Mustafa Akyol’s Pie In The Sky

Mustafa Akyol’s latest attempt to recognize — should he be given credit for recognizing what is obvious to all?  — that something has to be done to change Islam, He limits himself to the wars within Islam, that is the sectarian wars of Sunni and Shi’a, and of those Sunnis called by the Shi’a of Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic “takfiris” for regarding the Shi’a as Infidels. But that is or should be of concern only to Muslims, and perhaps welcomed by non-Muslims as a way of weakening the Camp of Islam. The main thing — which Mustafa Akyol fails to discuss — is the war of Muslims against real non-Muslims, and he can’t do that, because Islam is based on the opposition of Muslim and Believer, of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. So he avoids it altogether.

One more attempt by Akyol to elide the important, and instead to call for – not “reform” but some kind of Grand Postponement — that will have no effect, that could not possibly work, but does allow for what in the mind of Mustafa Akyol the most important Postponement of all — the postponing of the day of reckoning, that will follow when a sufficient number of non-Muslims, having not ony familiarized themselves with, and made sense of, Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, recognize the as well the effect of these texts on the minds of Islam’s adherents, or a great many, even most of them, and also understand the rich profusion of techniques of taqiyya and kitman, and finally, will also realize, with sinking hearts, that even the most “moderate” of Muslims may not be, or may not remain so, or their children, even if the recipients of the most fantastic benefits that generous Western welfare states now offer, will revert to type, and become more not less Muslim in their views.

None of this is dealt with by Mustafa Akyol in the proper way. For if he were to do so, the question he would know he would have to ask is: why, if Islam is this way, do you persist in calling yourself a Muslim? What bend of defensiveness and fiial piety and fear makes you do it? Why don’t you Follow the Path, the Path of Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, and so many others, who speak clearly, without the writhing nonsense, because they made the break, recognized the impossibility of all of these half-baked suggestions that come from plucking out, from the Western religious and political thought, a phrase — Protestantism’s “sola scriptura” — or a name, as “John Locke” (a name Akyol proffers, simplemindedly,  without understanding how Locke and his ideas come out of the Western politico-philosophical tradition, and what many other things, besides Locke, made Lockean ideas important in practice. Akyol cannot admit that in Islam, the legitimacy of the government depends not on its reflecting, as in the non-Muslim West, the will expressed, however imperfectly, by the people, but on its reflecting the Will of Allah, as set down in the Qur’an, glossed by the behavior of the earliest Muslims, above all Muhammad, in the Sunnah, and codified in the Shari’ah, the Holy Law of Islam.

None of this can Mustafa Akyol do, or even begin to do.

But he can offer his own reason for the Grand Postponement — that is, of Mustafa Akyol’s final recognition — will it ever come? — of what is immutable and forever dangerous, to all non-Muslims, and even to many of the mustafa-akyols of this worled — about Islam.

There is more to be found on Akyol the Reformer here.

And here.  And here. And here.