What "religious authorities" are you talking about? There are no authorities in Islam. There are no prophets, leaders, priests, or some authority figure.
Of course Islam has its authorities. You said so yourself, the regular folk go to the Imams for instruction. Why in the world would they do that if they are their own authorities who can interpret the Quran for themselves? There is no central authority like the Pope is for Catholicism or the Prophet is for Mormonism, but there are recognize authorities who have the final say in public matters. In Sunni Islam there are four schools of jurisprudence which pronounce judgments and interpretations of sharia law. They are authorities. Sharia law is central to what Islam is. Ask your Muslim friends what they think about sharia and that should probably tell you everything you want to know about their loyalties.
The highest authority among Shi'ite Muslims is an Ayatollah. In Sunni Islam muftis are responsible for making fatwas - religious declarations on sharia.
Now in Catholicism people can run to the Pope to find out what true Catholicism is. In Mormonism they can go to the First Presidency. Your friend seems to think that as long as there is no central authority in Islam then any self-proclaiming Muslim can declare true Islam form himself. This might work for some on a personal level, but it doesn’t wash for Islam as a whole. Your friend falls into the tiny minority category that would, as I said before, be expunged from Muslim societies abroad. A lack of a central authority does not help those who want to say terrorism has nothing to do with “true Islam” because they are in no position to declare what true Islam is either. There are essentially two sides here. One side argues that the vast majority of Muslim authorities have a better understanding of Islam and their opinions far outweigh those few Muslims living in the west. Further, those authorities are the ones leading sermons n Friday and indoctrinating the Muslim populace. If Islam is such a private-personal religion with “no authority,” then why do Muslims go to mosques and attend sermons at all? Why is it not OK to use these sermons as some kind of barometer in ascertaining what Muslims are actually learning? That is all I am doing.
But it isn’t just the authorities since most Muslims outside the west consider western Muslims to be somewhat on the fringe: “People in America think they are going to be the vanguards of change...But for Arab Muslims in the Middle East, American Muslims continue to be viewed on the margins of the faith.”(Georgetown University professor of Islamic studies Yvonne Haddad, March 18, 2005) Again, considering American Muslims to be in a position to declare true Islam is like giving polygamous “Mormons” in Colorado city the same privilege to declare real Mormonism. Actually the Colorado city Mormons would constitute a greater percentage of the whole than would western Muslims.
Who is going to speak out? Lets say a muslim woman wants to speak out against terrorism. What is she supposed to do? Call the local tv station? Get CNN to interview her? Write an article for the New York times? Individuals do what they can to promote peace and speak out against terrorism but it is not so easy to be heard.
This is just excuse making that flies in the face of the fact that Muslims do in fact speak out. Again, it isn’t a question of whether they can, it is an issue of what they choose to speak about. We know they can. They have no problems protesting cartoons, alleged discriminations, profiling at the airports, protesting speakers they consider “Islamophobic” et cetera, without benefit of a central speaker. They go to great efforts to protest and speak out on trivial or illegitimate concerns – threatening non-Muslims in the process - but they remain silent on what they insist is the largest threat to their faith: those “hijackers” of Islam. The hypocrisy is absurd. Well, if this is true, and you’re being “hijacked”, prove it then. Do something about it and stop focusing all your attention and efforts to stigmatize critical debate on the issues at hand, because that is what they are trying to do. Islamic radicals are against free speech and even the most “moderate” voices try to make American society bow down to sharia law by outlawing any critical speech as “hate speech.” In shariah law, to speak critically of Muhammed or the Quran is punishable by death. This is the standard Muslim immigrants are used to and they want to keep it that way. But what they don’t care about is the fact that to ban critical discussion is to take a huge element out of what made western society great: free speech.
CAIR is the Jesse Jackson of the Muslim community. A con-artist that goes around threatening companies with lawsuits if they do anything that seems politically incorrect. For instance, CAIR just encouraged Muslims to write up complaints about their treatments on airlines during the haaj, mainly because it adds legitimacy to their existence. They live to complain about non-issues, bigot-bait, race-bait, support terrorism through the back door, and then expect gullible people to accept their claim that they are only interested in civil rights. They write up reports about hate-crimes, most of which are fabricated, and use it to gain the “concerns” of politicians who love to play the anti-bigot card. They are a political group of the worst kind who wants to replace the constitution with sharia law through the back door.
So you can imagine my surprise when you provided CAIR as an example of Muslims wanting peace. CAIR is a front for terrorism and always will be.
This is where I disagree with you... I agree the Quran is understood as the cornerstone of Islamic faith. No question. But... how the Quran is understood and embraced is NOT as clear cut as you seem to think. This is my point.
But your point is supported by nothing except anecdotes from what Western Muslims have said to you personally. You cannot produce citations from religious authorities who wield influence over entire Muslim populations. I can do this all day long from the highest authorities in Islam; those in Mecca and Cairo.
I agree that much of the world does indeed hold to archaic harmful beliefs discussed in the Quran. But not everyone interprets it in the same way.
If that is all you are saying then I never disagreed with it. I never said many of the things you read from my posts. Of course there are some self-proclaiming Muslims who go against the grain and have their own personalized form of Islam, but my point is that they are on the fringe and represent nothing other than their own form of religion they like to call Islam. They would be excommunicated or socially expunged if living anywhere else. Even in America they are on the fringe. And with global Islam in perspective, they are even further on the fringe. Again, to speak out against Islamic terrorists could mean excommunication from American Mosques. To say Osama bin Ladin was a terrorist cold mean expulsion from American Islamic high schools. But if any of this was said in the East their lives would be in danger. For a Muslim to put forth the effort to “March against terror” in America means embarrassment and isolation.
All of these FACTS speak loudly about what I am saying. You can always find spurious individuals to support just about anything, but the record shows they do not represent the norm, even in a western society. Your claim that the “educated” Muslims reject radicalism is undermined by the researched facts. Education in Islam, education in Arabic and Islamic texts, means one has a greater tendency to become a radical. It is primarily the ignorant who are illiterate who do not become radicals, either in thought or deed. Muslims in America become educated in sciences and field that have nothing to do with Islamic studies, and they gradually become products of their host society. Often the result is that they try to hold on to their heritage as “Islam” while trying to conform it to western sensibilities. They want it both ways, but the fact is Islam at its core is incompatible with western society because Islam and the Sunnah and sharia law cannot be divorced from one another.
Many of the Muslims we see who are “regular” people are not those who believe sharia law is the highest law in the land. But then again, many of them appear “regular” and support everything we like to think they don’t.
And FTR, I am not telling Muslims what they believe. You keep trying to turn this around like that when I have never said any such thing. I am simply saying what is the norm in Islam based on research, not what a few western Muslims who are living out of the Islamic element, tell me.