The other guest on the program, … Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?" He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran. Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation.

This is the point that, I think, has gotten a lot of people worked up. It's sensational, plays to Western prejudice and is a Big Fat Lie.

What Al-Khouly actually said was,

You mean an atheist? . . . I am asking you in order to deal with you using your own system of logic, if you are an atheist, then there is no censuring you if you curse Islam, Islam's Prophet and Islam's Qur'an.

To paraphrase, for anyone who still doesn't get it, Al-khouly is essentially saying, "If you don't believe in the Qur'an, there is no point in my quoting Qur'anic verses at you. If you are an atheist, I can't rebuke you for being irreligious."

Should there be any doubt that this is what Al-khouly is saying, at a later point in the transcript he says,

Those you are speaking about do not have the correct grasp of Islam. When a non-Muslim insults Islam and Islam's prophet, this doesn't disturb a hair on our heads. We excuse him if he is ignorant and we accept the situation if he is a resentful extremist because he is not to be judged by our standards or our criteria.

There may well be whackos who call Wafa Sultan up on the phone and threaten her. But Al-khouly hasn't encouraged them. I find the most outrageous thing about this whole affair is that the MEMRI editing and the subsequent NY Times story make Al-khouly look like a Mad Mullah who wants Wafa Sultan dead. He's not. He's got some ideas I strongly disagree with and a weak grasp of history but he's not some Taliban-loving jihadi rabble-rouser. On questions of religion, he's a reasonably moderate Islamic scholar. Al-khouly is the real story because he represents a moderate strain of Islamic thought that can resonate with the pious middle -- that large majority of ordinary Muslims who would prefer just to get on with their lives. Wafa Sultan, as engaging as she is for Western audiences, is an Islamic Madeleine Murray O'Hare and, like O'Hare, she's never going to have a lot of popular influence.

When a non-Muslim insults Islam and Islam's prophet, this doesn't disturb a hair on our heads.

So if they burn down Danish embassies when they're calm, what do they do when their hair is disturbed?

You know, I'm actually interested in hearing something from moderate Muslims. So could we please have some moderate Muslims who have not retreated into a fantasy world?

Meanwhile, I'm really sorry that Dr. al-Khouly got pushed down on the playground by a girl. He can take comfort in the fact that he is now apparently the biggest martyr since Martin Luther King.

Meanwhile, I'm really sorry that Dr. al-Khouly got pushed down on the playground by a girl. He can take comfort in the fact that he is now apparently the biggest martyr since Martin Luther King.

Or he's the Bobby Riggs of the Muslim world.

While the translation gives another view of the text of the argument, the impression given by the video version of the debate remains the same.

Wafa Sultan defended our own culture with more passion than most Western pundits, and with more passion than any Western politician (except for Giuliani). We've forgotten how to defend our own ideals - in many cases, we've forgotten what our ideals are. If she wanted to run for any office, I'd vote for her.

Dr. al-Khouly was flustered and confused by the words and the manner of a woman who dared to confront him directly. People like al-Khouly expect everyone, including Westerners, to treat their half-baked fact free ideas with a respect they don't deserve. For decades, we've accomodated and appeased the al-Khoulys of the world. After all, we have to win their hearts and minds. Wafa wasn't playing our game, and al-Khouly had every reason to be shocked.

I never got the impression that he was issuing a fatwa, but after al-Khouly's Riggs-like defeat, I'd expect that Ms. Sultan might have to worry about threats. The current attitude of 'humiliated' or embarrassed believers hasn't been rational or predictable.

The most interesting part of the pdf version is at the end, in the al Jazeeera poll, asking "Do you believe that the world is heading for a clash of civilizations?"

81.5% of respondents said yes. 8.5% said no.

> I'm really sorry that Dr. al-Khouly got pushed down on the playground by a girl.

>Or he's the Bobby Riggs of the Muslim world.

Focus... focus.

al-Khouly may offer a fascinating window into the thinking of al-Jazeera's audience. He has harsh words for Saudi Arabia's flavor of Islam (Wahhibism). Anon (#1) called al-Khouly "a reasonably moderate Islamic scholar," saying "he represents a moderate strain of Islamic thought that can resonate with the pious middle." That seems about right.

Still, when I read his take on the spread of Islam, the Crusades, dhimmitude, Islam's history of tolerance, the Sudan, homosexuality, and patriarchy, he comes across to my Western ears as, er, not the sort of fellow I'd have my sister marry (<- NB, attempt at humor).

al-Khouly may represent the realistic reformist alternative to Qutbism and similar strains of Islamic thought. It's to our advantage to be aware of that possibility.

Wait a second, problem here:

When a non-Muslim insults Islam and Islam's prophet, this doesn't disturb a hair on our heads

Isn't al-Khouly being disingenuous here? Wafa Sultan is not just some random non-Muslim, she's a former Muslim who converted away from the religion. In the eyes of Islam, doesn't that put her in a more taboo category than the usual "non-Muslim" designation, as we've seen so pointedly in Afghanistan in the case of Abdul Rahman?

I agree that al-Khouly is not pronouncing a formal fatwa. But if al-Khouly, playing to an Islamic audience, tries to get Sultan to confess to leaving Islam, then he's at least trying to provoke an automatic condemnation of her and everything she says in the eyes of his viewers.

(For completeness' sake, here's her account of leaving Islam:

A Syrian native, Sultan said she walked away from the faith of her family 27 years ago, when she witnessed the murder of her professor by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist organization then battling the Syrian government. She said the men burst into her classroom at the University of Aleppo in northern Syria, where she was a medical student, and gunned him down, screaming, "Allah is great!"

"That was the turning point of my life," she said. "I was traumatized. I lost faith in God — or their God — and started to question every single teaching of ours."

)

Wafa Sultan is not just some random non-Muslim, she's a former Muslim who converted away from the religion. In the eyes of Islam, doesn't that put her in a more taboo category than the usual "non-Muslim" designation, as we've seen so pointedly in Afghanistan in the case of Abdul Rahman?

