The Fight for the Soul of Islam

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The Fight for the Soul of Islam
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Part 1 The War from the East

• Session 1.1 Is This War?
• Session 1.2 Islam One of the Great Monotheistic
  Religions
• Session 1.3 The Fight for the Soul of Islam
• Session 1.4 Dar al-Islam The House of War
• Session 1.5 The Global Caliphate
• Session 1.6 Islam Religion of Peace?
• Session 1.7 The History of the Conflict
• Session 1.8 Poverty in Islamic Nations

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Outline

• Introduction
• Five Conflicting Schools
• Before and After Medina
• Tensions within the Quran
• Islams Golden Age
• The Battle for Islam

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Introduction
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Titles

• Moderates
• Secularists
• Reformers
• Faith Reason
• Enter the future
• Reconstructionists
• Enlightened

• Extremists
• Jihadists
• Islamists
• Faith w/out reason
• Return to the past
• Restorationists
• Strident

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A Set of Truisms

• Most Muslims are not fundamentalists.
• Most fundamentalist Muslims are not terrorists.
• Today, most terrorists are Muslims.

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Five Conflicting Schools
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The Five Elements

• The Pragmatists
• The Reformers
• The Secularists
• The Fundamentalists
• The Jihadists

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The Pragmatists

• Revelation (without reason?)
• The silent majority
• Just want to live their lives and raise their
  families
• Go along to get along!
• Faith is for the private life, not the public
  arena
• They have a vague understanding that Islam and
  Modernity are not in conflict
• Like many Evangelical Gnostic Christians

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The Reformers

• Revelation and Reason
• See Islam as a progressive, rational and
  reforming faith
• Islam needs to be related to the real world (not
  necessarily accommodating Modernism)
• Followers of Mohammed in Mecca
• Perhaps a small minority of Muslims
• Natural allies of other reasoning monotheists
  Jews and Christians

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The Reformer

• Prof. Akbar Ahmed
• Pakistani high commissioner to Britain
• Prof Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge
• Chair of Islamic Studies at American University

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The Secularists

• Reason without Revelation
• Operating consciously or unconsciously from an
  atheistic set of assumptions
• Muslims by birth, name and historic background
  only
• Reject Islam as a religion
• Function from secular materialistic value system
• Corresponding to liberal Christians

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The Secularist

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Member of Dutch Parliament
• Author The Infidel
• Intellectual Refugee
• Fellow American Enterprise Institute

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The Fundamentalists

• Revelation (without reason?)
• Thoughtfully faithful Muslims
• Consider that the problems of Muslims stem from
  too much modernization
• Restorationists return Islam and the world to
  the glorious past
• Most are not violent
• Corresponding to fundamentalist Christians

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The Jihadists

• Revelation without Reason
• Restorationists return Islam and the world to
  the glorious past
• A minority of fundamentalists
• Followers of Mohammed in Medina
• Faith is to relate to every area of life
  including social, economic and political
  institutions

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The Jihadist

• Founder Al-Qaeda
• Declared war on the USA
• Planned 9/11
• Committed to the restoration of a global Muslim
  Empire

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Before and After Medina
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Mecca to Medina
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Tensions within the Quran

• Reflect Mecca and Medina

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Tensions in the Quran

• Mecca
• Christians and Jews are people of the book
• Convert through persuasion
• Enlightened
• Roots of the Reformers
• Pluralism in society
• Freedom

• Medina
• Christians and Jews are infidels
• Conquer or kill them
• Strident
• Roots of the Jihadists
• Uniformity in society
• Tyranny

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Ijtihad Concept of Reasoning

• Fundamentalist Muslims a narrow, legalistic
  notion of it as a process of juristic
  reasoning.
• Reflects Medina
• Legal Ijtihad
• Reformist Muslims freedom of thought, rational
  thinking and the quest for truth through an
  epistemology covering science, rationalism, human
  experience, critical thinking
• Reflects Mecca
• independent thinking
• Led to the Golden Age of Islam

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Reason and Revelation

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Islams Golden Age
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Ijtihad
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Ijtihad

• IJTIHAD For Freedom of thought and independent
  thinking among Muslims everywhere
• http//www.ijtihad.org/
• Dr. Muqtedar Khan Associate Professor Political
  Science and International Relations University of
  Delaware

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Caliphate of Cordoba Andalusia
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Impact on Christianity

• Ijtihad independent thinking in Andalusia
  brought Jewish and Christian scholars to think
  together with Muslims.
• Much of the dialog dealt with the relationship
  between faith (being people of the Book) and
  reason (the contribution of the Greek scholars).
• The work done by Arab scholars was translated
  into Hebrew and Latin to impact Judaism and
  Christianity.

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Achievements of the Golden Age

• Architecture
• The Arts
• Literature
• Medicine
• Philosophy
• Mathematics
• Science and technology

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Architecture

• Moorish architecture in Spain
• The Taj Mahal in India

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The Arts
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Literature
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Avicennas Canon of Medicine
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Mathematics

• Arabic numerals
• Concept of zero
• Algebra
• Algorithms

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Science

• Contributed to
• Experimental Physics
• Optics
• Experimental psychology
• Astronomy
• Chemistry (Jabir ibn Hayyan- father of
  chemistry)

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Death of the Golden Age

• Ibn Taymiya from Syria
• 1263-1328 AD
• Sunni Islamic scholar
• Led movement to return to the fundamentalist
  understanding
• Ended the Golden Age
• The father of Islamic Fascism

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Moderates vs. Jihadists

• Mecca
• Christians and Jews are people of the book
• Ijtihad Freedom of thought
• Persuade
• Enlightened
• Reformers
• Pluralism in society
• Freedom

• Medina
• Christians and Jews are infidels
• Ijtihad law
• Conquer
• Strident
• Jihadists
• Uniformity in society
• Tyranny

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The Battle for Islam