Is the Islamic State the Islamic ‘Reformation’?

Screen Shot 2014-10-14 at 2.34.22 PMThe self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shocked the world with its brutality. The British Prime Minister David Cameron, along with other Western leaders, claims that the Islamic State has “nothing to do with the great religion of Islam, a religion of peace.” The former British PM Tony Blair states that IS’ ideology is “based in a complete perversion of the proper faith of Islam.”

Notice that both the current and a previous British Prime Minister say virtually the same thing as Tariq Ramadan. He is a Swiss writer of Egyptian origin and is a Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University in Britain. Tariq Ramadan suggests that the Islamic State is ”not Islamic.”

Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Banna’s stated goal was the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate. We now have an Islamic State under the leadership of a Caliph. You could therefore argue that ISIS have fulfilled the original promise of Hassan al-Banna. What Tariq Ramadan is in effect saying is that: “The Islamic State have fulfilled the promise of my pious Muslim grandfather. Yet this has nothing to do with Islam.”

The slick Islamic infiltrator Tariq Ramadan has always reminded me of the deceiving manipulator Grima Wormtongue from Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings. It is no wonder that Western ruling elites are clueless about the true nature of the Islamic threat when we allow people such as Ramadan to be treated as experts on Islam in prestigious Western universities and advise Western authorities on matters related to Islam.

Saying that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam or Islamic teachings is false. ISIS propagandists quote authentic Koranic verses or respected hadith literature in favor of their actions. Yes, texts can be interpreted in different ways, but some interpretations have a stronger foundation than others do. A rubber band can be stretched up to a certain point, but not forever. Likewise, texts can be read in several ways, but they are not infinitely elastic.

Maybe what the militant members of the Islamic State are doing is not the only way to interpret Islamic religious texts. Maybe. What should worry us, however, is that it is a perfectly legitimate way to interpret Islamic texts.

The Islamic State now has many supporters, also in Western countries. Their atrocities resonate with quite a few Muslims who recognize something similar from Islamic history. In the earliest days of Islam, Mohammed and his companions raided and pillaged their opponents, massacred and beheaded non-Muslims, enslaved their children, raped their women and forced them to be sex slaves. Suggesting that it has nothing to do with Islam, when militant Muslims today directly copy the behavior of their Prophet as described in Islamic sources, is not credible.

Western leaders and commentators are often shockingly ill-informed about Islam. Tony Blair, then still Britain’s Prime Minister, wrote about Islam for the influential magazine Foreign Affairs in its January 2007 issue. This quote sums up the breathtaking cluelessness of Western leaders:

To me, the most remarkable thing about the Koran is how progressive it is. I write with great humility as a member of another faith. As an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, much as reformers attempted to do with the Christian church centuries later. The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance. Under its guidance, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands were breathtaking. Over centuries, Islam founded an empire and led the world in discovery, art, and culture. The standard-bearers of tolerance in the early Middle Ages were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian ones.”

Some observers suggest that Islam needs to be reformed. Yet it is arguable that we have already witnessed an Islamic Reformation, and that ISIS/the Islamic State represents a culmination of this process.

In 2007 I published an essay with the title Do we want an Islamic Reformation? The question of whether Islam can be reformed largely hinges upon one’s definition of “Reformation.” This is often implicitly taken to mean something along the lines of “peaceful, non-sharia-based with respect for individual choice, freedom of speech and the freedom to criticize and leave your religion.” In other words: “Reform” is vaguely taken to mean less Islam, or at least less traditional sharia laws, and no violent Jihad.

However, several observers argue that there are similarities between Martin Luther and the Christian or Protestant Reformation in sixteenth century Europe and the reform movement started by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab in the Arabian Peninsula in the 18th century. Wahhab’s alliance with the family of Muhammad bin Saud led to the creation of Saudi Arabia. Using its massive oil wealth, paid for by non-Muslims, that country has for generations funded strict sharia-based Islamic movements worldwide. This Islamic revivalist movement is at the base of the present-day Salafist movement.

Although the Reformation was a turbulent period, it paved the way for more tolerance and religious freedom in Christian Europe over the long run. Christians could return to the example as contained in the Gospels of an early age where Jesus, the founder of their religion, and his disciples led a largely peaceful movement separate from the state. Muslims can find a similar example only in the Mecca period. however, as long as the writings from the very violent Medina period remain in force, when Islam was a state run on religious laws, a return to an “early, Golden Age” of Islam will mean a return to sharia and Jihad violence. As such, one has to ask whether an Islamic Reformation would be desirable from a non-Muslim point of view. The likely answer to that question is no.

There is arguably a direct line from the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 to the Islamic State. The Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb was one if the ideological inspirators for Osama bin Laden’s Jihadist terrorist network al-Qaida. The Islamic State (ISIS) is an offshoot of al-Qaida that has fulfilled the Muslim Brotherhood’s desire for a new Caliphate.

