Who Gets to Define the Faith of 1.5 Billion People?

Many years after 9/11 I researched and read about Islam. The result of my research was that I had to admit that Islam is a birth to grave, total way of living, complete with laws, religion, and rules for everyday life. It is in short, a political system with a mandatory state religion. That is the way it is practiced in the Muslim countries. We simply misunderstand that basis. We attempt to make those countries into our vision of the world, to some extent and with great distance, it seems to work.

Another aspect we overlook because it is not convenient is that Islam has no overall constant definition. There is no Muslim pope to arbitrate the discussion of the religion. It is locally defined and that definition generally changes ever so slightly as one moves about in the Islamic world. Given that reality it is impossible to define a moderate Muslim, nor a overzealous Muslim, as there is not absolute definition of Islam other than the local practice of the religion. Being a Muslim extremist is actually a viewpoint with almost no basis for definition, regardless of the position of the individual believer regarding the practice of Islam.

A few years ago PBS tried to put together a mosaic of films about Islam. Zudhi Jasser was excluded because he is considered an extremist moderate and various Muslim factions deemed his work and his writings as against Islam. I studied that controversy. Again, the end result was that Dr. Jasser is a fine man but is not within the confines of Islam as defined by the practice of Islam. He is not sufficiently Muslim to please the people who claim Islam as their private domain.

This clip brings up another often overlooked aspect of Islam, the religion is practically a convention of tribalism tied off neatly in a way of living confined in the modern world. It is in most respects a throwback to the 7th century from which it came. It also does not intend to be modernized. It intends to exist contrary to all things modern, to subvert every aspect of modern life to the readings and interpretations of the Koran, which are highly personal but always bending to the core of Islam. Read that as no assimilation, ever.

Even among Muslims there is a pecking order of holier than thou. That is the true vein of Islam. That is what defines most of the brutality of the religion. The zealous core that claim the moral high ground will always intimidate the less zealous. Because they claim to speak for the central tenets of Islam they are not ignored. Usually the zealous core of the religion is the Imam, the local religious leader. But there are thugs to be found who want to extend the limits, they are what we consider Islamists. These are the people who will take up arms to extend Islam. They consider anyone less zealous than themselves as infidels or apostates, and they wish to visit death upon them regardless.

It is an exercise in futility to try to separate the zealous extremist from mainstream Islam because the extreme seems to define the mainstream and the extremists attempt to control the mainstream of the religion. That self referential meme about being sufficiently Muslim or be cast out as a heretic or apostate ensures that extremism is the norm.

Do not underestimate the chilling threat of being cast out of Islam because the individual has embraced some aspect of modern life. That ostracism is as complete a punishment as death. It essentially is done to preserve the central tenets of the religion. Islam cannot change, it must be constant and unchanged. Therefore anyone attempting to change Islam or at least the local practice of Islam, and generally that includes being less than a complete zealot, will have to be removed. This situation exists even absent a complete definition of the religion. That is a contradiction that westerners simply cannot understand. The end result is you can be killed for almost any act under Islam, simply because almost any action can be ultimately interpreted as against Islam, therefore it is apostasy, and death is the penalty for apostasy. Speak against female genital mutilation, that’s apostasy, even though it is not specifically mentioned in the Koran, it is defined by local Muslim practice. Speak against polygamy, you are an apostate, because that is in the Muslim tradition as established by Mohammed. Have western friends, that is apostasy because a true Muslim does not make friends outside the religion. Even to publish a translation of the Koran into another language is apostasy and will result in death threats. And so on down the long list of forbidden acts.

The greatest sin against Islam is simply defined as ‘trying to change the practice of Islam’. The end result is that any Muslim who accommodates western civilization in any way will eventually be punished for sins against Islam. The challenge then is to find a place in western society for the people cast out of Islam by the extremists who run the religion. They are under a death threat just for being cast out of Islam.