There will never be a reformation of Islam.
Perhaps this statement requires a small clarification:
Any reformation of Islam will end up looking exactly like Al Qaida.
In the Christian doctrine, the reformation meant in its best sense getting back to the basics of the Gospels and the larger New Testament — it meant throwing away all the addons which the Roman Church had accreted to Christian doctrine after more than a millenium. Whether or not this was successful is really immaterial, except to point out that the Reformation also yielded the Rennaisance, the Enlightenment, and the Modern World. Nothing like these movements has ever been forthcoming from Islam. Conflating the two religions is, on some level, an exercise in futility.
In Islam, getting back to the basics means emulating Muhammad since according to Muslims he manifested the most perfect Muslim person as god’s final prophet.
His life is a model to all Muslims for all times. His actions are a template on which to measure and base Muslim actions, laws, morality, and faith for all time.
We must become familiar with this man and the actions the Muslims themselves admit he engaged in.
These include, as I state above, slavery, rape, thievery, lying, genocide, torture, terrorism, and extortion.
There’s no way around his vile record.
Islam is, at its root, an ideology based on the barbaric actions of a 7th Century brigand. If one knows this, the actions of the violent Jihadis becomes far less of a mystery, and more of an obvious consequence of paying scrupulous heed to the barbarous and bloody acts of Islam’s “holy” prophet over a millenium ago.
So based on Muhammad’s actions alone, and leaving aside Islam’s 1300 year record of mass murder and cultural annihilation and genocide, Islam is an execrable “religion”. It also should come as no surprise that, despite very brief periods of marginal enlightenment and putative tolerance for openness, that Islam’s main trajectory is always towards backwardness, hatred, and violence. The two nations who have the most resources to show the world what Islam truly can be, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have amply illustrated to the world what unlimited wealth and a dedication to the two main branches of Islam yields: Totalitarian hell holes of human degradation of the lowest order. Both are nearly identical in the horrors they unleash on their people and on the world. Islam is a nightmare of human bondage, hatred and horror in those exemplary Islamic Nations.
Let’s stop pretending it has much positive potential in the modern world – The Muslims can pretend this, but we don’t have to… Such daydreams are a fatal delusion and will only guarantee that the insurrection which Muslims are currently conducting in the West will continue unabated. This horrid tide of Islamic spreading and Islamic fascism must be halted and reversed if human kind has any hope of emerging from the nightmares Islam has unleashed in the world.
I also see little point in constantly conflating ancient transgressions which may or may not have happened with and among Christians with the ever spiraling reality of mayhem caused by Muslims for the sake of Islam today.
I don’t see any fanatical Christian Arabs strapping on the bombs to conduct genocidal murders of Jews in Israel. I don’t see Buddhists strapping on bombs or beheading Muslims in Thailand. I don’t see Christian Philippinos kidnapping and beheading Muslim or animist fellow Philippinos for the sake of Christ, or Hindus blowing up McDonalds across the planet because they’re outraged by the massive slaughtering of their Godhead. Those religions and cultures have proven their capacity to live, maybe not always perfectly, but to live among many others. It’s the Muslims who don’t fit in anywhere, and who require the submission, even of superior cultures and religions to their cave man creed.
We see Muslims across the globe rampaging and murdering for the sake of Islam and for Muhammad. We see Jihadis every day using extremely well founded Islamic arguments for their heinous acts of barbarity across the globe. The so-called moderates never challenge the justifications the Jihadis use – they spend most of their time trying to convince we infidels that the Jihadis have it all wrong. Wouldn’t their time be better spent convincing the Jihadis to STOP their atrocities? Why is their energy focused on convincing us about Islam? On some level this implies that our interpretation of Islam somehow is implicated in the terrorist acts of their brethren. What could be more upside-down in terms of reasoning?
I see plenty of so-called “moderate” Muslims obfuscating and attempting to mislead infidels by saying sweet nothings about the nature of Islam. What is their true intention? I am deeply suspect of all of these apologists. Let’s see them CONFRONT their Jihadi brethren, rather than papering over the truth about Islam. Let’s see them developing arguments which take the Jihadi mindset on directly. What we see above is a deft deflection – if Dr. Mansur is to be believed, the stand alone Koran is the sole source of Islam and its misinterpretation is at the root of all the bad actions of his fellow Muslims. If this is so, then where do the vile actions of Islam’s prophet fit into the scheme. Was Muhammad the best Muslim? Is he a man to be emulated, including his bloody lust for beheadings, torture, thievery, and mayhem? Or was he a bad Muslim for doing all those ugly things and more. Did their prophet misunderstand Islam as the Jihadis supposedly do? His life sure looked like a Jihadi life. His actions sure looked like Jihadi actions. His beheadings sure looked like Jihadi beheadings. His rapes, thievery, and mayhem sure looks like Jihadi rape, thievery, and mayhem.
So what would Dr. Mansur, or other apologists such as P. Ami have to say about the life of the “Prophet” Muhammad? Does his life have no bearing on Islam?
