Building Moderate Muslim Networks
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www.free-minds.org is a Saudi-based site with a somewhat eccentric slant. Introducing itself as a pious mainstream Islamic grouping dedicated to da?wa, it then proceeds to list as the correct orthodox Islamic positions on social rights, women?s status, interfaith relations, and shari?a criminal punishments stances which in fact represent a cutting-edge, progressive posture bordering on what actual orthodox Muslims would probably consider heresy. For example, the Web site challenges the five pillars of the faith and claims that the first of them, the shahada (or declaration of faith), is based on an unreliable hadith and should not be followed. The Web site includes a map of the world which, when the visitor clicks on a respective region, lists the members resident here.
http//www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG574.pdf -
A consistent view in liberal modernist Muslim thinking is that shari?a is a product of the historical circumstances of the time of its creation and that elements of it?for instance, corporal punishments? are no longer contextual and therefore need to be modernized. In Islam and Liberty The Historical Misunderstanding, the noted Tunisian modernist thinker Mohammed Charfi argues that under Ummayad and Abbasid rule Islamic law evolved in the context of an alliance between theologians and politicians.
Although the law was dressed up as religion, it was written to suit the political needs of the rulers. At the time, the theory of the state was founded on authoritarianism, women were not equal under the law, and the legal system incorporated corporal
punishments. These conditions existed everywhere else, Charfi argues, ?but others evolved and we didn?t.?Mohammed Charfi, Islam and Liberty The Historical Misunderstanding, trans. Patrick
Camiller, New York Zed Books, 2005. -
Thanks for posting this JM. I found the wording used quite odd and a somewhat eccentric way of endorsing the site. That's bad news in my book.
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Thanks for posting this JM. I found the wording used quite odd and a somewhat eccentric way of endorsing the site. That's bad news in my book.
In your book ???
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I meant that proverbially, all I can write is fan fiction P. How do you see this though? What are your thoughts about the org, the article itself and that particular quote?
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I meant that proverbially, all I can write is fan fiction P. How do you see this though? What are your thoughts about the org, the article itself and that particular quote?
The best would have been not to see FM in this document.
Anyway, coming from them, a somewhat bad comment is better than a good one.Peace