The Search for Moderate Islam

Really? Did you go to any Shisha bars? Attend Mosque? Did you put even the slightest bit of effort into it, or did you try a search within your Google filter bubble? I can find moderate Muslims by looking at my address book. Suhayl, Rashid, Iqbal, Ahmed, Farhad. They've all done the Hajj I believe, but most of them have drunk alcohol or eaten bacon (which they rationalize in much the same way Christians do for their sins). Farhad once gave me the keys to his car when mine had been written off and paid for the insurance on it until I got a replacement sorted out.I have attended Mosque, been to their weddings and done general week-to-week socializing with them. They abhor violence, but are slightly homophobic (it's just idle talk, not of a remotely violent nature (the usual, 'disgusting' 'unnatural' etc)) and occasionally distrusting of Jews and Americans. They think that Western Civilisation is losing its sense of community but they also decry when Muslims use their community to collude to cover up crimes, but they believe that those issues will normally be sorted 'internally', though they know there are the corrupt. They believe in Shaitan and djinn (most Muslims I know, after I've grown to know them well, well tell me the time they met a djinn).They all think the world is young, they have no free will, and that if we don't revert we will burn in hell. On the other hand, with a handful of exceptional exceptions, they don't proselytize (if I ask, they tend to give 'just the facts, ma'am', with a little bit of editorializing).All of these people are second generation immigrants, ancestral cultural influences become less strong for each generation (generally). In short, they have strange beliefs, a somewhat alien cultural background, and have slightly different characteristics than moderate Christians, but there are plenty of them.Hey - maybe the American internet is not a reliable medium to learn about moderate Muslims?

eg My only point with this statement is the nature of the rationalisations are quite similar to those of Christians (which you deny exist). Maybe the Muslims aren't rationalizing either? I notice you didn't give reasons why I was misrepresenting Islam? Sin is a religious concept not a secular one, both Islam and Christianity have it. Individuals vary on how they use the term, but there are general similarities. In general, sin is that which goes against the word or law of God. It is not a relative term.As an atheist I don't believe sin exists, so I don't generally sweat the details and concern myself more with how my actions and inactions impact those around me which I think is more important than worrying about what a hypothetical being might think of them. This is true of Christians too, which is why Jesus reminded them not to worry about judging other people's sins and to worry about their own and that God is the only judge on the matter. I fail to see what being an atheist has to do with that.If you want to talk about how Christians are unique and special snowflakes rather than them being human beings who operate just like other human beings in that rationalizations are an essential part of their psychology - start a thread. Because that isn't anything to do with moderate Islam.

But one thing that must also be considered is how intolerant many humans are of those who don't believe as they do. Is what Fox News probably said.In reality, a Muslim woman made a negative comment about it on a forum and the owners voluntary pulled the sign. Why is this a relevant data point? I'm pretty sure Christians are regularly applying pressure to American businesses, too (and usually a bit more directly and with six orders or magnitude more people involved). This is not being intolerant of others, this is a clash of cultural norms. There are Christian doctors who have refused to assist patients with life threatening conditions because they are transexual and opted to let them die in agony instead, pharmacists who refuse to sell the morning after pill, cake shop owners getting pissy about gay marriage. NOT UNIQUE TO MUSLIMS. Why are you trying to paint a picture of westernizing Muslims as being so problematic by pointing to a small group of arseholes patrolling East London to the chagrin of most Muslims who saw it as a threat to their peace. You know Jews do this too, right? And American Christians once upon a time had their own modesty patrols, I mean lynch mobs. Yeah, Christians didn't try and increase their numbers to the point where they can influence culture so that eventually they would have complete cultural stranglehold on the Americas, Europe, Australia, and parts of Africa - so thankfully that doesn't undermine your point at all. Bloody Romans.I think it's called 'normal human social interaction'. What would you do if you were in a culture that kept black slaves? Would you try to get as many likeminded people together to fight to change it, or would you just let it happen? The former undermines your narrative that this is a bad thing, the latter undermines your courage or character. What if you lived in a culture that teaches creationism in high school biology classes? Would you fight that? Even if it was just, say participating in a forum or something mild like that.

If all you are going to say is this, you could at least be specific.

Erm, thanks for attempting to summarize my Message 20, but if I was going to criticize I'd say you summarized it to the point of making it hopelessly vague and generic. I can't think of many threads where this summary couldn't be used.Anyway, if you ever do feel like 'checking out what is happening' so that we can discuss in what ways it is 'more involved than you realize' please do try and put some effort into making a response.

