In my previous post on extremism, I floated some rather lofty ideas on an information campaign against Islamic fanatism. In this post, I'll float an idea to deal with the core issue itself.
Here's my idea on how to sideline fanatism in Islam. It's based on the following assumptions.
Note: I'm not a Muslim, so feel free to point out any flaws in my reasoning or knowledge here.
1. Most Muslims are people who want to go about their everyday lives without incident.
2. The text of the current editions of the Koran are fairly ambiguous and leave a lot of room for "interpretation".
For example, a verse on "killing the infidel". A moderate would assume it means to strive against evil and sin, and to be a good person. An extremist would interpret the text as a duty to kill those who do not follow their beliefs.
3. Muslims belonging to the moderate and silent majority are not thrilled about Islam being equated with terrorism.
Here's the solution.
Form an organization consisting of noted Islamic scholars and clerics. Their objective is to come up with a new edition of the Koran. This new edition will contain the same sequence of texts, but without the ambiguity. The previous example text on "killing the infidel" will be replaced with "striving to be good and to do good".
Some people may argue that the Koran is literally the word of Allah as shown to the prophet. Well, in that case, this new edition of the Koran can be a mandated reference guide for the original Koran. No copy of the Koran may be given out without this reference guide. A mandate to all Muslims to acquire this guide for existing copies of the Koran can be passed. With this move, the original text of the Koran will be retained, but the possibility of negative interpretation will be minimized.
Essentially, it's like changing the face of Islam, without actually changing anything.
This would sideline the Islamic extremists as their actions will be clearly seen as going against the guide. Their actions would be viewed as completely inconsistent with the teachings of the Koran. Soon, people will stop viewing them as "Islamic" extremists, and just a bunch of terrorist criminals.
People in the west, and other non-Islamic regions would find the guide easy less esoteric. They would understand that Islam doesn't justify terrorism.
Yes, certain extremist organizations and terror groups would reject this new guide to the Koran. However, their numbers are too small as compared to the majority of Muslims who would probably take to this idea.
It's an idea.
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2 comments:
By giving a reference guide to a holy book, what you end up doing is not allow differences of opinion.
What is then the measure of fundamentalism if you dont have the liberal?
And who would make the reference guide? Liberals? To be absolutely honest, Islam is the only religion with the power to mobilise a people compared to other religions. Let just the liberals come in to it and you take Islam out of it. You need the fire breathing preachers - but preaching the right message.
How do you get them to preach the right message? well, that is the purview of the flock, isn't it?
I think that the burqa clad woman is a bigger threat right now than Osama. But everyone's targetting Osama.
so your idea is interesting, but has been anticipated and acted upon a couple of thousand years ago already. :)
my post here was too long, so i simply made it an entry into my cynosarges blog: cynosarges.com/wpblog
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