Dear Unbeliever,

Did you even bother to read the transcript? Nothing in that transcript identifies Sultan as a Muslim former or otherwise and when he DOES attempt to uncover her religious orientation he does not ask her what religion she left to become an aethist as the issue seemed to be an irrelevancy to him since he did not press her. In addition, and this is a vital point many have missed, it is common to try and fathom the orientation of Arabs from their last names, as most Arabic last names can be traced to Islamic origins and thus one can avoid awkward or embarassing social situations by assuming that one is a Muslim. Wafa Sultan is a name that can easily be a Christian one.

AMac: "al-Khouly may represent the realistic reformist alternative to Qutbism and similar strains of Islamic thought. It's to our advantage to be aware of that possibility."

Okay, help me see the realism and the possiblities here.

I see no realism at all in clerics like al-Khouly and al-Mutawakkil who say that apostasy is okay, being kufr is okay, and blasphemy is no problemo. How are we supposed to react to these statements, which are directly opposite to political reality and daily tragic experience?

1. We can pretend that al-Khouly-et-al are the real Muslims who speak for real Islam, and pretend that anyone who doubts that is an Islamophobe. That's basically the position of the Remora Left, which attaches itself to any monster that swims by and pretends that it's "progressive". They are currently lip-locked to anti-Western Islam, but I don't care to join them because they are not only wrong but historically doomed.

2. We can hope that they are seminal "voices in the wilderness" that are speaking for a great silent majority of Muslims. (If that is so, BTW, then Wafa Sultan is not their problem - they should be telling it to the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Finsbury Park.) Given that the overwhelming trend of Islam worldwide is not in the direction of reform, but rather in the direction of the 10th Century, that hope seems unrealistic.

3. We can hope that they will prove astonishingly influential, after the manner of Martin Luther or John Calvin. Their reforms resulted in schism, however. And the political forces they took on were sufficiently civilized that both of them lived to die of old age. And no Islamic Luther will get any help from Islam's so-called friends in the West, who are interested in nothing but apologism and denial.

4. We can bolster the al-Khouly element by actively fueling their only source of hope: Democracy. This will bring us into direct cofrontation with virtually every Islamic kingdom and republic on earth, not to mention Europe, Russia, the far left, the far right, and the so-called "Democratic Party".

I really like that one, but I must admit it is not a model of realistic thinking.

5. [Your suggestion here]

Glen Wishard (#7):

I meant something quite different in the two sentences you quoted. Namely, that al-Khouly's appreciation of history as portrayed in the transcript is fairly awful in its misconceptions and biases. Nonetheless, in his attitudes about blasphemy, unbelief, and apostasy, he seems to display tolerance. If al-Khouly is indeed "as good as it gets" among Muslims of stature in the Muslim world, it behooves us to recognize that unhappy reality. There are clerics and scholars with attitudes that are more in line with Enlightenment ideals--but are they in the mainstream of today's Islam, or are they scorned? It's an important question in light of Dean's thought

My view is that Islamic radicalism can never be defeated if we do not have muslims on our side. And we aren't going to get muslims on our side by consistently distorting them and their worldview.

al-Mutawakkil is working, in Arabic, in an Islamic jurisprudential tradition and arriving at positions that are consistent with Enlightenment ideals. That encouraging tidbit from the "al-Hiwar" blog (at Blog*pot) is the limit of my knowledge.

It may be worth noting that the Churches of the time of the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Inquisition, Hundred Years War, &c. were not particularly "civilized" in the way we are using that word. Perhaps this tells us that reform is more possible than it seems--though never easy.

Depressing these exchanges:

Okay, help me see the realism and the possiblities here.

One rather suspects you meant to write, "Let me engage in a bit of hand waving and posturing to emphasize my pre-drawn conclusions."

I see no realism at all in clerics like al-Khouly and al-Mutawakkil who say that apostasy is okay, being kufr is okay, and blasphemy is no problemo. How are we supposed to react to these statements, which are directly opposite to political reality and daily tragic experience?

Leaving aside the strawman distortion (nicely done for the overdone point I should add), which political reality and what 'daily tragic experience'?

I suppose that would be the MEMRI "reality" - wherein the Arab universe is filled with beheadings and the like?

It's usually vaguely entertaining to read this sort of darkly dripping with menace writing, if depressing in the end when one recalls the fear lurking behind it.

But let me get to the meat (if that is not too far off as an express) of the straw man.
1. We can pretend that al-Khouly-et-al are the real Muslims who speak for real Islam, and pretend that anyone who doubts that is an Islamophobe. That's basically the position of the Remora Left, which attaches itself to any monster that swims by and pretends that it's "progressive". They are currently lip-locked to anti-Western Islam, but I don't care to join them because they are not only wrong but historically doomed.

Well, the credentials - in Islamic learning terms - of the two gentlemen are what they are. Now, setting up 'Real' Islam versus something else is a bit boring. The Jihadis and the Phobics like to play that game, but for the rest of the world one has to make do with lines of thought and tendancies, and all kinds of complexities.

That aside, the attack on the Left was... well bizarre and out of nowhere. I suppose it suits the audience, and the writer, smear critics of his evident attachment to an unholy Islamic bloc, with being wooley headed Left. Nice story line as well. Except of course it doesn't actually say anything and is mere assertion (for that matter although I would accuse the wooley headed Left of many sins, being lip-locked with the Salafine Jihadist murders is not one of their sins, at least not in great numbers).

What we do have are two well-credentialled (by the communities' own standards) Islamic scholars, known in Islamic scholarly circles making arguments that tend toward moderate readings of the religion, against senseless violence etc. Ah yes, and in Arabic, for their own audiences consumption. Certainly not warm and fuzzy Left Anything Goes Urbanites of the West, nor classic liberals - but then theologians tend not to be that sort, regardless. Except the Archbishop of Cantebury, but the poor bastard is going to have a schism on his hands soon. It's probably the goatee. Or his left-liberalism going down poorly among other Xians.

