The Muslim Civil War: ‘The Most Important Ideological Struggle in the World Today’
What Zeyno Baran gets right is that those Muslims who support sharia, even if they don’t intend personally to participate in violent jihad, are not moderates.
What she gets wrong is that she says traditional Islam is “secular.” If she is going to make such a counter-factual and counter-intuitive claim about Islam, she has to back it up with evidence, at least if she cares about being taken seriously. But she offers no evidence, no doubt because all the evidence refutes her.
For example, if Islam is secular, why did Muhammad make no distinction between treason and religious apostasy, and say in Sahih Bukhari, the most canonical hadith collection, “If someone changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.” See http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/084.sbt.html#009.084.057
Muhammad called for death for apostasy in many other canonical hadiths.
Muhammad was the ruler of a theocratic state in Medina. His words and actions were law. All the schools of Islamic law, which do not differ very much from one another, developed because theocracy was present from the first when Muhammad ruled Medina.
In calling traditional Islam “secular,” Baran seems to be yet another promulgator of polite fictions about Islam.
