One noble effort can be seen in the US State Department’s choices for their “Woman of Courage” award. 7 of the 10 winners are from Islamic nations.
These 7 women had all in their way challenged Islamic Orthodoxy in their countries. Some were able to change the status quo, others were not.
These seven women are engaged in a quixotic quest to reform Islam into something that is incapable of becoming. Islam is incapable of becoming a kinder gentler faith. Islam is only capable of being what a plain reading of its text, the Qur’an and the Hadith, make it out to be.
As long as the text of the Qur’an and the Hadith are what they are now, a plain reading of the text will make for an Islam that must be understood as the so called extremist understand it.
Wish these woman well, but note how little they will be able negate the argument for Jihad.
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Something special went unnoticed last week when the US State Department gave out its first awards for "women of courage" to 10 foreign recipients: Seven of the women had demonstrated their honored bravery within Muslim countries.
Were these awards another US effort to help reform Islam? Possibly. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice simply praised the honorees for "combating attempts to dehumanize women." And the awards were pegged to International Women's Day, March 8.
Still, the winners, selected from 82 women nominated by US embassies, came from only eight nations, five of which are largely Muslim (Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Maldives, Saudi Arabia). That carries a message about the churn for change among Muslims.
It's possible that at least one woman activist from Iran should have made the cut. But then she would have been tagged a US agent. Last week, the clerics who rule in Tehran detained 33 women activists as they protested for five other women on trial for a 2006 demonstration against discriminatory laws. Such arrests show that female dissenters in Iran are a big threat to the Islamic regime.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0314/p08s02-comv.html
Islam is currently undergoing a reformationist movement.
ReplyDeleteThe Salifist are the reformers, striving to remake Islam into what it was in the very beginning, by making the Qur'an and the Hadith the centerpiece and cornerstone of Islam in place of the flummery produced by the last 400 years of the Imams and clerics who have accommodated the West's influence on Islamic nations and cultures.
“Back to the text” they argue.
And that is what makes their reformationist movement real. They see their task as being “to make again” to “reform” Islam into what the Qur'an and the Hadith plainly describe, illustrate, and command.
I hear many people argue that Islam can be “reformed” into some kind of “kinder and gentler” faith. How they propose to do this and retain intact the Qur'an and the Hadith they neglect to say. In truth, they can not leave the Qur'an and the Hadith intact or all of their efforts would be for not. They must burn the Hadith and destroy the Qur'an, gutting much of it, and leave but a few Surah between the Qur'an's covers much as Geert Wilders has already argued.
It would be easier to shit gold and piss diamonds.