This Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had a very interesting
article titled: THE REFORMATION OF ISLAM and was an essay adapted from a book
titled: HERETIC: WHY ISLAM NEEDS A REFORMATION NOW by a young, female author
AYAAN HIRSI ALI.
What struck me about this article is the fact that it went
right to the heart of the matter; WHAT MAKES UP THE RELIGION ITSELF.
Recently, President Obama as well as many Islam apologists
have tried to distinguish between the true ISLAM that preaches peace and
justice and the ISIS and al-Qaeda Islam that preaches Holy War (Jihad) against
the West and even against those who share their faith but are somehow infidels
and apostates.
The problem with this idea of two Islams is that it just isn’t
true; there is only one Islam and all Muslims are united under the same belief
system and this needs to be pointed out in no uncertain terms.
What is interesting is the fact that Judaism and
Christianity have been in the same position Islam finds itself today; it too
preached war and destruction.
The Old Testament is filled with violence and calls for
violence. The Old Testament God was a very violent God and prescribed death for
many transgressions which in today’s world, we would find absurd.
Yet, even though many faithful still consider the Bible as
the true word of God and some in a most literal sense, many have learned to
take the violence found in the Old Testament with a grain of salt meaning that
they recognize that the days of the Old Testament were from a totally different
culture and historical setting.
The Jewish and Christian religions have gone through many
reforms or reformations throughout their history to arrive at this point in the
present manifestation of the religion; Islam has not.
Christians and Jews never denied that words of violence
exist in their sacred texts; they just chose to look at them in a different way.
The Muslim religion has undergone some changes or better
yet, additions throughout the ages especially in the stories outside the Quran
like the HADITHS which eventually formed the rules of SHARIAH LAW.
The problem here is that these so called “rules” were
written many, many years ago and just like the Old Testament stories, were
written by people from a different age, different culture who looked at things
in a very different way than we do today.
The author, Ayaan Ali feels that Islam must reform to be
accepted into the modern world and she offers a point by point way that this
can be accomplished.
Well, that is just not going to happen since the Islamic
terrorists use the “sacred” words in their religion to justify their terrorism
and the millions of poor and uneducated Muslims, who have been brainwashed from
birth to believe that their God demands this type of violent behavior, will
never allow someone to challenge their belief system.
Muslims in the West and especially those in the United
States, take pains to tell us that Islam is a religion of “PEACE” even though
the words in their sacred texts are words of violence.
In fact, many mosques here in Canton, Michigan where I live
have many regular “open houses” or “coffees” open to non-Muslims for the
purpose of interacting with the community and answer any questions that those
in the community have about the Muslim religion.
They do this as a means of showing that they are true
Americans and that their religion can absolutely co-exist within the American
community of religions and non-religions. I will try to attend one this week to
see what I can learn.
I want to see how they explain the violent language in their
sacred texts and how do they explain the actions of the terrorists who use the
same sacred texts to justify their terrorism.
I think the reformation of Islam needs merely to treat the
violent language in their sacred texts with a modern understanding of why that
language was used and why it does not apply to our world today.
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