If a “Reformation” is meant to be a return to the earliest days of the religion, as Martin Luther and John Calvin wanted to achieve in Christian Europe, then what we are looking at now may well be the Islamic Reformation. Seen in this light, al-Qaida and the Islamic State are the culmination and logical conclusion of the Islamic Reformation. This Islamic revival and return to the earliest days of Islam has led to Jihadist terrorism, beheadings, large-scale massacres and mass enslavement because that was what early Islam was all about.

Right now, there are few signs that the unrest in much of the Islamic world will end any time soon. The brutal attacks on non-Muslims in the Middle East continue. The terror warnings about militant Muslims in the West are growing increasingly alarming. Since the Jihadist attacks of September 11 2001, the situation has deteriorated. We now face an extremely well funded terrorist organization in the form of the Islamic State. Through their control over substantial territory and several oil fields in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has access to far more money and resources than al-Qaida ever did during their time in Afghanistan up until 2001.

The historian Dominic Sandbrook worries that the ongoing disintegration of the Middle East could get even worse and more violent in the years ahead. He warns that ”We have lived through some of the bloodiest years in human history. But the really frightening thing is that the worst may be yet to come.”

The former Chief of the Australian Army, Professor Peter Leahy, has warned of a century-long war against Islamic militants. Several other commentators indicate that the unrest in many parts of the Islamic world and the Jihadist threat ensuing from it could continue for decades. Even in the very unlikely event that a peaceful version of Islam should emerge at some point in the future, this process would likely take generations.

Regardless of outcome, we are in all likelihood facing many years of continued instability in the Islamic world. This is intensified by the high birth rates in some Muslim countries. Some of this unrest is already spilling into other regions. Several European cities have experienced riots involving Muslim immigrants. Western intelligence agencies warn that the number of militant Muslims and potential Islamic terrorists is so large that it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of them all.

It is immensely irresponsible of Western leaders in this situation to continue Muslim immigration. Yes, part of the damage has already been done, but that is no excuse for doing nothing. A firefighter does not let the entire neighborhood burn down just because one house has caught fire. If damage limitation is the only thing we can do at this point, then let us at least do that. When militant Muslims are threatening to behead us, it is simply no longer acceptable to continue mass-importing people from unstable Muslim societies.

Muslim immigration in every form to all European and Western nations needs to be suspended, and any practice of sharia laws banned. Western governments who fail to do this are failing to protect the basic security of their citizens. They should be held accountable for that failure.

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  • mollysdad

    It won’t be possible to defeat Islam without criminalising is profession, conversion to it, and exposure of children to Islamic teaching and practices.

    • DNY

      That’s not entirely clear. We did not criminalize Shinto, or the view that the Emperor of Japan was divine, but we managed to replace the suicide-attack inducing cult of Imperial Shinto with the pacifist constitution Japan willingly embraced. Banning Anabapistism wasn’t what turned it pacifist, the Seige of Munster was.

      Unfortunately, at present the West lacks the will to inflict a sufficiently severe defeat on the actively-warlike adherents of Islam that Muslims generally will question the traditional interpretation of the Qu’ran and Hadiths and turn Islam into what its apologists in the West pretend it is.

      • Blurb1000

        People who are able to work hard are always able to change.
        Who work hard?
        Muslims have a little problem with that. And that’s why they never change or give up their desert age cult.

  • Bamaguje

    “To me, the most remarkable thing about the Koran is how progressive it is… The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition… blah blah blah” – Tony Blair.

    Mr Blair should please pass a copy of his “tolerant” “progressive” Quran to ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Taliban, Iran’s Mullah tyranny, Wahabi Saudis and other intolerant Islamists.

    With regards to reformation, I disagree with the notion that it implies return to the fundamental tenets of a religion.

    The fundamental tenets of Judeo-Christianity as espoused in the Torah are not tolerant. The New testament gospels are not the fundamental basis of Christianity.
    The concept of Christian Mesiah – Jesus – is rooted in Old testament Judaic prophecies and traditions. What more, Jesus purportedly came to free us from original Adamic sin… again in Old testament.

    For me, reformation simply means redefining and reinterpreting religion to conform with modernity. It is not necessarily a return to the fundamental tenets of the religion.
    Most organized religions have gone through a reformation. Hindus today no longer indulge in Sati (widow burning), and many of them now denounce the caste system.

    In the same vein, reformation of Islam requires Muslims to abandon the ugly aspects of their pseudo-religion… not return to its original tenets.

    • El Cid

      I think the important aspect of the Christian Reformation is that the period was noted for sectarian wars and state religions. In particular, people went to war in the name of their religion. It did not lead to peace or religious tolerance (remember WWII?) That is very much like the Middle East today.

