All Muslims believe in God and the prophet Muhammad, and they advocate such practices as fasting during the month of Ramadan and giving to the needy. But beyond that, various groups of Muslims hold divergent theological and ethical systems — and they all find passages in the Quran that reflect their approach.
On the violent end of the Muslim spectrum, ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq released a video Oct. 3 showing the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning. He was the fourth westerner beheaded by the Islamist group on video.
On the other hand, news stories in the United States related to nonviolent Muslims may center around a group bringing the first mosque into a community or the election of a Muslim to congressional seat.
An evangelical scholar on Islam who asked to remain anonymous because of his work in Muslim countries said the difference between moderate or liberal Islam and radical Islam lies in Muslims’ approach to Islamic texts, though all regard the Quran as their ultimate source of authority.
However, the Quran is not the only source of authority for Muslims. There also are the biographies of Muhammad known as Sira; collections of traditions and sayings, known as Hadith, attributed to the Muslim prophet; and a large body of scholarship that developed over the centuries that many Muslims consider authoritative. Included in this scholarship are works containing legal decisions by Muslim jurists reflecting on the Quran and Hadith that came to be known collectively as Sharia law. In some Muslim majority nations, the dictates of Sharia are codified into law.
“There is a fundamentally different hermeneutical approach between the two ends of the Islamic spectrum. For radicals, the words of the Quran, Hadith and legal texts are to be taken literally. They believe that Allah gave them those texts for all time with universal and timeless relevance. So when the Quran says to slay the pagans wherever you find them — or for that matter, says a man can take four wives — then quite simply Allah means that Muslims can follow those injunctions for all time. Hence the ISIS phenomenon,” the scholar said.
“In contrast, more liberal Muslims, or moderate Muslims, if we want to use that term, take a more rationalistic approach to reading their texts and following Islamic law,” he said. “They believe that some of that textual material, whether in the Quran, Hadith or legal texts, was relevant at a particular point in past history, but Islamic societies have moved on and so they are no longer relevant today. So many liberal Muslims are genuinely horrified by the ISIS atrocities in Iraqi in Syria. Similarly they argue that polygamy is not relevant to the 21st century and so the relevant verses or legal paragraphs represent historical artifacts as it were.”
Another important distinction between moderate and radical Muslims is the way they view Muhammad, Islam’s founder, the scholar said. “Both radicals and liberals look to Muhammad for their model,” but liberals emphasize his early work in Mecca as a “peaceful protestor” while radicals focus on his later years in Medina as a “warrior statesman,” where he developed the practice of physically waging holy war, or “jihad,” against non-Muslims.
“Today’s jihadis look at non-jihadi Muslim moderates as having sold out the prophet,” the scholar said. “For radicals, where Muhammad ended up is what’s important. For moderates, taking a holistic approach to his life and relegating some of the more uncomfortable events of his later years to policies that suited the eighth century but are not relevant today is the way to go.”
The famous division between Sunni and Shiite Muslims is “not tied at all” to the issue of radical versus moderate Islam. Sunnis and Shiites differ over who should be Muhammad’s successor as the “caliph,” or ruler, of the Islamic community. Both Sunnis and Shiites include radical and moderate elements.
Diversity within Islam
A 2012 Pew Research study of 38,000 Muslims worldwide appeared to confirm claims of diversity within Islam. Muslims “have widely differing views” about “how important religion is to their lives, who counts as a Muslim and what practices are acceptable in Islam,” according to the Pew study.
In surveys of Muslims in 39 countries, a median of 27 percent per country said Islam is open to more than one interpretation. A majority of U.S. Muslims (57 percent) said Islam can be interpreted in multiple ways.
Mike Edens, professor of theology and Islamic studies at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, said he believes only about 10 percent of Muslims have some inclination to use violence to advance Islam. But he noted that in most communities where Muslims gain a majority, personal freedoms begin to erode.
Shifting of standards
“When we see a British community or an American community such as Dearborn (Mich.) moving toward a Muslim majority, we begin to see shifting of standards of behavior in the street and in the families,” Edens said.
Among Muslims of all stripes, even those who reject violence, religious coercion is a “broadly applied reality,” Edens said, because Islam is a religion focused on external behavior rather than heart transformation. There is a passage in the Quran forbidding coercion in religion, Edens said, but “that verse is abrogated by many other verses that talk about enforcement of external codes.”
In the end, preventing Islam from eroding personal liberty in the western world will require a combination of evangelism by Christians and discerning action by governments whenever Islamic practices begin to undermine democratic ideals of religious liberty and expression, Edens said.
(BP)
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