This fight over the definition of Islam and the control of its meaning is fierce because Islam continues to be the doctrinal basis of Muslim societies in the contemporary world and continues to be a collectivist, communitarian and communal affair in the lives of these societies – as against the highly individualised, personalised and privatised forms of religiosity prevalent and practiced in the West today. Similarly, the modern tradition, which euphemises the original scriptures of Islam by explaining them away symbolically, metaphorically, figuratively, allegorically, etc., remains quite weak, meaning in turn that the literal reading of the Koran today, for example, retains far greater force than any reading of the Old and/or New Testament.
The influence of middle-class Islam, embodied by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's governing AKP party in Turkey, is felt all across the Arab world, says Sadiq al-Azm | This partially explains the collectivist mass eruptions on the part of Muslims against such phenomena as Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses and the famous Danish cartoons dealing with the Prophet Muhammad and the blessed virgins of paradise. In spite of its rich classical tradition of parody, laughter, satire and criticism (particularly in Arabic and Farsi), contemporary Islam has not yet fully adjusted itself to the idea that in the modern world no religion is either above or below criticism, parody and satire. Perhaps Muslims have made some progress on this score lately, considering that the recent showing of Gert Wilders' movie Fitna (highly pejorative to Islam) was met by Muslims practically everywhere with much self-restraint – i.e. with rationally considered and planned reactions in lieu of the usual mass emotional eruptions and abusive collectivist outbursts.
http://newageislam.com/the-fight-over-the-meaning-of-islam--/ijtihad,-rethinking-islam/d/1059
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3:05 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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