“Islam is a religion of peace” – this statement as a demarcation from acts of terrorism is too simple. The majority of moderate Muslims must finally debate the Quran in Islam. Otherwise their holy book will continue to be appropriated by extremists.
When the archangel Gabriel preach God’s word unencrypt to the prophet Mohammed, the man from Mecca knew the world of ideas of Christianity and Judaism, at least roughly. That is the reason why Christian and Jewish basic ideas can be found in Islam. Nevertheless, the religion of the Arab Mohammed is different from Christianity. Dealing with this belief is difficult for Christian societies, sometimes it hurts. And sometimes Muslims do things in the name of a supposed Islam that is unbearable – see Paris and the attacks.
Even if jihadists are only a tiny minority of Muslims: It is not only the terror against the Charlie Hebdo artists that shows that individual groups among Muslims in Europe reject the basic principles of a free society. This applies to a religiously based ban on images and unpleasant satire, but also to equality between women and men and freedom of religion.
With violent jihadists – and with many non-militant Islamists – you can save yourself some persuasion. Your Islam is anti-democratic, anti-libertarian. He places God’s law above all legal and value systems. Nothing works there.
The question of Islam’s capacity for democracy and freedom
Fortunately, such harden Islamists are still a minority among Muslims; in Europe anyway, but also in the Muslim core areas, in the Middle East, Africa, Turkey, and Southeast Asia. That is why the question of Islam’s capacity for democracy and freedom – and thus its capacity for integration in societies such as Germany – cannot be addressed to these radical fringe groups, but only to the more moderate majority of Muslims.
At this point in the debate, both Muslims and non-Muslims argue that all monotheistic religions are essentially peace-loving and that only individual radicals misuse the pious message. This is why the horror of the majority Muslims at the terror of the minority Muslims is always followed by the sentence: Quran in Islam “Islam is a religion of peace.”
It’s too easy. Yes, there are no different values of religions. One belief is not “better” than the other. But there are, as with secular ideologies or other buildings of thought, different construction principles. Islam differs from Christianity in that it remains the religion of law in many respects. In addition to paradisiacal perspectives, it also specifies how society should organize its coexistence on earth. The Koran and the commentaries provide information on when Islam must be protected and when violence is legitimate. That makes it easy for extremists. They see Islam threaten if someone draws the Prophet without pants. Radicals always find some passages in the text that cover the call for violence. The majority of Muslims must finally debate how to deal with the theological construction of Islam by.
Quran in Islam As long as a holy book is the only true revealer word of the Creator, this is hardly possible – who can edit God? Of course, liberal Muslim thinkers have tired this feat for centuries. But then the fundamentalists come with the green highlighter – and they are right
Without taking away the divinity of the Quran.
The challenge is to understand the Koran as a historical text from the seventh century without depriving it of its divinity. That almost requires the Islamic squaring of the Islamic circle. Only this would make this religion so widely interpretable that it can play the productive role in the 21st century that many Muslims attribute to it.
This won’t happen quickly. Liberal Euro-Islam is an island of the blesse, but it is also part of the Uma, the global Muslim community. And little has move there for decades; and if so, then in the direction of fundamentalism and radicalization. In the countries that set the trend, the Islamic zeitgeist is pointing in the wrong direction. From Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Southeast Asia, the reformers are drown out by extremists.
To say that patience is require is unsatisfactory for practical policy. Perhaps a look at one’s own helps: Because Christianity was construct or revealer differently than Islam, it was easier for Christians to contain the power-obsess and violence-loving representatives of their faith. As far as the potential for secularization is concern, the founder of the religion from Nazareth had a lighter hand than the man from Mecca. It was still bloody with the Christians, and it took a long time.