Returning to the scholars, in short, more or less what the Phobics are constantly whinging on about not seeing / never happening.

Moving on in this Festival of Strawmen to be thrown up in dispair:
2. We can hope that they are seminal "voices in the wilderness" that are speaking for a great silent majority of Muslims. (If that is so, BTW, then Wafa Sultan is not their problem - they should be telling it to the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Finsbury Park.) Given that the overwhelming trend of Islam worldwide is not in the direction of reform, but rather in the direction of the 10th Century, that hope seems unrealistic.

Well, given they're fairly ordinary run-of-the-mill guys with good diplomas, I am afraid that I would have to give the author's gloomy They Must Be Great or Must Be Nothing rhetoric a pass.

Of course the same assertion about overwhelming trend to the 10th century (not a bad one for Muslims come to think of it, although they're going to have to watch out for that Mongol Horde coming their way), is more hand waving.

Apparently the author thinks that it is perfectly logical and rational analysis to lump a near billion odd people in with some fringers at Finsbury (mind you fringers that need to be surveiled, expelled or jailed at the proper moment - as the old Anarcho-Syndicalist movements of 19th c Europe showed, 10-20 odd percent can be deadly - of course nothing new there).

I did find the throwing of Qatar into the mix to be amusing, though. I guess the Scary Muslims mix accidentally had a nice little LP Gas finger in there.

Now this bit of over-the-top Gloom and Doomism is delicious:
3. We can hope that they will prove astonishingly influential, after the manner of Martin Luther or John Calvin. Their reforms resulted in schism, however. And the political forces they took on were sufficiently civilized that both of them lived to die of old age. And no Islamic Luther will get any help from Islam's so-called friends in the West, who are interested in nothing but apologism and denial.

Not sure what the point here was other than to illustrate that the person writing it (i) hasn't a clue as to how Islamic jurisprudence and scholarship work, (ii) likes gloomy rhetoric linked to the Protestant Reformation and the gloomy but utterly irrelevant conclusions one can draw. Rather like pissing on about the development in Tamil Hinduism and then noting about all the bloody mindedness that Luther and Calvin helped set up.

It would be, perhaps, a bit tedious to remind the author (not that he'll pay the least attention before searching for more darkly attired straw men and arguments making much use of fallacious logic) the two fellows are actually boring mainstreamers.

The question of course really is the Jihadi fringes, and their bloodimindedness. Schism requires massive followings. The Jihadi fringes merely have hard core fringes. Very dangerous that, but not the same thing.

4. We can bolster the al-Khouly element by actively fueling their only source of hope: Democracy. This will bring us into direct cofrontation with virtually every Islamic kingdom and republic on earth, not to mention Europe, Russia, the far left, the far right, and the so-called "Democratic Party".

Ah, nothing like underling the Bolshy fringery of what passes as one's writing than placing a major political party of one's own country in "quotes."

Well, it's an amusingly overdone, bordering on absurdist painting of gloom, doom and conflict. Of the sort that had Europe rising up in a Muslim intefada last year, over the fine French tradition of car burning by suburban youths (some of whom were indeed Muslim, most of which were African descended, but some is not a scary adjective so it goes right out the window and race baiting being so unfashionable.).

I really like that one, but I must admit it is not a model of realistic thinking.

No but it is a sign of one needing a reality check.

For those who are not ready to run shrieking to the door at the sight of a turbaned Muslim, one can point to some rather trivial observations that while no where near as blood pumping as the V for Vengeance (tedious movie by the way, but fun beginning) like rhetoric our fellow rallied:

First, for Europe, UK and USA, simple public diplomacy aimed at "the pious middle" of believing Muslims who don't particularly get riled up, but do feel authors like the one replied to here hate them.

Second, in terms of the Arab region, liberalisation. Economic liberalisation most of all focused on generating opportunities. Stagnate economies based off of strangling regulatory regimes that serve the rent-seeking bureaucrat are prime reasons for low growth and high unemployment. See the horror that is Egypt. Run some comparatives from World Bank data on ease of doing business.

Third, focus on supporting regional freedom of expression. The Al Jazeerahs and the like. Slowly wears away the old pretensions.

Fourth, in the diaspora both surveil to catch the Finsbury Park types and engage. Sadly harder to do than said. Most of the successful Arabo-Paki emmigrants are not big mosque goers.

But what can I say, I am no doubt some kind of Leftist or something (always fun to get accused of being a Leftist by the ideologues, almost as good as an exploiter).

I felt moved by this:
So if they burn down Danish embassies when they're calm, what do they do when their hair is disturbed?

Well, if you're speaking to professional mobsters and agitators, they're breaking the bones of people trying to muscle in on their cigarette smuggling rackets and that sort of thing.

It's nice, however, to see such an extreme version of the fallacy of composition.

You know, I'm actually interested in hearing something from moderate Muslims. So could we please have some moderate Muslims who have not retreated into a fantasy world?

Actually, no, you're not interested in any such thing. By your own discourse, you're interested in spinning dark doom and gloom scenarios and generally playing Harbringer of Muslim doom.

Probably more fun, I confess.

Meanwhile, I'm really sorry that Dr. al-Khouly got pushed down on the playground by a girl. He can take comfort in the fact that he is now apparently the biggest martyr since Martin Luther King

As evidenced by this comment. Not terribly strong or well rooted in facts, but a fun thing to write.

I see no realism at all in clerics like al-Khouly and al-Mutawakkil who say that apostasy is okay, being kufr is okay, and blasphemy is no problemo. How are we supposed to react to these statements, which are directly opposite to political reality and daily tragic experience?

Glen, you're commiting the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here.

What you need to realize is that NOBODY speaks for "Islam." Islam as a religion, is far, far, more fragmented than even Christianity and nobody believes that Pat Roberton -- or even the Pope -- speaks for all Christians.

