The National Journal has a lengthy article on Islam called, "Islam: A religion of peace?" It is interesting reading and I will provide a few excerpts.

David S. Powers, professor of near eastern studies at Cornell University, has noted that Muslim scholars of abrogation such as Ibn Salama (d. 1020) claimed the "sword verse" cited above (9.5) had abrogating power over 124 other verses, including "every other verse in the Koran which commands or implies anything less than a total offensive against the non-believers." U.S.-born historian John Wansbrough found that the sword verse "became the scriptural prop of a formulation designed to cover any and all situations which might arise between the Muslim community and its enemies." Influential Islamist authors such as 'Abd al-Salam Faraj, Maulana Maududi and Sayyid Qutb have all expressed their agreement with the classical interpretation of the commands to fight and kill.

Indeed, one of the greatest challenges facing peace advocates in Muslim nations is that the Islamist voices that seem to have the greatest appeal to youth are those that portray the Koranic commands to kill as clear and unequivocal. Some of these Islamists have already carefully processed Western criticisms and have deliberately reasserted the classical understandings. For instance, Egypt's Sayyid Qutb, a guiding force of the Muslim Brotherhood (from which al-Qaeda sprang), wrote that the tendency to interpret the Koran as if it enjoins only defensive war is an error of Muslims minds "defeated by the pressure of unfavourable conditions and the treacherous propaganda of the orientalists."

But this need not be the only way of interpreting these texts. One alternative -- quite common in some faith communities -- might be to decide that these were commands for a very particular set of circumstances, but that they no longer apply to modern believers in this time. Another option, advanced recently by the Turkish scholar Israfil Balci, is to reject the classical interpretations of these commands as a product of the political tensions of the period.

In other words, Muslims seeking to find a peaceful message in the Koran must fight not only the plain meaning of the Koran's text and the current fashion for militancy, but also the arrow of Muslim history.

Interpreting the words of Muslim scripture so that they pose no threat to peaceful coexistence with non-believers thus seems a large challenge. In view of the high stakes in the world today, however, it is certainly a challenge worth taking up. Otherwise, Canadian proponents of multiculturalism will have a harder time arguing that traditional Islam is just another peaceful element in Canada's multicultural quilt.

Exactly. Koranic literalism* is the problem; it is unclear whether reinterpretation is possible if the new meaning contradicts the actual words in the Koran.

Read it all and do some thinking. Crossposted here.

*"Belief in the Qur'an's direct, uncorrupted divine origin is considered fundamental to Islam by most Muslims. This of course entails believing that the Qur'an has neither errors nor inconsistencies.

Posted by: cbjohnson at 05:21 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 592 words, total size 4 kb.