In "The Region: Another kind of Islam," Barry Rubin addresses the problem of reforming Islam and ending incitement. From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Designnut and RB:
A Saudi mother, a college professor, recently wrote about a remarkable experience. Shortly after September 11, 2001, her son came home from fifth grade and sang the praises of Osama bin Laden, repeating what his teacher had told the class. Three years later, that same teacher was one of the Islamist terrorists who attacked the Saudi Interior Ministry.It is quite clear that terrorists in the Arab world are often the direct product of what they were taught in school about Islam. And even if the graduates make good, pro-regime citizens they are also inoculated against supporting political reform, democracy or moderate Islam.
That is why a recent article by Latif Lakhdar in the March issue of MERIA Journal - and in an earlier Arabic version published in Middle East Transparent Web site - is so important. For Lakhdar shows how this vicious circle can be broken, and is in fact already being broken in one Arab country.
Lakhdar, a Tunisian liberal who lives in Paris, contrasts how Islam is taught in his native country with what is done in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In those places, he explains, Islamic education "instills in the younger generation a religious fanaticism which entails a phobia toward dissimilarity and a rejection of the other, even to the extent of killing." Any debate about religious precepts is an unacceptable deviation that must be punished.
In contrast, there is a way of teaching religion rationally, in a manner that does not bar science or logic. Such an approach includes the comparative study of religions, which shows there has been a historical development. It demonstrates not only the lack of a monopoly on piety but also that change is a natural part of religion.
The sociology and psychology of religion can be either a tremendous benefit or manipulated to serve the interests of unscrupulous people. Linguistics encourages the careful study of texts to show that they have always been interpreted....
Read it all. I wish Lakhdar well, but I wonder how he deals with the objection that the idea that "change is a natural part of religion" conflicts with Islamic orthodoxy. In Islam Unveiled I discuss the uphill (and well-nigh impossible) battle Islamic reformers must face, because reforms inevitably (and quickly) clash with cherished tenets of Islam. It is a problem to which I have yet to see a solution.
When Muslims can read Bat Ye'or, instead of refusing to read her, for even a man like Kanan Makiya will hand back, in evident distaste, one of her books that he has had pressed upon him, when they read Robert Spencer's "Islam Unveiled" and "Onward Muslim Soldiers" and "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance" without pretending the passages in question from the Qur'an or Hadith do not say what they do say, when they read as easily as we in the West read Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not A Christian" another book, Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim" and study carefully the articles posted at www.faithfreedom.org by the tireless and inimitable Ali Sina, when they read what Azam Kamguian has written, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoken and filmed, about the treatment of women under Islam, when they begin to think that non-Muslims living in predominately Muslim societies should have inalienable rights, that are not seen as depending on whatever Muslims choose to grant them or how dutifully dhimmified they behave, when they willingly study not only Bernard Lewis (who goes very easy on Islam), but read the forthcoming "The Legacy of Jihad" by Andrew Bostom, and even such studies as that of Andre Servier on "The Psychology of the Musulmans," when they cease to make exaggerated claims for the achievements of Islamic civilization and proerly ascribe many of them to those from whom certain things were borrowed (the Chinese, the Hindus), or as the product of non-Muslim translators and thinkers, or even where they were created by Muslims, those Muslims were almost always Persian or Central Asian or Berber in origin; for in what is called Muslim civilization, for which the Arabs try to claim credit, only a handful of the major figures were in fact Arabs. When Muslim historians of science do not react with hysteria, in the manner of George Saliba, and are willing to soberly discuss what may be in the ideology of Islam that limits free and skeptical inquiry without which modern science cannot be undertaken, when Muslims are willing to discuss the economic backwardness that results from inshallah-fatalism that keeps Muslims poor despite the fantastic unearned OPEC oil wealth, which the Muslims have so completely misused in failing to create modern economies, when all of this is recognied -- then maybe, just maybe, we can let down our guard a teeny-weeny bit, about Islam.
No, I've changed my mind. We can never let down our guard. Never.