These strains of Islam often disagree on what you would think are very basic tenets of the religion. It is foolishness to attribute the acts of any group to "Islam" as a whole.

Having said that, there are certainly some strains of Islam that are completely incompatible with modern liberal democracy. But anyone who wants to intelligently discuss the problems of the Islamic world needs to be able to differentiate between these different strains of thought. Lumping them all together and concluding that "Islam is bad" is both boorish and foolish.

Al-khouly is a far more authentic voice than Wafa Sultan. He's a far more authentic voice than Osama bin Laden, too. What he has to say isn't all bad. It's just dumb to dismiss him out of hand because all Muslims don't agree with him -- a great many do. We're not going to get anywhere until we give up our comfy caricatures of how "all" Muslims think and start trying to understand how things really are.

The most interesting part of the pdf version is at the end, in the al Jazeeera poll, asking "Do you believe that the world is heading for a clash of civilizations?"

81.5% of respondents said yes. 8.5% said no.

Sadly, from what I've seen so far, a poll of readers of this blog would come out about the same.

Anon,

You came close to making the point that living in a historically Christian-dominated country provides a useful insight into understanding Islam. This is actually quite so, true Christians are as rare as true Scotsmen and Muslims. (Which true, exactly?)

Obviously, people make generalizations about all sorts of things. Sometimes it's reflective of poor thinking, but more often it's just reasonable shorthand. Prose would get awfully digressive, even turgid, if every paragraph had to be larded with a set of repeated disclaimers.

As you know, I know you appreciate this simply because I've read various threads at 'Aqoul and some of its linked blogs. Among friends, you've been known to take the same sorts of liberties you are remarking on here. Which is, of course, quite a reasonable thing to do.

Assuming one has the assurance, that is, that one's correspondents are employing the same reasonable shorthand.

Many strains of Islam have firmly-held doctrinal beliefs that make it quite difficult for them to get along with non-Muslims, and for that matter with other Muslims as well. This mattered less overall in the past, except for the unfortunate individuals who got squeezed and snuffed, but not that long ago there was no TV to make the wider world aware of these messy little problems.

If you'd rather discuss the sins of Christendom, by all means, there's a rich vein to mine there. But it seems fairly obvious that, as concerns the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Vicar of Rome, or for that matter the President of the LDS, the most egregious sins of the "why can't we all get along?" variety are some distance in the past. However grudgingly, there's something approximating consensus that rights start with the individual, and that the secular polity can set standards of behavior that all are obliged to follow--religion doesn't offer an override to permit compulsion of others, no matter how much deviationists (etc.) have strayed from the correct spriritual path.

To say that Islam is heterogeneous is not to say that these issues have been, in general, resolved to a similar extent. I can affirm that the Muslims I've known and worked with and for have been as agreeable a group of people as have batches of religious Christians and secularists. This individual experience repeated many times in Enlightenment-based cultures does not, alas, wipe away the problems symbolized by Finsbury Park or Jersey City or Amsterdam.

Again, I know that you and those you consider compatriots are quite aware of such tendencies existing within various branches of Islam. Were it not so, there would be little reason for any but the most devout to concern themselves one way or another about the work of an al-Mutawakkil. Or a Qutb. Or, back to the starting point, of an Ibrahim al-Khoury.

We aren't living at the End of History, but at the beginning of a long slog to ... wherever it is that the 21st Century ends up taking us. Some of the challenges have to do with the incompatabilities of Liberal traditions (Locke, Mills, Rawls, etc.) with certain Islamic ideologies (Salafism/Wahhibism, Qutbism, etc.) and not with others, or with most individual Muslims. I hope that, looking back, the changes that are coming are ones that leave most Westerners and most Muslims more free and more prosperous. I don't think a poll of readers of this blog would show anything else.

You came close to making the point that living in a historically Christian-dominated country provides a useful insight into understanding Islam. This is actually quite so, true Christians are as rare as true Scotsmen and Muslims. (Which true, exactly?)

I'm not quite sure I follow you. The "No True Scotsman" fallacy refers to this.

Argument: "Ach! No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Reply: "But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge."
Rebuttal: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Glenn commits this fallacy when he says,

I see no realism at all in clerics like al-Khouly and al-Mutawakkil who say that apostasy is okay, being kufr is okay, and blasphemy is no problemo. How are we supposed to react to these statements, which are directly opposite to political reality and daily tragic experience?

1. We can pretend that al-Khouly-et-al are the real Muslims who speak for real Islam, and pretend that anyone who doubts that is an Islamophobe.

He also, as pointed out above, uses a fallacy of composition.

So if they burn down Danish embassies when they're calm, what do they do when their hair is disturbed?

The argument I'm seeing a lot of here, if reduced to a syllogism, would be, "Osama bin Laden is a hopelessly intolerant, violent enemy of the West. Osama bin Laden is a Muslim. Therefore, Muslims are hopelessly intolerant, violent enemies of the West."

This isn't just bad politics. It's bad logic.

As you know, I know you appreciate this simply because I've read various threads at 'Aqoul and some of its linked blogs. Among friends, you've been known to take the same sorts of liberties you are remarking on here. Which is, of course, quite a reasonable thing to do.

No, not really. There is a great deal of effort expended to understand the nuances of the various schools of Islamic thought. The Islamic world is quite diverse, both culturally and religiously. Sometime ago, there was, in fact, an extended discussion on how to differentiate (and what to call) the different strains of "political Islam." Some of these strains are compatible with liberal democracy and others need to be eradicated, root and branch. In case you were wondering, the consensus term was "Neo-Salafi" for the most obnoxious strain of Islam, that represented by ObL and his fellow travelers.

Many strains of Islam have firmly-held doctrinal beliefs that make it quite difficult for them to get along with non-Muslims, and for that matter with other Muslims as well.

