages such punishments elsewhere. When the country that does so is the birthplace of Islam, that message resonates. I lived in Saudi Arabia’s most liberal city, Jidda, in 2005. That year, in an effort to open closed Saudi Salafi minds, King Abdullah supported dialogue with people of other religions. In my mosque, the cleric used his Friday Prayer sermon to prohibit such dialogue on grounds that it put Islam on a par with “false religions.” It was a slippery slope to freedom, democracy and gender equality, he argued — corrupt practices of the infidel West. This tension between the king and Salafi clerics is at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s inability to reform. The king is a modernizer, but he and his advisers do not wish to disturb _the 270-year-old tribal pact between the House of Saud and the founder of Wahhabism_ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saud/cron/) (an austere form of Islam close to Salafism). That 1744 desert treaty must now be nullified. The influence that clerics wield is unrivaled. Even Saudis’ Twitter heroes are religious figures: An extremist cleric like Muhammad al-Arifi, who was banned last year from the European Union for advocating wife-beating and hatred of Jews, commands a following of 9. 4 million. The kingdom is also patrolled by a religious police force that enforces the veil for women, prohibits young lovers from meeting and ensures that shops do not display “ indecent” magazine covers. In the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the religious police beat women with sticks if they stray into male-only areas, or if their dress is considered immodest by Salafi standards. This is not an Islam that the Prophet Muhammad would recognize. Salafi intolerance has led to the destruction of Islamic heritage in Mecca and Medina. If ISIS is detonating shrines, it learned to do so from the precedent set in 1925 by the House of Saud with the Wahhabi-inspired demolition of 1,400-year-old tombs in the Jannat Al Baqi cemetery in Medina. In the last two years, violent Salafis have carried out similar sectarian vandalism, blowing up shrines from Libya to Pakistan, from Mali to Iraq. Fighters from Hezbollah have even entered Syria to protect holy sites. Textbooks in Saudi Arabia’s schools and universities teach this brand of Islam. The University of Medina recruits students from around the world, trains them in the bigotry of Salafism and sends them to Muslim communities in places like the Balkans, Africa, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Egypt, where these Saudi-trained hard-liners work to eradicate the local, harmonious forms of Islam. What is religious extremism but this aim to apply Shariah as state law? This is exactly what ISIS (Islamic State) is attempting do with its caliphate. Unless we challenge this un-Islamic, impractical and flawed concept of trying to govern by a rigid interpretation of Shariah, no amount of work by a United Nations agency can unravel Islamist terrorism. Saudi Arabia created the monster that is Salafi terrorism. It cannot now outsource the slaying of this beast to the United Nations. It must address the theological and ideological roots of extremism at home, starting in Mecca and Medina. Reforming the home of Islam would be a giant step toward winning against extremism in this global battle of ideas. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
