Re: Minority forward acting Muslims on taking the general Muslim public
Reply #4 - April 25, 2011, 09:42 PM
HO, I hope you're right.
I think though that there are a few factors that liberalisers in the Muslim community at large face (note I am referring to those Muslims who just want to have some space for individualism, not nessecarily those who want to get into the nitty gritty of structurally liberalising the religion itself)
Three things:
* Any liberalisation and loosening of affiliation to traditional or reactionary versions of Islam will produce a counter-reaction. When literalists and conservatives and extremists flourish, they are doing so with an eye on liberal Muslims as much as non Muslims. When someone in your family or circle of friends rejects Islam, or liberalises their life away from Islam, it provides a personal, near example and narrative of why 'Islam is in danger', and so the walls close in further.
* Islamic identity politics on a grassroots level is the bane of Muslims in the UK.
* Feeding into both of the above, the constant injection into the blood supply of British Muslims of the reactionary, literalist, brutalist Jamaat-e-Islami, Tableegi-Jamaati, Deobandi, Salafi, Maududi-ist version of Islam, which brings the reactionary mores and mindsets and attitudes of South Asian Islam to bear in a modern, liberal, secular context of 21st Century Britain......as much liberalisation occurs, wil be depleted by the constant stream of this Islam, transferring ideology like heroin in a needle into the atmospherics and space of British Muslim communities.
Those are some of the challenges. As more liberal Muslims come to the fore, attitudes will harden too.
"we can smell traitors and country haters"
God is Love.
Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.