2006/04/04
A remarkable testimony to the power of the modern mass media
revolution was noted in the complaints of an Egyptian cleric in 2005:
Leading
Egypt Cleric Wants Fewer Frivolous Edicts
The chief Muslim cleric in Egypt
wants tighter controls on who may issue religious edicts, or fatwas.
Egypt's Grand Mufti says more fatwas have been issued in the past 10
years than in the previous 1400 years. Modern technology has made it
easier than ever to issue or receive a fatwa, one of the religious
edicts that guide Muslims' interpretations of Islamic law. Someone
with a specific question about what Islam allows can get a
personalized fatwa on the matter over the Internet, through television
or via cellphone. The number of religious edicts keeps growing, and
because Islam has no central authority there is no set system for
governing who is allowed to issue them.
This explosion of unorthodox religious activity can only be compared
to that of Christian Europe in the early 16th century. Just as
Gutenberg’s invention marked the first mass media revolution in the
West, the Internet and satellite TV are now doing the same thing in
the Islamic world. However, the outcome may be very different, and the
parallels between the Protestant Reformation and what is happening in
the Islamic world now shouldn’t be pushed too far. The introduction
of the printing press was delayed by several centuries in the Islamic
world because of religious resistance and never had the same effect
there as it did in the Christian West, which should strongly indicate
that although technology is important, it isn’t everything. Culture
matters. Islam does not have quite the same centralized hierarchy as
the Catholic Church had in Europe, which means that the change cannot
be linked to a specific date as it did with Martin Luther’s 95
theses. Although it did ultimately have consequences far beyond the
borders of Europe, and although it did happen at a time of Ottoman
Muslim expansion in the Mediterranean, the Reformation was primarily
an internal, Christian and European affair. The turmoil in the Islamic
world now affects more or less the entire world, and many of the
critics are based in rival civilizations. And last, but not least: The
religions are entirely different. Christianity was reformable, whereas
Islam probably isn’t.
Does this mean that the current information revolution will destroy
Islam? That is the view of David Wood:
Islam
Beheaded
The truth about Muhammad has been one
of the world's best-kept secrets. For centuries, it has been virtually
impossible to raise objections about the character of Muhammad in
Muslim countries, for anyone who raised such objections would
(following the example set by Muhammad himself) immediately be killed.
Outside the Muslim world, there has been little interest in Islam. But
things have changed. Now many people are interested in Islam, and
Muslims aren't able to silence everyone. Moreover, with the advent of
the Internet, it is now impossible to keep Muhammad's life a secret.
The facts about the founder of Islam are spreading very rapidly, and
Muslims are frantically scurrying to defend their faith. But the
information superhighway is paving over the ignorance that has for
centuries been the stronghold of Islamic dogma. In the end, Islam will
fall, for the entire structure is built upon the belief that Muhammad
was the greatest moral example in history, and this belief is
demonstrably false.
This optimistic view ignores several important facts. Many of the
worst Islamists have above average education, as did many supporters
of Communism in the West. Which shows that, unfortunately, increased
knowledge does not always translate into increased wisdom. The second
catch is that Muslims do not view the world in the same way as
Westerners or infidels do. In his book The
Lawful and Prohibited in Islam, renowned cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi
explains how Islam has restricted the authority to legislate the haram
and the halal (forbidden and permitted), taking it out of the hands of
human beings and reserving it for the Allah alone through explicit
verses of the Qur'an and from clear ahadith of the Prophet Muhammad.
The jurists' task does not go beyond explaining what Allah has decreed
to be halal or haram. Prohibiting something which is halal is similar
to committing shirk (idolatry).
According to traditional Islamic law, and confirmed by leading
scholars today, it is perfectly allowed for a Muslim man to have
forced sex with the infidel concubines he just captured by massacring
their relatives in front of their eyes. Muhammad himself did this
several times. You just shouldn’t wear
a silk tie while doing it. Likewise, it is perfectly permissible,
halal, to behead a Buddhist schoolteacher in southern Thailand, but
it's haraam to wear a gold ring at the same time. This thinking is why
slavery was eventually abandoned and forbidden by the Judeo-Christian
West, where the emphasis is on what’s moral or immoral, but only
banned through external pressure by the same West in the Islamic
world, where the emphasis is on what’s permitted or forbidden. It
also explains why Qaradawi himself is reputed to be married to a girl
in her pre-teens, 60 years his junior. He is perfectly aware of the
fact that Muhammad had sex with a 9-year-old child, and has confirmed,
in Arabic, but not in English, that this is allowed even today. To say
that “Muhammad was immoral” just won’t wash with a truly devout
Muslim, who is trapped in a circular thinking where the very concept
of “morality” begins and ends with the example of Muhammad and his
Sunna.