Very true, a point I've made repeatedly.

If you'd rather discuss the sins of Christendom, by all means, there's a rich vein to mine there.

I don't think you quite take my point. The comparision to Christianity was not to say that Christianity is as "bad" as Islam but that, in a sense, Islam is worse. There is no formal central authority at all. Each Muslim chooses his own religious leader. In Christianity, the Pope speaks for all Catholics, but there is no equivalent of this in Islam. When a religious scholar speaks, he speaks only for himself. He may, of course, be influential and well-respected such that a lot of people will agree with him, but that is a separate issue. The point is, that you cannot take what one religious scholar says and use it to "demonstrate" that "Islam" means this or that.

To analogize it to the Christian context, assuming that some Neo-Salafi who wants to kill all infidels speaks for "Islam" is the equivalent of assuming that Fred Phelps (he of GodHatesFags) speaks for "Christianity."

There are, most certainly strains of Islam that are inimical to modern liberal democracy. But there are many strains that are not. There are lots of Muslims that have political gripes with the West. Some of these are valid, many are not. But it is absolutely critical to separate the political issues from the religious ones. Muslims who are pissed off at the West about, say, the Palestinians, are acceptable interlocutors -- that's a political problem that can, at least in theory, be worked out. In any event, being annoyed about the Palestinians is not incompatible with living in a liberal democracy.

If we want to deal successfully with the Islamic world, we need to deal with it as it is, not how we imagine it to be. That, ultimately, is what is wrong with Wafa Sultan. She confirms our fantasies of what we wish Muslims were like but that, unfortunately, is not how they are. People like Al-khouly are much more representative and they are people that we could work with. But not if we reject them out of hand as "living in a fantasy world" because they don't conform to our prejudices.

[offtopic]
BTW, has everyone see this?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/03/29/national/a163611S00.DTL
I am outraged. I think everyone in America ought to know about this. First they came for the Danes . . .
[/offtopic]

Lounsbury & Anon:

No, I am not committing a "No True Scotsman" fallacy, though I see some clarification to my Scots-Irish Spleen is needed.

I am not saying that in order to be a Muslim you have to believe in killing apostates. I'm saying that it is false to pretend that those who do believe in killing apostates are not "real" Muslims. Not when half a dozen Islamic states prescribe that punishment as a matter of Shari'a law.

Al-Khouly tells us that blasphemy by non-Muslims "doesn't disturb a hair on our heads." By "our heads", whose heads are being referred to, please? Not the ones lying in the dirt in Saudi Arabia, I guess. If al-Khouly is speaking for himself and an unknown number of moderate colleagues, fine. But that tells us nothing about Islam unless we commit the fallacy of composition and extend his views to Muslims in general. Right?

What am I asking from people like al-Khouly? I'm asking for a realistic acknowledgement of the obstacles to Islamic reform - assuming, of course, that al-Khouly is supposed to be a reformer and not an apologist.

... assuming that some Neo-Salafi who wants to kill all infidels speaks for "Islam" is the equivalent of assuming that Fred Phelps (he of GodHatesFags) speaks for "Christianity."

There is no formal central authority at all. Each Muslim chooses his own religious leader. In Christianity, the Pope speaks for all Catholics, but there is no equivalent of this in Islam.

Islam remains relatively opaque, and that is largely because of too much authority, not too little. Imams and Ayatollahs speak, but their captive mosque audiences have little or no voice. Under Shari'a they have little life outside of their religion, to compare with what they are told. Those of us who are free to make up and speak our own minds might remember that now and again.

Angry Dog, what you don't know know about Islam is vast. How can you hope to define Islam for us when Islamic scholars go to school for years just to learn how to debate the meaning of the Qu'ran?
You are a blind man in a room with an elephant.

What I took your & Lounsbury's objection to be was that Al-Khouly was really making a more nuanced and open argument than he's been painted as making...

That is just not going to happen.
So when you say that it is fine for MEMRI to warp what Al-Khouly says, or to supress it by not including it in the translation, you validate muslim accusations of hypocrisy on free speech.

They say, free speech in the West is fine as long as as the West agrees with what you say. Else, no free speech for you.

That was another part of the panel discussion that MEMRI omitted from their translation.
I paraphrase: The host says, the West holds up the cartoons as an example of free speech. Yet an englishman is sentenced to three years for holocaust denial. Where is your free speech?

Change is an incremental process.
If you insist on throughing away all the half loaves, it is going to take much, much longer to gat a full one.

Angry Dog, what you don't know know about Islam is vast. How can you hope to define Islam for us when Islamic scholars go to school for years just to learn how to debate the meaning of the Qu'ran?

Any of you logicians want to guess which fallacy this is?

Actually, Islam was originally a great simplification of Judaism and Christianity, and it gained early followers among Monophysite Christians, who simplified the problem of Christ's nature by making him wholly divine. Mohammed may have started as a Monophysite, but he radically simplified things by eliminating the triune nature of God ("There is no God but Allah"), demoting Christ to Prophet, and eliminating the sacraments and priesthood entirely.

Yes, things have been much elaborated upon since then. For one thing, the Quran is a different book than the one Mohammed wrote, and we have no idea how different. And the hadiths have been piled on it, along with a thousand years of doctrine, tradition, and theology.

So I agree that all that stuff is a lot to deal with, which is rather why I'm not impressed with efforts to dispel radical Islam with a few theological incantations. And if it is incomprehensible to non-Muslims, as you claim, then I wonder why we are listening at all, unless it is just intended to lull us to sleep.

"By their fruits ye shall know them," the man said.

Actually, Islam was originally a great simplification of Judaism and Christianity

Actually, ALL religions are Culturally Stable Strategies (CSS) that have evolved to spread fitness and kinship benefits among genetic and memetic kin. If you like, christianity evolved from judaism, and islam from some memetic hybrid of both.

