Monday, October 13, 2014

"Diversity In Islam"? Not So Much

Robert Spencer rebuts Nicolas Kristoff, who is determined to put the Maher-borne truths about Islam back into the bottle and seal it with a really tight cork:
One irony (among many) of all this is that Islam is, in point of fact, one of the least diverse entities on the planet. A few years I came across a group photo of a summit meeting of Southeast Asian government officials. The Vietnamese, Thai, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai, Burmese and Chinese officials all had names indigenous to their nations; the Malaysian and Indonesian ministers had names like Muhammad and Abdullah – names indigenous to Arabia. Converts to Islam the world over give up a bit of their cultural diversity to take on Arabic names, and in many cases feel compelled to adopt the dress of a seventh-century Arab. This is not diversity, it’s homogeneity. 
Nor is there, despite numerous claims to the contrary, significant diversity in the understanding of Islamic law, Sharia. Wherever Sharia is fully implemented around the world today, from Sudan to Saudi Arabia to Iran, it looks largely the same: freedom of speech is restricted, women and non-Muslims are denied basic rights, apostates from Islam are ostracized or even killed, “heretics” and “blasphemers” are hounded by legal authorities and/or lynch mobs. The four major Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree on 75% of all rulings, and those matters upon which they differ are not central to Islamic faith or practice.
Re Islam's diversity, I think Artie Erdogan (or was it Porky Pig?) captured it best when he observed: "There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and th-th-th-th-th-th-that's all, folks!"

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