What does (or would) “Moderate Islam” look like?

Last updated on: February 24, 2015 at 11:21 pm by Jane the Actuary

What does (or would) “Moderate Islam” look like? 2015-02-24T23:21:45-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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I’m writing this completely unsourced today, more to invite conversation than anything else. Ideally, later on, I’d look at some actual sources, so this may be a “part one” post, to be followed-up on later.

“Moderate” Christianity means, to greater or lesser degrees, contextualizing the Bible. For instance, Paul’s injunction commanding women not to speak in church is understood as something Paul was saying to a particular congregation where there was dissention. And churches which have signed of on gay marriage, or same-sex sex more generally, take the approach that Paul’s injunctions on this were really against the “pagan” practices of the time, and he what wholly unaware of the prospect of loving same-sex relationships. And in the Old Testament, of course, the creation stories are seen as story, rather than literal depictions of the creation of the world, but still expressing a larger truth, that God, in some less specific way, is the Creator.

Which you can do if your scripture is “inspired by God” but written by men, but it’s harder if, as is the case for Islam, one of your core beliefs is that your scripture was literally dictated by God.

I’ve also read on multiple occasions that the Koran itself contains contradictory statements — one set of statements encouraging peace among religions, and another calling for spreading Islam by the sword, and either demanding that those who reject Islam be put to death, or accept surrender terms in which they are legally inferior. And, again, reportedly, the peaceful verses date from the time when Mohammed was hoping to convert Jews and Christians to his new faith, and the violent “Sword Verses” from later, when he and his followers had set about conquering. And the “official” way of interpreting such verses is that the later verses cancel out earlier contradictory ones. Hence, violence and repression replaces tolerance.

So what do “moderate” Muslims believe, about those parts of their scriptures which are, well, not terribly moderate, not to mention the not-at-all moderate Sharia Law?

I have the impression that many “moderate Muslims” just gloss over this entirely. A while back I read a book in which a Muslim woman from the United States spent some time working in Saudi Arabia, and describing her experiences, focusing on the positive, such as women she met who genuinely wanted to improve their country. What did Islam mean to her? The high point of her stay (about 2 years or so, I think) was her pilgrimage to Mecca, and what thoroughly impressed her was the universality of Islam (as she experienced it there, by, for a brief time, women from all walks of life and from many different countries participating together, their differences temporarily erased), and the impact the specific rituals associated with the Hajj had on her, again, especially as they were performed by just massive numbers of people together. I don’t really remember any description of her reading the Koran, or praying anything other than the prescribed prayers, but it seems to me the other thing that made an impression on her were particular religious practices or traditions or traditional stories that were told to her by others, along the lines of how to better serve God and lead a good life, in a generic way (that is, by observant, but non-confrontational people, who in any case didn’t compel her to veil and submit to men).

Does Islam, then, just boil down to “God is love”? I don’t think so — it’s my impression that that’s a pretty Western view of God, to identify God as all about love and compassion. In any case, in a book I read a while back, about an American woman’s experiences in Afghanistan, the Muslim women there certainly believed that God was angry and keeping score, on whether they had sufficiently fasted, for instance, to make up for missed past fasting times.

But anyway — let’s just say that “moderate Muslims” explain away verses exhorting violence and ill-treatment of non-Muslims as “just not applicable any longer.” Does that mean that they say “it was appropriate then, but not now”? Or do they essentially excise this from the Koran altogether, maybe saying “well, maybe Mohammed lost is way once he started to gain power”? And, if so, what do they believe about the Koran, more generally, and the Islamic claim that it is not just “inspired by” but genuinely the literal word of God, speaking through Mohammed as if dictating his words to a secretary?

It would seem that, in this case, you have to boil Islam down to “Mohammed had some good ideas that we should follow” — or, maybe, at most, “Suras X, Y, and Z are inspired; the rest were merely composed by Mohammed.”

And if you do that, is that Islam? I suppose there are two general definitions of Islam: the first requires that you accept the Koran as dictated by God, and the Hadiths and Sharia, and the second requires that you be willing to make the Islamic profession of faith. Can you, then, profess that Mohammed is the prophet of God, and intend by that, that he had some good ideas, what with monotheism and shared rituals and all? But that’s pretty slim pickin’s for a religion.

And, in any case, those clerics and organizations which are labelled as “moderate” certainly don’t do this.
From all reports, they believe in the Koran as the true word of God, just in a “moderate” sort of way, y’know.

But, again, this is unsourced and speculative — I have no idea if any of these “moderates” are on the record with an explanation of how they understand the Sword Verses, because surely they do have an interpretation of them, if, after all, they’ve studied their own theology.

UPDATE: according to Wikipedia, which I quickly turned to, the claim that’s being made by some scholars is that these Sword Verses were a call for self-defense at that particular moment in history. But this doesn’t really sound credible — and yet, right now, I don’t have the time to read more.

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