A strategy is a behavioral phenotype, or memotype, such that if adopted uniformly by the population, no mutant strategy can invade under the forces of natural selection.
But rapidly changing environment can alter the forces of "natural" selection to say, "hyper-natural" selection.

We need to nuture emergent mutant strategies where we find them.

Thanks to all for the thoughtful comments thus far. Please edit out any name-calling just before hitting 'post,' if you would...

We need to nuture emergent mutant strategies where we find them.

Just jerking your chain, matoko. Don't go all fatwa on me again.

How can you hope to define Islam for us when Islamic scholars go to school for years just to learn how to debate the meaning of the Qu'ran?

Two points.

(1) Thanks, anon, for correcting my misapprehension of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. I find myself in agreement with much of what you say, at least when carefully restated. I won't go through them point by point as that would be boring.

(2) Matoko: "How can you hope to define Islam for us when Islamic scholars go to school for years just to learn how to debate the meaning of the Qu'ran?, " etc., is a line of reasoning that risks carrying us where we don't want to go. Rephrased: "However much you think you know about this subject, it's far more complex than that. Because of your ignorance, the stereotypes you sketch in your comment are misleading. In contrast, I am able to make generalizations that get to some of the truths of this intricate matter. Thus, you'd do better to remain silent and learn from me."

Stipulated: Islam is complex. Further stipulated: any generalization about Islam is likely to be untrue or misleading in at least certain circumstances.

As readers will recognize, the same could be said about most substantive remarks on most complex subjects.

There is a big role for expert opinion. That doesn't mean that, as Citizens or as free-thinking individuals, that we must retreat to the sidelines and let our Betters decide the issues.

As an example, one doesn't have to be learned in Islamic jurisprudence to discern important tendencies from the Danish Cartoon Affair (although it would help).

• Most of the 40 invited cartoonists declined to offer submissions; many citing fears of personal safety issues. Intimidation of Western intellectuals by thugs acting in the name of Islam is an issue.

• The 12 cartoons were published, and reprinted to no great effect in Egypt and other places. There are many tolerant and open-minded Muslims who deal with "blasphemy" without resort to violence.

• Danish imams decided to stoke Muslim outrage by reprinting the 12 cartoons and taking them on tour in the Mideast, demanding that the Faithful respond to blasphemy. Radical Muslim leaders in the West do not share Enlightenment values, and are looking to provoke a Clash of Civilizations on their terms.

• The Danish imams faked addtional cartoons and added them to the ones actually published. These radical imams are intellectually dishonest, and are willing to advance their Salafist/neo-Salafist agenda by inciting violence.

... I could go on, step by step, making further comments about ensuing developments. And about the weak and appeasing responses of most Western institutions. And about the response to this manufactured crisis by the Ummah's "pious middle" and by Muslim intellectuals (such as Faisal al-Qassem, op. cit. #16, "I paraphrase...").

By all means, as we contemplate this spectacle, let's remember the diversity (and schisms) within Islam, and recall the absence of a Rome-like theologically-based hierarchy. Let's not be so open-minded and tentative as to dismiss the important general tendencies that the Cartoon Affair reveals about the state of Islam in 2006 (and the state of the West as well). That's conflating open-mindedness with empty-headedness.

The fearful, tentative, respect-to-all, multicultural and expedient responses to the Cartoon Affair have certainly not promoted or extended the rights and freedoms of the individual, in the West or in Muslim-majority countries. They certainly have not strengthened the hand of reformers within Islam.

To return to my point, detailed knowledge of, say, Usul al-fiqh is not required to draw lessons from such events. Stated in those terms, I don't imagine there is much disagreement about that in this forum.

This requires some comment:
I am not saying that in order to be a Muslim you have to believe in killing apostates. I'm saying that it is false to pretend that those who do believe in killing apostates are not "real" Muslims. Not when half a dozen Islamic states prescribe that punishment as a matter of Shari'a law.

That's well enough, although hardly evident from the original comment.

For the record, Muslims who vaguely believe apostasy is punishable by death are as real as those who don't in my mind. I try to apply the "not real Muslims" label to silly nutters like the Nation of Islam who are clearly not.

As to the count of 6 states, I'll take your word for it, although aside from Afghanistan I doubt there has been any application outside that pit of iniquity, Saudi Arabia.

Al-Khouly tells us that blasphemy by non-Muslims "doesn't disturb a hair on our heads." By "our heads", whose heads are being referred to, please?

Those of rational, right thinking people who following his fatwas.

Or in the alternative, whoever listens to him.

Like any other theologian getting up and speaking.

This is a surprise?

Not the ones lying in the dirt in Saudi Arabia, I guess.

One would think not, but KSA is so very special in so many ways.

If al-Khouly is speaking for himself and an unknown number of moderate colleagues, fine. But that tells us nothing about Islam unless we commit the fallacy of composition and extend his views to Muslims in general. Right?

Wrong.

It tells you what the views of a moderate, mainstream theologian are.

It gives you the point of departure.

It also, of course, puts lie to the idea that all "Mullahs" (etc) are blood thirsty loons.

Now, to test those views one probably needs a well-designed survey.

What am I asking from people like al-Khouly? I'm asking for a realistic acknowledgement of the obstacles to Islamic reform - assuming, of course, that al-Khouly is supposed to be a reformer and not an apologist.

This merely makes no sense. (A realistic acknowledgement of obstacles? Meaning a breast beating confession of iniquities to the infidels?)

Al Khouly is hardly a liberal reformer as far as I can tell. Part of the mainstream of al Azhar, he would seem the "ordindary go to for the ordinary fatwa about how to grow plants" sort of guy.

In short, he's the baseline for "organised Islam" - neither Right Wing (Salafi) nor Left Wing (Liberal) reform.

We are not dealing with "some Neo-Salafi". We are dealing with many millions of militant Muslims, as you well know, and not all of them are Salafists, Neo- or otherwise.

Nice slip for a bait and switch.

