Azzam Tamimi

[Salaf]

Salaam

Has anyone heard this guy speak before?

He's a member of Hamas and an ikhwani style modernist.

[Abdur_Rahman]

Take the test (http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2709&highlight=filter)

[Salaf]

I guess we better shut down all the threads about salafis then.

[Mossy]

Nah, most of those past the test..

[faqir]

There was quite an entertaining interview with him on Hard Talk a short while back. I thought he handled Tim Sebastian pretty well....

[Salaf]

There was quite an entertaining interview with him on Hard Talk a short while back. I thought he handled Tim Sebastian pretty well....

Thats a perfect example of whats wrong with the modernists.

They give interviews to the kuffar knowing that it will be used against them. He was once on a bbc programme about "the passion of christ" when he hadn't even seen the film and had nothing to add to the discussion what so ever. The only reason they asked him on was so that they could attack islam and he still came on.


I brought him up because he is a good present day example of dangerous modernism. Muslims today get hung up over Irshad Manji and completely ignore people like him and Tariq Ramadan who in my opinion are much more harmful.



Nah, most of those past the test......

There are very few threads saying positive things about the salafis.

[Mossy]

There are very few threads saying positive things about the salafis.

You could argue that some are for their own good. Besides, 2/3 ain't bad..

[Abdur_Rahman]

I guess we better shut down all the threads about salafis then.
:salam:

It's better to shut down the non-beneficial talking from all sides
;)

[Salaf]

This is an article I came across by Azzam Tamimi today

http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/article_15237.shtml

On a website, named 'Scholar of the House' and dedicated to him and his works, Khaled Abou El Fadl is introduced as 'the most important and influential Islamic thinker in the modern age'; 'an accomplished Islamic jurist and scholar'; 'high-ranking shaykh'; 'a world renowned expert in Islamic law'; and as 'a prolific author and prominent public intellectual on Islamic law and Islam' - not much more one may aspire to achieve. However. few Muslims would have heard of El Fadl, let alone read him.

Anyway. he seems to be a rising star in the US where he has managed to persuade a few fellow academics to take part in this project of his. What is interesting about Islam and the Challenge of Democracy; is not so much the topic but the format. which is similar to his earlier book, The Place of Tolerance in Islam. In both, a number of scholars respond to EI Fadl's lead piece and then El Fadl responds to their responses.

Perhaps, the titlecould not have come at a worst time. Democracy in the West is in crisis: ruling liberal democratic elite in both Washington and London have violated every democratic principle in the name of democracy. They lied. Iied again and continued to lie to their people and to the world until the images of inhumanity emerging out of Abu Ghraib prison left no room for doubters.

The values said to be associated with liberal democracy such as inalienable individual rights, a set of liberties, the rule of law and equality before the law have all been undermined with varying degrees across the liberal democratic world under various pretexts. The Muslims in particular have been primary victims because the war on terror has for all intents and purposes been nothing but a war on everything associated with Islam and Muslims, almost everything about them: The Qur'an, Hadith and Shari'ah; women, family and children; marriage and moraliry; economics, polity, culture, education. Nothing is out of bounds for these 'terror warriors'.

Since 11 September 2001 thousands of Muslims, men and women, have been arrested and detained without charge in the US, Britain and other European participants in the 'war on terrorism'; laws have been enacted in all these places to restrict the freedoms of expression, movement and assembly; and even Muslim schoolgirls in France banned from entering schools with headcovers because their headcover were said to threaten French secularism. Secularism had an understandable rationale in the backdrop of European intellectual history. It was as an intelligent European's natural revolt against the extremes and excesses of native clericalism. But there could be nothing more absurd than secularism as ordained by some of its post-modern priests in France.

In the lands of the East, the prospects to popular and representative rule. 'democratisation' as everyone is shouting from the roof top, have suffered irreparable damage. The US and its allies have given such a bad name to a 'democracy' that was either a stooge or surrogate, that few Arabs or Muslims deem it respectable to associate themselves with any talk of bringing democracy to the Muslim lands. They do not want to become another bunch of witting or unwitting collaborators in any neo-con or neoimperialist programme to remake yet again the Muslim world in their own image. If the term 'failed states' said anything, it spoke about the skill of their imperialist designers. The Muslim and Arab worlds, indeed most of African, Asian and South American, have been made and remade at least three times in the past three centuries. So, 'No, thank you' as most of the people are saying.

Most Iraqis who had loathed Saddam Hussein and prayed for an end to his rule seem now to regret the 'regime change' which the Americans have brought about. If the methods to bring it about were violent and illegal the outcome was not democracy but a terrible nightmare. In light of this it is indeed a bold move on the part of Princeton to publish the book.

An impressive list of names is involved in producing the work. In the order of their responses to E1 Fadl, they are: Nader A Hashemi, Jeremy Waldron, Noah Feldman, M A Muqtedar Khan, A Kevin Reinhart, Saba Mahmood, Bernard Haykel, Mohammad H Fadel, David Novak, John L Esposito, and William B Quandt.

In his 46-page treatise Islam and the Challenge of Democracy, El Fadl seeks to find room for democracy in Islam. The room is very much there, what he wants is to install a secular deity in that space. For up to two thirds of his paper he exhibits skill in using his knowledge to prove the compatibility of Islamic values with those of democracy. Though he does not acknowledge it, many thinkers such as the Algerian Malik Bennabi (1905-73), the Tunisian Rachid Ghannouchi and the Egyptian Tariq El-Bishri, to name a few, have already made this point.

Some of his interlocutors do mention a few, in passing though, particularly Ghannouchi, whom they mistakenly assume to be resident in France as well as Shaikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the most authoritative contemporary scholar, and Fahmi Huwaidi, the most widely read and highly regarded Islamic journalist in the Arab world.

However, in his own response El Fadl seems to take offence at the suggestion that his position is shared with 'other "Islamicists" such as Rashid al-Ghannouchi, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, or Fahmi Huwaidi'. Obviously, their positions are not identical, but not for the reasons El Fadl gives. He charges that 'Huwaidi's and Qaradawi's proclamations on democracy are dogmatic at best; they do not exhibit any serious understanding of the doctrinal challenges a democracy poses for traditional understandings of Islam'.

His opinion is that 'both writers speak about Islam and democracy only in the most vague and general sense, without engaging the particulars of history or doctrine'. Since Abou El Fadl has nothing to say about Ghannouchi, one is tempted to think that he probably knows not much about him and may have not read him. As for Bennabi, he does not feature anywhere in the book despite the originality of his thinking and the enormity of his influence.

The real difference between Abou El Fadl's thinking and that of the aforementioned 'mainstream' scholars and thinkers is that they emanate from within while he comes from without. Perhaps without realising it - he is gently alerted to this by some of his respondents - Abou El Fadl borders the 'End of History' discourse as he presents the case for democracy.

Democracy is seen by Islamic thinkers as consisting of two components: a philosophical aspect that is not compatible with Islamic view about Sovereignty and Vicegerency and a procedural aspect which Muslims have no problem with.

Islam is based on the unmixed Sovereignty of God and Vicegerency of Man, while the liberal secularist view was premised on the absolute Sovereignty of Man. The twain do not meet, but then leaving aside the question of Sovereignty of Man, there is a tremendous convergence in the functional aspects of two differently premised political systems. A totally secular democracy can hardly be espoused by the Muslims because it contradicts the essence of their faith. It is simply a case of two conceptually different worldviews: in the Islamic view divine revelation is the source of reference whereas in the liberal tradition man is self-referential.

It is therefore a futile effort to try and re-formulate Islam to espouse liberalism; this would simply be the end of Islam as a divine revelation.