I have some knowledge of some things, but I am knowledgeable enough to know I am ignorant.

I want to learn more, and I want others to learn more. I respect disagreements as long as disagreements are open and honest – I have found it harder to deal with public campaigns of deliberate disinformation than even being threatened.

Open discussion is the only practical way forward in these strange PC times, without having people – and their societies – polarising under the flags of opposing ideologies or politics.

I know i accused you of other flaws in your arguing style, and I stand by those, but in this sense, you’re the most open person I’ve seen on a blog in years.

But that is the entirety of Islamic ethics and law. It is a comprehensively and completely deontic system: everything is subject to Allah’s Will alone, and Allah is so sovereign that even Rationality cannot and does not constrain that Will. Hence the centrality of occasionalism and the Ash’ari credo. (Reliance: w57, w3, and a1.3-5 for a summary of the “proper” relation between the Good and the Rational.)

Yes, but abrogation is generally an argument of last resort. That is, a reconciling explanation (if and when found) is to be preferred, and one should not go around looking for contradictions, or trying to force them. So, the tendency over time has been to whittle down the set of mansukh verses.

[...]such as 2:256 (there shall be no compulsion in religion) continue because this is an early text, and has apparently been abrogated by 9:73. (O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey’s end.)

Or by Q9:5, among others.

One fascinating aspect of most modern discussions is that Q2:256 is rarely quoted in its entirety, quite probably because then it doesn’t sound anywhere near as categorical, or come across to goodthinkful audiences as some ringing declaration of a universal principle.

The verse states the reason for “no compulsion”: that the Final Truth Has Been Revealed. Therefore, every rationally competent person will See.

But, of course, not everyone is Rational Enough To See The Truth. Why is this?

Because Allah has closed the minds of unbelievers, blinded them, made them deaf, confounded them. (Q4:87, Q2:16-17, Q13:33, Q17:97-98, Q21:45, Q54:38, etc. etc. etc.)

So, what does this mean?

It means that, by the Will of Allah, only some will See when presented with The Truth.

The remainder will have to be fought, because Allah’s Truth Must Prevail (Q8:39, Q2:193, Q9:29).

Of them, some will submit to dhimma and pay jizyah.

And the rest will have to die.

No compulsion needed, and no abrogation involved.

More projection. I do not like the “tu quoque” approach, but if in order to explain my position to someone who is constantly telling me what my position is – I will use that method to make the person stop and assess.

If the Bible has violent texts and these are not taken seriously, and the Koran has violent texts which are taken seriously then the Koran (and Islam) must reform completely (Salman Rushdie said that there would be virtually nothing left of the Koran if the violent passages were removed). If it cannot, then it must go to war.

There seem to be only two choices for Islam. Reform or wage war (and probably lose).

If reform really is impossible, then reinterpretation is the only solution that will allow Islam to continue in a peaceful manner.

Very well-made points. I think of some of the horrors carried out by Christianity, whose tenets are officially peaceful, and then look at the warlike Suras (1 through 9) and I am surprised that Islam has not been more violent.

I think that the current global resurgence of the violent form of Islam will ultimately signal its undoing as a monolithic and immutable force.

You are right about clerics – they generally do not set good examples and do not criticise what is bad – unless forced to. The Deobandi clerics at Birmingham Central Mosque set terrible examples – Mohammed Naseem tried to pretend that the 7/7 bombers were innocent, his preacher Riyadh ul-Haq wanted a second wife and when that caused dissent two people from the mosque community got shot on separate occasions, with one guy dying.

Clerics and so-called “community leaders” never condemn. They are like politicians – it is always the fault of the other party.

But I still think Islam, if it is allowed to accept a more personal relationship of the individual with God – as Sufism purports to do, and with a bit of reform, could be peaceful and enlightening.

But it has to reform. In its current manifestation, with so-called representatives of Islam (CAIR, MCB, MAB and a host of others) pretending to be supportive of democracies while shilling for the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jamaat-e-Islami party (who tried to introduce the death penalty for apostasy into the Pakistani Penal Code), we have a problem.

If it were just a question of violent Salafists/Islamists versus secular, nominal Muslims engaging in their Tasawwuf communions with God, there would not be too much chaos. Eventually the violence would revolt enough people to turn them away from the violent clerics and their followers, and their creeds.

But while the MCN- or CAIR-type people in suits and ties pretend to be mainstream while playing politics on societies – they will eventually force a violent Western backlash against anyone who remotely looks Muslim. And that is what I fear.

The only hope is for reform, for brave Muslims to nail their own manifestos to the doors of national Mosques, in the manner of Luther.

Islam will reform or it will become a byword for backwardness and barbarism. How long before it will be forced to reform I do not know. 50 years, one century, or two?

I think the current resurgence of violent forms of Islam is a sign of a culture in crisis. There is nothing glorious in trying to mount a war, thinking one is doing God’s work.And when Islamists bomb Muslims, they are sealing their own fate in traditional Muslim countries

If you really hated this sort of comparison you wouldn’t make them.

Tabari is even later (838-923). He was born five years after Ibn Hisham died. Edward Gibbon described Tabari as the “Livy of the Arabians” and even though I have been tempted to buy certain volumes (at £18.50 minimum from Amazon) of his work, I do not have any, and have only read snippets quoted second-hand.

I do have “Reliance of the Traveller” and I think that this is fast becoming a source-book for anti-Islam activists as it contains so many ghastly things in amongst chapters that superficially appear “fair”.

I have just read w59.2 and where it quotes the hadith “Whoever sees something wrong and accepts it is as though he had committed it” it then diverts away from what had thitherto been sound to saying that it is OK to dislike something in one context but like the same thing elsewhere, and to say it is OK to be glad when someone dies as he was the enemy of one’s enemy and also one’s own enemy – one should celebrate that one has died.

There is nothing in there that equates to Christian “morality” at all. Which is why that little bottom-feder Anjem Choudary likes to set himself up as a Sharia judge – he can just exercise his most base instincts, drawing on the Fiqh of someone like al-Misra, and pleasure himself accordingly – all the while deluding himself that he is being “moral”.

There is nothing moral about following rules.

No, I accuse you of making an equivalence between Judaism where no prophet is God’s final arbiter and Islam which is about the ravings of a single man.

I don’t care if Moses was Mohammad squared, he is only one figure in Judaism and it is perfectly acceptable for Jewish scholars to argue that Moses was wrong.

The claim that there are any prophets in Islam other than Mohammad is one of Mohammad’s frauds. Mohammad was obviously illiterate and his versions of older stories are, well, horrible. And Muslims do not study the actual Jewish or Christian texts.