      The bigger revolution was the separation of church and state. The Americans accomplished this by fostering religious tolerance–the “shot heard round the world.” The biggest threat to America is Islam’s systematic war on free speech since religious tolerance also depends on free exchange in the market of ideas and ideology.

      If people seek to escape tyranny, they should be welcome immigrants. If they come to foster tyranny, they should be rejected.

  • El Cid

    Well said. I would add the following.

    We could afford the kind of patronization we see in Tony Blair’s interpretation of the Koran when the British and French ruled the Middle East. In those days, the ambitious Arabs wanted to act French or English. Today, we had better take their “holy book” seriously as a threat to our way of life.

  • Warren Raymond

    Tony BLiar’s idiocy is remarkable. At the same time, he has worked feverishly to promote Mohammedan interests in the west, and accumulated enormous wealth in the process. Never has treason been more highly rewarded.

  • De Doc

    Answer of Western leaders to the troubles caused by Islam: Find hole in sand. Insert head.

  • tagalog

    I can’t express how frustrating it is to suffer through the seemingly endless stream of commentators who are trying to find parallels between the history of the West and the unfolding of the latest manifestation of Islamic belief. The Islamic “re-formation” has NOTHING to do with the Reformation of the West. Fundamentalist Muslims may be trying to make fundamentalist Islam the dominant Muslim sect (not that it was ever anything else but dominant in that faith) and in the strictest, dictionary-style, sense what’s going on now is a kind of “re-formation,” but it’s not going to lead to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason in Islam. It’s going to lead to the latest Mahdi and the Caliphate.

    If it succeeds, the closest it will get to the Western Protestant Reformation will be as if the Western Protestant Reformation ended in the bloody suppression of Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anabaptism, and the other Protestant sects, with the Roman Catholic Church triumphant throughout Western Christendom, with the Holy Roman Empire, led by the Pope in Rome ascendant as the theocratic governing power.

    • MukeNecca

      “…how frustrating it is to suffer through the seemingly endless stream of
      commentators who are trying to find parallels between the history of the
      West and the unfolding of the latest manifestation of Islamic belief.
      The Islamic “re-formation” has NOTHING to do with the Reformation of the West.

      Agreed a 100%
      I fully understand and share your frustration, tagalog.

  • Jacob Greenwood

    IMPOSSIBLE to live with Islam. Muslims will never throw out the Medina verses. Unfortunately, the “Secular” West cannot speak coherently with two feet planted in a knowledge of the creator and the nature of the universe without a firestorm of from both “religious” and “secular” sides. This puts us on a downward spiral; because evil thrives with ignorance; However,

    If “The Creator” manifests “himself” in every particle of the universe, this shall be our basis of science knowledge and perception. If Quantum Mechanics could levitate a 40 ton rock, they would have done so by now. Its time to throw off religious and scientific dogma. http://www.TheResonancePrinciple.org

  • MattBracken

    We’re going to find out, sooner or later,
    If Abdallah will pray, to a glowing crater.
    The USA won’t do it, but if Russia, India or Israel are attacked with Islamic State WMDs, I think Mecca and other targets will be obliterated. Then we’ll find out if Islam can survive, after losing 2 of the 5 eternal Pillars of Islam. I don’t think “Our god used to be the greatest” will be a big recruiting tool after that.

  • DNY

    As regards Islam and the DAISH (I prefer the transliterated Arabic acronym to either ISIS or ISIL), what Fjordman writes is spot on.

    However, the notion that Luther and Calvin were returning Christianity to its original form is quite unsupportable, whatever they and their latter-day followers might assert. For Jan Hus and Jacob of Prague (now both listed in the calendar of saints of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia) we might make that claim.

    Folks who think a reformation in Islam will lead to religious tolerance seem to forget that the protestant “Reformation” itself was a time of religious intolerance, as much by the “reformers” as by the Latin church (cf. the persecution of “recusants” in England and the English Civil War, when even more radical protestant Puritans militarily fought non-so-radically protestant Anglicans) and that it was not the “Reformation”, but revulsion at the blood-letting of the Thirty Years War which is spawned that led to modern Western European religious toleration.

    I’m afraid what Islam needs is not a reformation, but defeat on the order of the Siege of Munster that turned the militant establish-the-Kingdom-of-God-by-force-of-arms Anabaptists into pacifist Mennonites, or the defeat that replaced Imperial Shinto with the Japanese pacifist constitution. The defeat must be so severe that it shakes Muslim confidence in naskh so that in future Islam the warlike Medinan surahs no longer trump the peaceful Meccan surahs. Otherwise, yet more centuries will see the same horrors repeated when another generation of Muslims returns to the traditional interpetation of the Qu’ran and Hadiths.

  • ArentIpretty

    ISIS follows the commands of Allah and the example of Mohammad. Muslims can’t change the Qur’an and can’t criticize Mohammad’s behavior. Islam is stuck with being a fascistic theology. Nothing can save it.