Millions of "militant" Muslims doesn't tell me much.

neo Salafistes I know want to cut off heads and declare Takfir.

"Militant Muslim" is a vague term that guys like you use to cover everything from the young kid out burning becuase its fun to Brotherhood work within the system types to angry but not radicalised, to neo Salafi murderers.

Nice and scary imagery, but about as rational as lumping everyone from the Assassins of Abortion Drs in with "Militant" politicised Xians in the US of A.

If the lesson here is that we are supposed to look at al-Khouly and feel a great sense of relief, then I point out that there has never been any shortage of Muslim "moderates" whose main function is to speak in appeasing tones to Westerners.

I do love your slimey tendancy to strawmen.

Of course, al Khouly was speaking to his home audience in his home language not to Westerners, and there has never been a shortage of hand wavers with meaningless statements like yours above whose sole purpose is to dishonestly distract from the reality of the discourse and illogically imply some dishonest pimping of moderation "to the White man"

It's little wonder that moderate Muslims are not leaping to rally with your sort.

There is no formal central authority at all. Each Muslim chooses his own religious leader. In Christianity, the Pope speaks for all Catholics, but there is no equivalent of this in Islam.

Quite true.

Rather like low church Protestantism, or for that matter how even modern High Church Protestantism works.

Scary, eh?

Christianity in general has no central authority, either. In spite of that, there is very little difference between the way that all the major Protestant denominations understand Christianity.

Historically, that's bollocks. Even now its bollocks, as a look at differences over hot issues such as gay marriage illustrates.

Their differences (having to do with the status of various sacraments and other such doctrines) are certainly of little concern to non-Christians. They differ from Catholics and Orthodox Christians in structure as well as doctrine, but very little in their understanding of the central significance of Christ.

Again, bollocks, self-serving distortive bollocks to lead up to the Scary Islam closer.

Islam remains relatively opaque, and that is largely because of too much authority, not too little. Imams and Ayatollahs speak, but their captive mosque audiences have little or no voice. Under Shari'a they have little life outside of their religion, to compare with what they are told. Those of us who are free to make up and speak our own minds might remember that now and again.

Those of us not caught up in paranoid fantasy worlds - and who live and work in the Islamic world feel free to laugh at your sad, exagerated paranoid vision.

Pity, there are indeed real problems, and the Salafi murders are indeed a real threat. I simply feel no particular need to engage in gross self-decieving religious bigotry of the sort above to get to that recognition.

A point on Amac's notes:

The Danish imams faked addtional cartoons and added them to the ones actually published. These radical imams are intellectually dishonest, and are willing to advance their Salafist/neo-Salafist agenda by inciting violence.

I saw the dossier, the Arabic one. It is not clear to me that the Danish Imams faked cartoons at all.

If you check Aqoul you'll see I was personally at the forefront of calling these bastards on their nasty pimping of the cartoons controversy to serve their own ends. At the same time, once I saw the dossier I had to conclude that the probably didn't fake them. Their story about some Danish bigots faxing them to the leaders rang true (and matched the contemporaneous Arabic text).

Dishonest and traitorous (re their hosts) use of inflamatory materials, yes. Outright fakery, well at best unclear, but I think not.

A quibble, but I dislike inaccuracies.

That being said, I like Amac's commentary.

Per #24, readers can access a collection of reformist/liberal Muslim analyses on the Danish Cartoons (and the comments of their sympathetic co-bloggers) at this Google search.

I find many points of strong disagreement--inevitable when considering diverse viewpoints. But I have to compare this with the contempt that's evoked by the craven and witless multiculti commentary that I've read in the American mainstream media, notably the NYT and my hometown paper.

Those of us not caught up in paranoid fantasy worlds - and who live and work in the Islamic world feel free to laugh at your sad, exagerated paranoid vision.

So long as we're psychoanalyzing each other in a light-hearted fashion, do you feel that your repetitive use of the word "bollocks" is a defense mechanism against feelings of misogynistic anxiety, which may have forced you to seek refuge in all-male clubs - like the Kingdom of Saud, maybe?

Seriously, and to show that I still welcome your continuing interest, I refer you to Joe's post here and my comment on Ali Eteraz's approach to problems like apostasy.

Sorry Glen my man, way off. I work in the Maghreb, and in the financial sector women actually slightly dominate (around 55 percent), good numbers even in the East. KSA of course exists in its own bizarre little world.

And not as secretaries.

My guilt would then run in other directions, but I rather acknowledge by scummy expat tendancies.

Else re the discussion, your man Katman puts "insurgency" in scare quotes like that. I don't get enough amusement out of exchanges with people so delusional as that. I rather blame them for enabling the idiocy that was the CPA-Iraq regardless.

What am I asking from people like al-Khouly? I'm asking for a realistic acknowledgement of the obstacles to Islamic reform - assuming, of course, that al-Khouly is supposed to be a reformer and not an apologist.

snip

If the lesson here is that we are supposed to look at al-Khouly and feel a great sense of relief, then I point out that there has never been any shortage of Muslim "moderates" whose main function is to speak in appeasing tones to Westerners.

I see that Al-khouly has gone from being percieved as an Islamic radical urging death for apostates and infidels to a Muslim reformer/apologist who speaks in appeasing tones to Westerners. I suppose that's progress, of a sort.

Al-Khouly does not have to acknowldge "obstacles to Islamic reform" because there are no "obstacles to Islamic reform." Once again, there is no monolithic Islam to be reformed. Islam is fragmented. Some strains are fine, others problematic. Islam as practiced in, say, Malaysia or Turkey, is pretty much unobjectionable. The Taliban are very much objectionable. It is nonsensical to speak of "Islamic reform." To go back to my Christianity example, should Billy Graham acknowldge the obstacles to "Christian reform" posed by Fred Phelps or abortion clinic bombers?

