From: Steve Davies (Steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue Sep 02 2003 - 08:19:33 MDT
>
>
> On Monday 01 September 2003 22:06, Terry Donaghe wrote:
> >> Isn't Islam a good bit younger than Hinduism, Christianity and
Buddhism?
> >> Islam is like the teenager of world religions. It took an awful long
time
> >> for Christianity to "simmer down." Perhaps, as religions mature, their
> >> followers get a bit more laid back. Now, obviously some Hindus and
> >> Christians can still get rabble roused and incited to violence, but in
> > general their followers seem to be less raucous.
>
> Samantha:
> >I have heard this metaphorical theory before. I don't believe it is
valid.
> >Mormonism is *much* younger than Islam but not at all violent. Many of
the
> >world's religions were much more mellow in their beginning than later on.
> >Besides, can the world afford to have a violent teenager over 1.3 billion
> >strong loose?
Amara said
> I don't have an opinion regarding the 'age' of a religion, but I do
> think that religions evolve in time, and the violent aspects do check
> themselves.
>
> Christianity had its Reformation.. Islam has not had its own
> 'reformation' yet. Extremists at the edge of every religion will
> always exist, but I think that Islam is ripe for an upheaval of some
> of its core elements. Some Moslem scholars have observed and written
> about Islam needing a 'reformation', unfortunately their ideas have
> not been accepted well in their societies yet.
>
> One example of such a person is Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid. He is an
> Egyptian teacher, and was a professor of Arabic Literature at Cairo
> University, who has written some works that interpret the Koran in
> the context of life at the time that the Koran was written. In his
> book: _Criticism of Religious Discourse_, he writes,
>
> "Since language develops with the development of society and
> culture, providing new ideas and developing its terminology to
> express more developed relations, then it is necessary and only
> natural to re-interpret texts in their original historical and
> social context, replacing them with more contemporary
> interpretations that are more humanistic and developed, while
> keeping the content of the verses stable."
<big snip about what has happened to this fellow>
I think we need to be very careful, both about metaphors that liken
religions to human individuals (use of words like 'adolescence') and about
historical comparisons. A Reformation is the last thing Islam needs right
now - fundamentalists are very similar in their rhetoric and analysis to
people such as Luther and Calvin. The Reformation did not make Christianity
more mellow or rational, on the contrary it reversed a movement towards
rationalism in the writings of people like Erasmus and made Christianity
(both Catholic and Protestant) much more dogmatic and intolerant. It also
led to savage religious wars within 'christendom' - I think something that
is actually the most probable outcome of Islamic fundamentalism. What Amara
is talking about and Abu Zeid is articulating here is more like the 'higher
criticism' of the mid-nineteenth century, which has destoyed the traditional
way of reading the Bible for most educated people. Textual criticism of the
Koran may sound boring but it's actually the way to go.
Steve Davies
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