Tuesday, March 18, 2014

What muslim moderation looks like

Takfirism, the eager use of apostasy charges to violently repress muslim diversity and kill anyone who is not sufficiently orthodox in the eyes of the accuser, is a major threat to everyone who is not part of the Takfiri in group. The violent muslims who threaten america are overwhelmingly Takfiri.

Commenting on a pretty good Emirati newspaper opinion piece, Akhram's Razor puts the blame on the toxic brew of massive Saudi oil money fueling Wahhabism. As he puts it:

When you view the world through the Manichiestic, inherently intolerant lens of Wahhabism and its various offshoots, Takfirism makes sense. In that context, any moderation is necessarily tactical as opposed to principled since the underlying worldview leaves no room for compromise. And no amount of political pressure will change that instinctive posture towards the world (including other Muslims).
Strong stuff, and what a lot of us have been looking for from muslims all along. We don't know, and will never know, Islam like believers do. We depend on the moderates who declare themselves on our side to make sense of it all if we're not going to descend into a wider use of violence than is absolutely necessary. One of the nice collateral benefits of moving off of oil is the reduction of the outsized influence of Saudi Arabia:

As I’ve said before, the Muslim world (and even Saudis) will be much better off when those accursed wells finally run dry and the Khaleej returns to fishing and animal husbandry.Both are just a matter of time, I think. The question is how much more harm they will cause us all in the meantime, as they make their cosmetic reforms (to much fanfare) to this monstrous counterfeit orthodoxy that they pumped into the Ummah’s bloodstream for decades. And, meanwhile, many leaders rest of the Muslim world politely change the subject, either out of a disastrously misplaced sense of decorum or adab, or simply fear of loosing a place at the petrodollar feeding trough.
This is why I keep Akhram's Razor in my mix of blogs to read even though we don't see eye to eye on a lot of issues.

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