Published: September 07, 2008 01:19 am            

The war within Islam

Serious issues are being debated within Islam today. Leading the minority group is the Salafi camp led by bin Laden types who preach the religion of the strict ancestors and the fixed law of the Qur’an and Sharia doctrines. In the other camp are the mainstream Muslims who deny that Osama speaks for Islam. Osama talks about these moderates in “The al-Qaeda Reader,” by Raymond Ibrahim, and how the moderates humiliate themselves by leaning toward the Western cultures. To be progressive and moderate some of the fixed laws have to be bent, misinterpreted or broken.

Michael Scheuer poses a question in his latest book, “Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam after Iraq.” He compares the words of Osama bin Laden to the words written by Thomas Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence as Jefferson spoke about the tyrannies of Britain’s King George III. The similarities are vaguely similar but I do not agree with this argument.

Yes there is a war within Islam and we have been dragged into the middle of it. Osama bin Laden clings to Muhammad’s seventh century ethos of Jihad for the advancement of the faith as it was preached and practiced by Muhammad. But the moderate Muslims do not all agree that this is proper. For the most part they want moderation, modernity, and a less rigid progressive lifestyle. We don’t know how this will turn out. Yet we are forced to moderate it.

D.E. Gronquist

Stillwater

        

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