Islamic "reform"?

Robert Spencer writes about the danger of Turkey's secular government being replaced by an Islamic state under sharia. The issues he raises speak to the very heart of the problem facing those who want to create a "moderate" Islam:

. . . [I]dentification as a Muslim is one thing, and acceptance of the principles of political Islam is quite another. All over the world today jihadists are targeting peaceful Muslims in their recruitment efforts, and presenting themselves as the exponents of “true” and “pure” Islam, including – as the title of a widely-circulated publication had it – jihad, “the forgotten obligation.” Part of this presentation centers on a reassertion of political Islam. Cultural Muslims who have no desire to live in an Islamic state nonetheless have been able to formulate no response on Islamic grounds to the jihadist challenge. The only response that has ever gained traction in the Islamic world has been not just a de facto laying-aside of Islam’s political and social character, but a self-conscious elimination of that character – and Ataturk’s Turkey has been the site of the greatest success of this approach. Ataturk realized that there would be a recrudescence and reassertion of political Islam whenever there was a revival of religious fervor. Thus Kemalism presented itself not as “moderate Islam,” nor as an Islamic construct at all, but as an explicit rejection of political Islam in favor of secularism. That is, it was never presented as an Islamic construct or justified by Islamic teachings, but was an explicit rejection of certain traditional aspects of Islam.

Ataturk became the first political figure ever in the Islamic world to reject -- avowedly and without apology -- political Islam in favor of a Western model of the separation of the religion from the state. While this would not forever prevent -- as recent events in Turkey clearly show -- a reassertion of political Islam, it would give the state greater ability to resist this reassertion, while a state that was nominally an Islamic one or that paid even lip service to Sharia in its Constitution would not have that ability. So Turkish secularism is predicated not on moderate Islam, but on premises that are not Islamic at all. And Oymen knows that any modification of Turkish law to change that will simply open the door to a full reassertion of Sharia -- Islamic law -- in Turkey.

It’s a principle with a much wider application than Turkey alone: for peaceful Muslims to prevail over the proponents of jihad and Sharia, they must be prepared not just to ignore, but to reject explicitly, the elements of Sharia that are at variance with accepted norms of human rights and with government that does not establish a state religion. Only then will they have a chance of defending those rights and standing up against the theological and societal challenge of jihadism. That is not just the Turks, but all free people, have a stake in the survival of Turkish secularism.

As I have said before there is really no such thing as "moderate" Islam. The founder of Islam was a warlord who spread his religion at swordpoint and who is held up at the perfect example of faith and practice. He created a system in which there was no separation between the religious and the political realms. The only legitimate government to a Muslim who is faithful to the Koran is one which imposes sharia law upon the society.

A so-called moderate Muslim is one which rejects basic principles of the Koran such as jihad in its true sense of making war against non-believers in order to spread the religion of Islam. In the eyes of those Muslims who uphold the entire Koran the "moderate" is nothing more than an apostate who the Koran condemns to death.

The Muslim who wishes to create a moderate form of Islam which is fit to exist in the 21st century is faced with the problem of Islam's founding text and founding prophet. To arrive at that moderate Islam he must admit that the Koran is not a perfect guide and that Mohammad was not a true prophet. In other words the Muslim reformer must trash Islam to the point where there is no point in continuing to believe in it in order to achieve his "moderation".

I have much sympathy and no envy for the Muslim reformer and I frankly doubt that he has any hope of success.