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Originally Posted by Bobcat1
You might as well have typed "Joe" or "Phil down the street." Without any context, this means nothing and doesn't constitute evidence.
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Oh, for God's sake.
Here's yet another article you won't read discussing the many forms of Jihad within Islam.
http://www.meforum.org/article/357
Search for the word "Sufi", and you'll discover that greater Jihad (the internal struggle to be a good Muslim) is a central tenet. Muhammed himself describes actual warfare as "the lesser jihad." Sufis accept lesser jihad only as a defensive struggle.
Scroll further down, to the "modern times" sections, and you'll find the article names many Islamic scholars who argue the "greater jihad" line. to quote:
Two groups of contemporary Muslims have articulated doctrines of peaceful jihad. Modernists may see the concept as central to the religion but see it as encompassing all forms of political and social action to establish justice. Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani scholar and long-time professor at the University of Chicago, argued that it had to exist to accomplish Islam's social and political agenda. "There is no doubt that the Qur'an wanted Muslims to establish a political order on earth for the sake of creating an egalitarian and just moral-social order. Jihad is the instrument for doing so."29 In this spirit, President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, used jihad to describe the struggle for economic development in Tunisia, much as Lyndon Johnson spoke of a "War on Poverty." In this context, jihad implies no more violence than does crusade in today's English.30
The Sufi doctrine of greater jihad remains alive. Though less influential than Islamism in the political realm, it may have more impact on the spiritual life of Muslims, at least in Egypt where one writer contends that the number of Egyptians active in Sufism may well exceed the number of Islamists.31 Sadat wrote articles for the first issues of Sufi journals in 1958 and 1979, both entitled "The Greater Jihad," in which he welcomed the diffusion of Sufi ideas.32 On the basis of field work in Egypt, the Sudan, and Tunisia, an anthropologist mentions jihad only in the context of the Ramadan fast: "Fasting for the whole month is a . . . personal trial for Muslims . . . a form of personal jihad . . . part of the more difficult inner struggles with the flesh and worldy appetites."33
The Sufi outlook remains important enough so that Islamists like Hasan al-Banna and The Neglected Duty author Muhammad 'Abd al-Salam Farajfeel compelled to repeat medieval criticisms of greater jihad.34 This criticism, plus the prevalent definition of jihad as warfare, causes Sufis often to employ mujahada, a related word for al-jihad al-akbar.
Here's a link on Ahmadis.
http://www.ahmadiyya.org/books/f-ahm-mv/ch10.htm
They explicitly reject wars to spread religion.
As for Western Muslims, just about every source available agrees that Western Muslims are extremely moderate. There's a reason jihadists and suicide bombers aren't drawn from their ranks. Because people practice forms of religion that fit their culture. Islam as practiced in the west is notably less conservative and medieval than Islam as practiced in conservative, medieval cultures.
Here's a guy who's pretty much on your side. Yet even he admits that Western Muslims are overwhelmingly moderate, modern and liberal.
http://markhumphrys.com/islam.west.html
His concern is the 10-20% of immigrants that aren't.
Islam in Southeast Asia is notably more peaceful as well.
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Thanks for a twenty page article. I'll read it at my liesure, but since you apparently don't think anything in the article is worth quoting, then I won't address it.
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God forbid you would at least scan it. It's an entire article devoted to outlining who moderate Muslims are. But to summarize for you, here's the key sentences:
The first are ordinary citizens of Muslim countries for whom faith but not politics is central to their lives. They pray daily, fast during Ramadan, make the Haj if they can afford to, but evince little interest in public affairs. Constituting a kind of silent majority, they do not participate in violent actions, and mostly do not support them.
The second group of moderates is made up of regimes, like those in Egypt or Jordan, whose “moderation” consists in alignment with the West. A third group comprises secular liberals who are largely in sympathy with the political and cultural values of the West; well-known examples include the late Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz and the Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya.
Finally, there are various self-described Islamists who dissent from the violent ways or extreme doctrines of other Islamists. These “moderate Islamists,” so it is claimed, are searching for an analog to European Christian Democracy: to wit, a political stance that is in some sense inspired or informed by religious ideals but is neither dogmatic nor exclusionary.
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I asked for just one. One who repudiated the idea of jihad as military struggle.
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I've given you plenty of links and scholarly discussions, which you dismiss as "politically correct" and "inaccurate" -- without demonstrating how they are wrong.
But here's a whole page of prominent Muslims who have condemned terrorism:
http://www.islamfortoday.com/terrorism.htm
Among the names you will note many imams.
Here's a similar list of Muslims opposing extremism.
http://www.islamfortoday.com/fun(*)(*)(*)(*)etalism.htm
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Now, isn't it strange though, that the only links you can furnish are Western and Israeli. To me, that should be telling.
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Um, why? I live in the West, and I don't read Arabic. And Israeli sources aren't generally pro-Muslim. There are Israeli doves, of course, but not nearly as many Muslim apologists.
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But there are some things they have to agree to, or they would not be Muslim.
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But suicide bombings and violent wars of agression are not among them.
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Very good scholarship on your part. I'm glad to see you are finally doing something worthwhile with your spare time. However, my reference to Tantawi is still accurate, as it refers to his position on using suicide attacks against innocents in Israel.
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Good; at least you weren't talking out of your butt. Yet my source has him saying the opposite, in documented public addresses, both before and after your source. Your source is unverifiable unless you were present and spoke Arabic.