Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluesman
See, THIS is what we're facing: there is no room for interpretation nor reform, because the Koran is not written in parables nor code nor is it loosely translated. It says what it says, and Muslim scholars - the products of the madrassas and the ayatollah's teachings and the customs and ALL of the body of work that makes up islamic law and scholarship - are INSULTED when we insist they don't know their own doctrine. OF COURSE THEY DO, and they follow it, well, religiously.
If we're waiting for the Islamic Reformation, we're waiting for an event that will not come. EVER. There's no room for it; there's no possibility of it.
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If jihad were obligatory against the dar al-harb as many supposed interpretations forward about Islam, then the true population of Muslims is quite small then.
The following paper provides some jurisprudence on the topic of abrogation. I am not presenting this as the definitive ruling on the concept of abrogation; rather, as I stated earlier, there are various interpretations of abrogation.
The American Muslim (TAM)
This subject is also mentioned in a thread from last year; maybe William might be able to expand on his earlier thoughts in that thread.
True Islam
In the end, if we develop arguments based on a definition that jihad is obligatory, then we face a self-fufilling prophecy. This doesn't mean that we need to involve ourselves directly in a Western style marketing campaign to promote Ghazali's ruling on abrogation, as we'll then taint it. However, we can eliminate our rhetoric that provides self-fufilling prophecies that are counter to our interests, and try to determine a way to promote those scholars that align with Ghazali's jurisprudence on this matter without leaving our fingerprints.