It's not a question of "reform," it's a question of popularity -- and you'll find that Al-khouly's brand of Islam is far more popular than that of the Neo-Salafis. But these people seldom make the news. Two thousand people protesting in Indonesia can make headlines around the world. When was the last time you saw a headline saying "200 Million Indonesians Do Nothing"?

None of this is to minimize the fact that there are dangerous strains in Islam and that these strains are a real threat. But you can't address this threat unless you understand what it is and what it isn't. Remember, it is Muslims themselves who are most at risk from Neo-Salafi terrorism and provocation. It is self-defeating to ignore that "pious middle" of ordinary people or to refuse to try and understand them on their own terms.

Anon #29:

Re: al-Khouly. It seems clear that deception is widely practiced by Salafists, neo-Salafists, and additional 'brands' of Islam. The tactic is spurned by others. Since al-Khouly was speaking in Arabic, we can be assured he wasn't trying to appease a credulous Anglophone audience. Absent other evidence as to his views on the punishment for apostasy (etc.), I'm assuming that he meant what he said on "The Opposite Direction." I object to some of it, but that's neither here nor there.

Al-Khouly does not have to acknowledge "obstacles to Islamic reform" because there are no "obstacles to Islamic reform." Once again, there is no monolithic Islam to be reformed.

On inspection, these two statements are very different indeed. Thanks to that word "monolithic," agreed on the second. If the first means that al-Khouly, or you, already believe that what you think is the best position and see no need for reform: well, yes. This is rather different from proposing that Islam, or "many Islamic practices," or "Islam as many millions of people implement it in their lives" doesn't confront non-Muslims--and many Muslims--with some very severe problems. Difficulties which I don't need to enumerate again; for shorthand I'll say respect of other peoples' rights, and co-existence with other faith traditions.

Yes, "Islam" does need to reform, to the point where violence, intimidation, and coercion are broadly rejected as legitimate agents for accomplishing spiritual goals. Yes, I understand that most in the "pious middle"--"middles" if you want--don't see it that way. And no, having said that, I'm not proposing to burn any villages in order to save them.

To go back to your example, yes, Billy Graham (as a stand-in for 'Christian leaders' or 'Christians') should condemn others in the Christian tradition who use violence etc. in pursuit of their religious visions. That's a poor tu quoque, though, unless you can describe a widely-endorsed Christian practice akin to death-to-apostates that is met with indifference or tacit support.

Your final paragraph ("none of this...") contains four statements. I emphatically agree with all of them.

Anon:

Once again, there is no monolithic Islam to be reformed. Islam is fragmented. Some strains are fine, others problematic. Islam as practiced in, say, Malaysia or Turkey, is pretty much unobjectionable.

I'm sorry to say that although you express yourself reasonably, Anon, I just can't reason with you in this. We're not sharing the same reality here.

Muslim practice is indeed "unobjectionable" in Turkey, because Turkey is not an Islamic state, it's a secular state where secularism is guaranteed by law - law which is backed by the power of the Turkish military. So they are unobjectionable at virtual gunpoint. Malaysia is better example, though their recent leader was an anti-Semitic nightmare and their legal practices invoke horror over here. Among the Islamic states in the ME, with which we are most concerned, about the best of them are the non-democratic states of Egypt and Jordan.

If you can't see the case for or the possibility of reform there, I don't think I can convince you, but I refer you to the Muslim Ali Eterez who disagrees.

Again, I see no sense of proportion whatsoever in your references to Fred Phelps, who is a mentally disturbed individual in need of court-ordered psychiatric treatment, not reform. And the entire crew of actual or potential domestic terrorists is generally regarded as much less of a threat than Al Qaeda. They certainly do not run the country, way the Salafists run Saudi Arabia. The comparison is past absurd.

I'll point out again that the number one casualties of Islamic radicalism (which is NOT confined to Salafists) are Muslims, and it is no help to Muslims to pretend this is some kind of insignificant phenomenon. We can reasonably disagree about the scale of the problem, but not about the problem itself.

Finally, I'll give poor old Dr. al-Khouly a final chance here. I have no idea whether he considers himself to be a reformer or not. If you take him as a representative of the peaceful "pious middle", fine. We're not worried about the peaceful people.

dear all,

i do not wish to join the mudslinging. i would, however, like to point to "big pharaoh"'s post Why I am not excited about Wafa Sultan

i would also like to point out that viewing the m.e.n.a. region solely through the prism of religious identity is silly at best. aqoul has a list of books that a few of the commenters might want to read before they start pontificating on what m.e.n.a. or islam are like.

cheers,

--raf*

www.aqoul.com

> i would also like to point out that viewing the m.e.n.a. region solely through the prism of religious identity is silly at best.

raf*, you may be mixing up two things. There's a great concern about how Islamic peoples and cultures deal with the rest of the world (and with each other). There are many practical issues, and also some significant human rights conflicts, as you know. That doesn't mean that commenters here view the Mideast/North Africa solely through the prism of religious identity.

Bg Pharoah himself had a recent post on Reform in Islam.

The Christian reformation was bloody and messy, the Islamic reformation will take generations before it bears any fruit... currently, we are not even in stage one. We are below the zero level. The debate of whether a convert out of islam should be killed or not didn't even commence. If such a simple crystal clear thing, the right to change religion, is still not being discussed, then when do you think will the Islamic world start discussing issues such as women rights, freedom of speech, and the seperation of politics and religion?

...we're in this for the long haul. Don't forget to tell that to your grandchildren.

Try this link for the Big Pharoah post raf* recommends. Excerpt (but RTWT of course):

It was apparent from the interview that Wafa Sultan has stopped being a Muslim for reasons that she alone can tell. This fact alone will discourage even the most moderate Muslims from listening to her... Western readers can get excited as they want over Sultan and Manji, but don't expect Muslims nowadays to heed the call of a former Muslim (Sultan)...

We don't need former Muslims, ... what we need are reform minded Muslim thinkers. Only these people have the necessary legitimacy to pull us from the dark abyss we're in now.