Author: Lawrence Auster
Publication: View from the Right
Date: January 17, 2006
URL: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/004904.html
When Pope Benedict's important statement that
Islam cannot reform itself was publicized recently by Fr. Joseph Fessio, everyone
naturally wondered how Daniel Pipes, the leading Western proponent of Islamic
reform, would respond. Today he did so, and it's basically a recapitulation
of his response to my massive critique of him last year, when he said that
"Islam can be whatever Muslims wish to make of it." Now he says
that Muslims can re-interpret Islam so as to excise all the bad parts, which
just happen to comprise the main body of the faith, and keep the nice parts.
Two problems immediately manifest themselves. First, Pipes never considers
what arguments orthodox Muslims might use against such re-interpretative efforts.
Second, Pipes never considers what might be the real-world consequences for
the courageous Muslims who actually attempt to carry out the re-interpretative
task that he urges on them. Such lack of seriousness on Pipes's part is not
new. What is new is that in support of his reformist argument he engages in
what must be seen, by even the most charitable view, as deliberate obfuscation.
Here is a slightly revised version of the
comment I posted about this today at FrontPage Magazine:
Pipes says that a radical re-interpretation
of Islam is possible, in which the Medinan, warlike part of the Koran is essentially
canceled out, leaving only the Meccan, peaceful part of the Koran. As an example
of such reform efforts he mentions the work of Mahmoud Muhammad Taha of the
Sudan, who, he tells us, died in 1985. Curiously Pipes leaves out how Taha
died. He was publicly executed by the government of the Sudan as an apostate,
while all his followers were forced publicly to recant his views.
This is what always happens to reformers within
Islam, because Islam is what it is. Islam has an unchangeable authoritative
structure, going back to the Koran and the hadiths as well as the Islamic
schools of jurisprudence of the ninth century based on the Koran and the hadiths.
And one of the unchangeable laws of Islam is that apostates must die. Therefore
the reform of Islam is humanly impossible.
For Pipes to conceal the fact that his model
Islamic reformer was in fact executed for advocating reform is an astonishingly
dishonest thing to do. Unfortunately, this is what happens when people commit
themselves to an agenda that is inherently impossible, such as creating a
"moderate" Islam, or making peace with someone who is inherently
an enemy, as we see in the Oslo "peace" process and its ever-more
bizarre successors. In order to keep the hope of peace alive, the peacemaker
must continually cover up the true nature of the enemy with whom he wishes
to make peace.
However, even if Pipes had not concealed the
fate of his model reformer, Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, Taha's ideas could still
go nowhere, as they would involve literally removing everything, including
sharia, that has made Islam what it has been for the last 1,400 years. It's
time for people to stop indulging Pipes in his fantasy and insist that he
come clean. The fact which he, and all of us, must face is that the only way
for Islam to stop being jihadist is for Islam to cease to exist. Since we
don't have the ability (or desire) to eliminate Islam from the world, our
only rational option is to contain and isolate Muslims within the Islamic
lands, which we do have the ability to do. We did it for hundreds of years,
and we can do it again.