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1 Comment Foreign Affairs James Matkin !

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The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists By Khaled M. Abou El Fadl Reviewed by L. Carl Brown

F R O M O U R M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 I S S U E

Is Islam the solution or part of the problem? Abou El Fadl depicts an ongoing struggle between puritans and moderates to define and apply Islam today. Those he labels puritans embrace an absolutist and intolerant orientation. The moderates draw on the more humanistic heritage hammered out by generations of ulama (religious scholars). That heritage has been badly undermined in modern times by the replacement of Islamic legal thought and institutions with Western courts and codes, but most of all by the intolerant doctrines of the Wahhabis, spread with the help of Saudi oil revenues, and of those groups known as Salafis, whose ideology stems in part from

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Wahhabism. The moderate Muslim outlook that Abou El Fadl champions can, however, build on that battered tradition -- through a dynamic process engaged with a changing world, not through restoration of a supposed lost golden age. A scholar trained in both Islamic and Western law, Abou El Fadl presents a brilliant brief for that humanistic Islamic tradition while getting in some well-placed blows against those puritans. He takes on tough issues such as Islam and human rights, the status of women, and jihad. In the process, he serves up one of the more engaging primers on Islam available. James Matkin Discussion on Foreign Affairs !The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists

! James Matkin 3 minutes ago !Sadly, while the topic of Professor Abou El Fadl's book, rescuing Islam from extremists, is vital, his analysis with hind sight seems deeply flawed. The good professor writes that he will ignore the differences between the two great Islamic denominations, Sunni and Shia, because in his typology extremism comes from the difference between the "puritans and the moderates" or literal versus figurative interpretations of the Koran and both denominations have these two contrasting world views. Yet the recent bloody wars in Iraq and Syria, and the rise of ISIS, prove the implacable and vicious schisms between Sunni and Shia are now the source of extremism poisoning Islam. !

Professor Paul Valley writes this week in the Independent

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News: ! "Sunni and Shia are locked in conflict all across the Shia Crescent. As each !side steps up its activities, the other feels more threatened and hardens its !response in turn. !Sunni-Shia tensions are increasing across the world as a result. They are on the rise in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Egypt, and even in London as issues of identity, rights, interests and enfranchisement find sectarian expression. !The tensions are deep-rooted in wider economic and geopolitical concerns. But the risk - given the long history of division and tension - is that predictions of a transnational civil war between Sunni and Shia could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. See http://www.independent.co.uk/n... !The tragedy Valley explains is that these "jihadists have come from across the Islamic world but they are backed by Saudi cash." !