You probably did something that you feel you can rationalize to yourself was a sufficient search, but your reticence to reveal the methodology reveals you aren't sure that other people will agree, indeed it may even be a little embarrassing right? I mean it's not like getting to know Muslims is even humanly possible, right? Best to stick with scary stories in the media. As demonstrated - all you are listening out for is the evil voices. You don't seem capable of tracking down the peaceful voices. They are - but the media you rely on doesn't give the peaceful guys nearly enough amplification so you never hear it because you don't get close enough to Muslims. Your ignorance on the matter is duly noted. Perhaps now you should STFU until you actually learn something? Or would that be considered 'unAmerican'? This is the non-sequitur of the century! You know those people that had the courage to stand up against ISIS? Yeah, they're dead now so you'll never have the opportunity to hear their voices. And like all religions, nobody is in control of it. There are certainly big problems we need to tackle, but denying basic facts about the situation isn't going to help us resolve the problem - its just going to entrench your point of view. You could argue you have a social and moral obligation to understand something before talking shit about it. Just a thought.

Sufficient to conclude there are basically no moderates, you must have met millions of the bastards! Please share some details. I don't need enough detail to be able to identify you. Biology is pretty strict about apes who lose their head, or have a bullet destroy significant portions of their brain or other essential organs. Yes, they have to be dead. 1 - they are in the West.
2 - if you think that Muslim extremists don't attempt to control migrant populations with fear and intimidation you are wrong.
3-Just a moment...

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"American Muslims view the actions of ISIS as un-Islamic and morally repugnant. No religion condones the murder of civilians, the beheading of religious scholars or the desecration of houses of worship. We condemn the actions of ISIS and reject its assertion that all Muslims are required to pay allegiance to its leader.

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"CAIR strongly urges American imams and other community leaders to continue to speak out against American Muslims traveling abroad to join extremist groups and sectarian militias. While ISIS uses romanticized imagery in its propaganda materials, its human rights abuses on the ground are well-documented."

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http://www.theislamicmonthly.com/...sis-the-un-islamic-state

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Dear ISIS & Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi,

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You are not The Islamic State.

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There is nothing Islamic about beheading foreign journalists, indiscriminately targeting religious minorities and instilling wanton terror within the general civilian population where your terrorist thugs operate.

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As I mentioned during a July 2012 CNN television interview, you are so crazy that even Al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has distanced himself from the actions of your terrorist organization.

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Seriously, you know that you’re a bunch of lunatics when even Al-Qaeda says that you are too ‘cray-cray’ for their taste....
For these and many other reasons, the acronym ISIS should stand for Idiotic Sacrilegious Imbecile Society or we can just call them The Un-Islamic State for short.

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iview

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Brothers and sisters, if I could tell you in one sentence about ISIS I would tell you that they are evil, they are corrupt, they are self-seeking, self-centered, vicious people. Don't get mixed up with them."

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Articles In Arab Press In Response To Islamic State's Expulsion, Persecution Of Mosul Christians: These Are Crimes Against Humanity Unprecedented In Iraq's History; Arabs, West Should Do More To Stop Them | MEMRI

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"There is no more accurate description for those who call themselves ISIS... than 'neo-Nazis' or 'neo-Tatars', for they are racist like the Nazis and murderous barbarians like the Tatars. They are harming Islam more than anyone has harmed it in the past 1,400 years, i.e. during the entire history of the Muslims since the beginning of Muhammad's mission in the seventh century

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Maybe your Google is broken? If you've turned it off and on again and that didn't clear it you should order a new one. Yes, I said that already. Christianity's moderates had thousands of years of trying to become the dominant voice before they could claim any degree of success sometime in the late 19th or early 20th Century. You don't help their voice be heard by denying it exists. Then you are a liar, a terrible investigator or you live in Iraq. My point was that finding them is as easy as pie, I know many of them. Of course in your area the demographics might be 1 in 100 people are Muslims whereas in Manchester they are sixteen times more frequent than that. Apparently you've met lots of Muslims yourself though - not moderates? That's how I started this thread. You said 'that's all well and good' and said something about 'liberating women'. Feel free to add your thoughts to what makes a Muslim a moderate. It isn't violent or practiced by terrorists? I mean you said the answer right in your question.A moderate Muslim, like moderate Christians do not believe faith should be forced upon others and we should learn to live with people of different religions rather than fighting or coercing them. How can you have searched for moderate Muslims without having a working definition to use? Obviously you had one - please reveal it.

