WHERE WOULD MOHAMMED LIVE?:

Islamic truths (Mansoor Ijaz, February 18, 2006, LA Times)

[T]here is no such human persona as a "moderate Muslim." You either believe in the oneness of God or you don't. You either believe in the teachings of his prophet or you don't. You either learn those teachings and apply them to the circumstances of life in the country you have chosen to live in, or you shouldn't live there.

Haters of Islam use the simplicity and elegance of its black-and-white rigor for devious political advantage by classifying the Koran's religious edicts as the cult-like behavior of fanatics. The West would win a lot of hearts and minds if it only showed Islam as it really is — telling the story, for example, that the prophet Muhammad was one of the great commodity traders of all time because he based his dealings on uniquely Muslim values, or that the reason he had multiple wives was not for the sake of sex but to give proper homes to the children of women made widows during a time of war. The cartoon imbroglio offered Western media an opportunity to portray the prophet in his many dignified dimensions, not just the distorted ones; sadly, there were few takers.

But to look at angry Islam's reaction on television each night forces the question of what might be possible if all the lost energy of thousands of rioting Muslims went into the villages of Aceh to rebuild lost homes or into Kashmir to construct schools.

In fact, the most glaring truth is that Islam's mobsters fear the West has it right: that we have perfected the very system Islam's holy scriptures urged them to learn and practice. And having failed in their mission to lead their masses, they seek any excuse to demonize those of us in the West and to try to bring us down. They know they are losing the ideological struggle for hearts and minds, for life in all its different dimensions, and so they prepare themselves, and us, for Armageddon by starting fires everywhere in a display of Islamic unity intended to galvanize the masses they cannot feed, clothe, educate or house.

This is not Islam. And the faster its truest believers stand up and demonstrate its values and principles by actions, not words, the sooner a great religion will return to its rightful role as guide for nearly a quarter of humanity.

Indeed, to moderate religious belief is to believe in nothing but oneself. The point is that just as one can easily be totally Jewish or totally Christian and be politically moderate, the Reformation of Islam must demonstrate that one can be totally Muslim and politically moderate, which will be easier for Shi'ites than Sunni to accept. The great challenge is to remind Muslims of the reality that Man is Fallen and that Paradise can therefore never be recreated here on Earth by we mere humans.

The ideal to which we can realistically aspire is that enunciated by Erif Hoffer

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

That in America, where we've come closest to realizing those ideals, we've also created the society in which Muslims can come closest to achieving the sort of decent society that is at the core of Islamic values, where all individuals are treated with respect, ought to be revealing. That those societies where politics is totalitarian are also those that are farthest from achieving those values ought to be even more revealing. Perhaps the following is the most psychically dislocating question a muslim today could ask himself: if Mohammed were to come back today, in which country would he say that the people live with the kind of dignity he demanded?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 18, 2006 6:29 PM