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November 08, 2009

"intellectually honest discussion of Islamic ideology"

Reading an AP piece on Yahoo about alleged Ft. Hood gunman may have 9/11 mosque link I was struck by the following,

Another classmate said he complained (about Mr. Hasan) to five officers and two civilian faculty members at the (Uniformed Services) university. He wrote in a command climate survey sent to Pentagon officials that fear in the military of being seen as politically incorrect prevented an "intellectually honest discussion of Islamic ideology" in the ranks.

What "Islamic ideology" would that be?

Sunni? Shia? Sufism? Kharijite? One or all of the numerous sectarian branches within each of those schools of Islam? Or perhaps one of the heterodox schools like the Ahmadiyya or Zikri or their sectarian branches? Or maybe the Submitters down in Tuscan, Arizona?

Would "Christian ideology" fairly and adequately describe Southern Baptists, Unitarian Universalists and the Amish? Heck, those are just within the Protestant school of Christianity. Throw in Maronites, Armenian Apostolic, Armenian Catholics, Syrian Catholics, Syriacs, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Melkites and Assyrians, just to name a few, and it gets all the more complicated to reduce down to one sweeping "ideology".

Frankly, there are a lot of people worried about evangelicals running amok in our military. Maybe there should be an "intellectually honest discussion of" Evangelical ideology in the ranks? Hmmm?

Back to Islam for a minute here. I've heard and read many times about how there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim because the Quran calls for jihad. And that invariably from... well let's just call them "critics" of Islam.

Have you ever wondered what kind of Muslims are in the areas of Pakistan outside of the problematic tribal belt? One of the larger groups are Ahmadiyya. There's 170 million of them worldwide but most appear to live in or near Pakistan. The founder of the sect, Ghulam Ahmad, reinterpreted jihad as a nonviolent battle against nonbelievers, using as its weapon the pen instead of the sword. But you're unlikely to learn of it via the news or popular culture because there's no room in the average Christian Coalition/Republican Party type's world view for any interpretation of jihad that doesn't involve killing Christians or potential Christians.

Posted by Kevin at November 8, 2009 09:34 PM