There is no such thing. You realize they abhor drugs and alcohol right - pretty much moderation right there.Seriously, yes, there are. Yes, or derived from it. Yes. The Constitution of Medina. You know, Islam doesn't exist and can't teach, right? It's just a label for several billion mental conceptions, you realize?So yes, I would say that from what I know of the religion of my Muslim friends, this naturally falls from their religious principles. The same goes for the other stuff. Have you done any self-analysis as to what you actually mean by this. Are you trying to talk about some ideal Platonic Islam? I quoted Arsalan Iftikhar who is a famous Muslim author and lawyer who also happens to have written an article that was published in Islamic Monthly for which he is a senior editor. This reflects very very badly on you and your ability to examine this subject fairly. In many mosques and homes. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

You say "La ilaha illallah, Muhammadun rasulullah " It works the same as with any religion. Or political idea. Or social movement. It's a socially constructed idea, not something that can be pointed to as a real thing.Look - it'll help me understand what you are looking for with Islam if you find another religion and show me the moderate version. The Quran is not Islam. It's a book. Can you see the difference? Islam is a mental conception. If there were no brains, there'd be no Islam. If what happened there confuses you, socio-cultural religious studies is probably not the subject you should be pontificating about.I mentally replaced 'does Islam' with 'do Muslims' to make the question coherent so that I could answer the spirit of the question rather than needlessly repeat a point I made earlier.What are you trying to say? You are not communicating it very well.

Look it up, or, if you have a point you are driving towards, make it. According to Muslims, Jesus was a Muslim. Therefore, you just found yourself a moderate Muslim.Also, there have been....differences of opinion about what 'loving god' and 'loving neighbours' means, and that includes torture, rape, genocide, forced conversion etc. So in its own right, it's not moderate. It can be interpreted moderately. But Jesus didn't do away with the law, he just said that summed it up. Therefore to love God you should follow the Law. Which includes killing people for trivial crimes. So you know, not all that moderate. Jesus, prophet of Islam, teaches the same thing.

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As you would have people do to you, do to them; and what you dislike to be done to you, don't do to them.

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Moderate enough for you? It's apparently from Kitab al-Kafi but English translations of the Hadith are hard to find. Creationism is explicitly a tenet of Christianity (and Islam), agreed? Equality for women is a pretty glaring omission from almost all of the early texts of the three big Abrahamic faiths. Product of their times and all that. Again, you need to help me a bit more here. Is this what you are looking for? Moderate Islam is what moderate Muslims follow. If you want to find Moderate Islam, you shouldn't look to 8th Century texts. You might get somewhere with that, but 'moderate' wasn't really a thing in the 8th Century.In any event, I answered your question without making the conflation. If you think 'Islam' 'teaches' things, then moderate Islam teaches from mosques etc. So why are you complaining? It's a bit more complex than that with Islam, I'm afraid. If you want to say 'The Qur'an is not moderate' then just say that. Neither is the book of Revelation. Let's suppose there are no written tenets which are remotely moderate. My position doesn't need them to be. Is it your position that this would mean Moderate Islam does not exist even as moderate Muslims practice a religion they call 'Islam' moderately? So what religion are those Muslims following if it isn't a moderate form of Islam.

Well some of them are clearly specific to the time and place they were written/spoken regarding the ongoing conflicts with neighbours. So that's one line that is used. Stoning homosexuals? Well most Islamic countries don't do that anyway.
Indonesia? No.
Pakistan? No.
Bangladesh? No
Turkey? No.
Just that list accounts for 600 million Muslims.Heck - homosexual sex was legal in Turkey before it was in the States or the UK (by many decades). Yes. There are many alternate interpretations. Islam is kind of characterised by its alternate interpretations and inferences, from fatwa to itjihad. Why not specify a verse and we'll find out together what different Muslims have made of it? Why would you expect that? It's a pile of horse manure just like when Christians do it. But I'd rather they did that than keep the pile of rotting raped babies that the extremists have. That's how Islam operates. They don't have a Pope, or Queens. It's like American Protestantism - it's all over the place. The 'random work of individual Muslims' is usually called a fatwa: " most Muslims argue that anyone trained in Islamic law may give an opinion (fatwā) on its teachings", wikipedia, Fatwa. There is also ijtihad. It's complicated, I don't know it as well as Christianity, but that's what I see. Which is funny because the Middle Eastern Muslims are in the minority (they only make up 20% of the global Muslim population) but they are the ones that get spoken about 90% of the time. Perhaps this says something about selection biases or something? Most Islamic problems come out of the Middle East, a highly unstable region because of the 20th Century shenanigans (collapse of the Ottomans, British interferences etc). The India/Pakistan thing is probably a thread in its own right! Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Why do people think that by comparing one common trait between groups, the person making the comparison is saying the groups are entirely the same? Is this rank stupidity or is it a rhetorical ploy to silence/shame people?Mormons try changing everything they can to reflect their way of doing things, as do Muslims, Protestants, Atheists and so on and so forth. This is not to say that Muslims, Protestants, Atheists and Mormons are the same thing, just that they share common behaviours (being the same animal and all that). I think it is just saying that this specific characteristic is NOT UNIQUE TO MUSLIMS. If you really think that comparing one behavioural trait observed in one group with similar behavioural traits found in other groups is stating the two groups are equivalent then you aren't having a discussion because you don't understand English well enough to have one. Was this intended to be funny? Americans have been persecuting Mormons since they started in case you hadn't noticed, this has only somewhat eased after certain a politician ran for the Presidency.

I suggest you stop complaining that people who disagree with you are asking the courts to make decisions about it. It's better than the alternatives. Not unique to Islam. See: Christianity. Like with Christianity. Like with Christianity. Nice propaganda there, are you proud of it? Marseilles is struggling with a high immigrant population, low employment, huge drug issues and more. Most of the deaths are drug related. Since drug dealing is haram to Muslims, they can't be TRUE Muslims, by your own way of defining things, so this data point provides no insight.There are Christian immigrants to America that organize into gangs that get involved in the drug trade and murder people. I believe they are often referred to as 'Hispanic'. So if the no true Muslim defense is out - then the Christians still come off worse.Also - what is this 'certain percentage'? Right now it is about 35% in Marseille. If they haven't enforced Islam yet, very soon it's going to be when they are in the majority. Didn't you just get done with whining about 'majority rule'? Well if Muslims are the majority in Marseille, why shouldn't they rule? This is one of the things with majority rule - only the current majority wants it, and they start making references to constitutional protections when they are in the minority.I should point out that Marseilles' 'shocking' murder rate is basically the same as the USA over all and is considerably lower than say Los Angeles which has lots of Christian immigrants and a small fraction compared with New Orleans. In short: try again, this avenue doesn't work. Really - prayer rugs along the border? Do we know Catholics are coming over because of the rosary beads along the border?Look - obviously illegal Muslims are entering into America, but America's primary illegal immigration concern is regarding other Christians from south of the border. This is not some obscure fact. No I'm not. Mohammed couldn't write.But yes, like all religions, their Holy Books are very important. But they are not the religion. Have you never taken part in Salat? Maybe you are closed-minded?

You were asking for moderate versions of Islam. What does 'moderate version' of a religion mean? This can only be answered by comparison. Sorry, but you basically started it. Look up the Aquidah, maybe something in there will resemble something you are looking for. Also the Five Pillars and Six Articles of Faith. Although this does not seem to remotely related to your original request about moderate Islam, I wish you the best of luck learning about Islam. Moderate Islam is what Moderate Muslims practice. Showing you moderate Muslims is therefore sufficient to prove the existence of moderate Islam. Even if their religion is utterly inconsistent with ancient religious texts and there is no textual support for any of it - that would still be true. Moderate Islam exists in the minds of the Moderate Muslims. I don't know their theological rationalizations and textual support for all of it, I'm afraid (and much of it only exists in other languages in printed form in any event), but to deny it exists is just pretty foolish. What did your local Imam say when you asked him?That you think asking western cultural Christians for references to texts that meet your requirements is a sensible research tactic, causes me to think I've found another flaw in your methods.Anyway, I've shown you moderate Muslims who practice moderate Islam.
I've posted text from the Hadith that may be considered moderate (the Golden Rule).
And now you want me to find something sufficiently close to the Catholic Catechism?
Are your demands going to become ever more ludicrous?

OK, so we agree that Christians committed atrocities to get their religion spread. Yes, attempting to change the world around us is what people do. Not unique to Islam. Islam spread through murder, war mayhem and so on. Just like Christianity. I'm perfectly happy to recognize this. But we're talking about moderate Islam here. Murder to impose one's will doesn't seem very moderate so why are you talking about it if it isn't just to take cheap shots at one of your bogeymen?