How to stop Islamic extremism: Global Fiqh Council (GFC)

[Azazel]

First who will define what is extremism keeping beard Wearing Hijab even that is considered by many westerners as extremism

Extremism is a complex phenomenon, although its complexity is often hard to see. Most simply, it can be defined as activities (beliefs, attitudes, feelings, actions, strategies) of a character far removed from the ordinary.An extremist will never claim himself to be an extremist.Its up to the society to judge who is extremist and who is not.

For eg: for me,A religious extremist is someone who over interprets their beliefs, sometimes in a way which compels them to use violence.But every body may not agree with these.Some people might think it is justified to use violence in their religion as a means to achieve their goals.For me they are extremists.

 

[Developereo]

The extremists in other religions actually do not behave. Recently I heard of a story in the US where a pastor advocated that a man "rise up" and beat his wife, if she supported gay rights. Now I dont know how he is any different from a guy in Saudi Arabia talking about wife beating.

But the difference is, that the guy in the US is not taken seriously for the most part (there are of course people like Pat Robertson who will buy into that crap).

Since this thread is about Islamic extremism, I won't derail it or waste time exploring extremism in other religions and regions. I urge you to educate yourself on the matter since your example shows a woeful lack of the same. The difference is that these extremists find an outlet by joining the official military of their country and carrying out their hatred in uniform. Certainly, these extremists are far more media-savvy than the Islamic extremists, so they will say all the right things to the media, but their actions speak louder than words. by election of hardcore fundamentalist elements through democratic elections.

The rest of your post contains points which have already been addressed earlier in the thread, so no point repeating myself.

 

[al-Hasani]

Very interesting thread. I have not read it all but let me give you guys a short Arabic perspective.

Firstly we need to define what extremism is. Is it extremism when the Palestinian youth are fighting oppression in the same manner as the one he is influenced by due to the actions of the Zionists - despite that being allowed in Islam? Clearly no. Is it extremism when a supposed Muslim puts a suicide belt/explosives around his body or fills a truck full of explosives and drives that into a innocent civilian area for it to explode. The answer is obviously yes.

So firstly, define extremism from a theoretical point of view - in other words Islamic and also from a view of "whether such actions benefit our Ummah or not". Clearly we know the question of that. It does not.

Secondly conferences are all good but when they don't result in anything they are not worth it. A good example is the Arab League. Fine, theoretically a Arab organization (the most powerful one) that is supposed to work in the interest of the Arab world and where the most important regional issues can be discussed. But the reality is that the conferences success versus its potential and in my opinion DUTY of serving the Arab people (not the individuals who are there) have totally failed. I can manage many examples and reasons but this is not the thread for it.

What I am trying to say by this is that we net people in the "field" who can put proposed ideas into practice. Either by education, example or something else. Otherwise it will just be beautiful but empty words.

Thirdly poltiical and actual Islam need to be DIVIDED. COMPLETELY. Look at the Iranian Shia school of thought that mixes politics with Shia Islam. It originates from the city of Qom and is totally different from the traditional Shia centers of thought in Karbala and Najaf in Iraq.

So if you see Awlaqi or another self-proclaimed cleric then don't take his word for granted but seek knowledge in the Holy Qur'an, the Prophet of the Sunnah, your local religious community or elders. Always be critical and use your knowledge correctly as taught to us by Prophet Muhammad (saws).

Most importantly EDUCATION is needed. And education again. Religious and non-religious because without education you can make a kind man into a devil with the right rhetoric and if that person has personal problems or in a situation where he is inclined to follow actions which he usually would denounce.

Also poverty. This goes hand in hand with education. We can all see a tendency that transcends ethnic groups, religion and geography, region in our world. And that is the lack of education and poverty. It is probably the most dangerous mixture because it leads to hopelessness and ultimately to everything that is denounced by Islam and common sense.

Also be proud and don't be afraid to speak your mind. Unfortunately many Muslims are silent when they hear Islamophobic speeches/tendencies instead of acting with a harsh hand with logic (words in other words, LOL). To show that the people who are guilty of that, that they are misinformed. Invite them to Islam. Don't denounce them from a Muslim perspective.

For example I read that there are Shari'ah patrols in UK that target non-Muslims. Imagine if you were a non-Muslim and some violent/threatening Muslim comes up to you and says that you need to wear a hijab in Coventry for example while UK is a non-Muslim land that is not governed by Islamic lw. Would that invite them to Islam or scare them away. Would individuals who were exposed to such a behavior ever feel attracted to Islam? My guess is that they would get a bad reputation of it which is not the point. We are supposed to make da'wah not scare people away. Also Muslims CANNOT (I cannot state this more clearly) command non-Muslims in a foreign land to follow Shari'ah or pass judgements. This is left alone for the religious council during a trial under Shari'ah law otherwise every single Muslim could make judgements to Muslims and non-Muslims alike based on his own interpretations and observations. That's not how a Islamic society works.

There are probably 1000 of other things you could do but that's some of my answers.

 

[kalu_miah]

Very interesting thread. I have not read it all but let me give you guys a short Arabic perspective.

Firstly we need to define what extremism is. Is it extremism when the Palestinian youth are fighting oppression in the same manner as the one he is influenced by due to the actions of the Zionists - despite that being allowed in Islam? Clearly no. Is it extremism when a supposed Muslim puts a suicide belt/explosives around his body or fills a truck full of explosives and drives that into a innocent civilian area for it to explode. The answer is obviously yes.

Agreed more or less with these definitions.

So firstly, define extremism from a theoretical point of view - in other words Islamic and also from a view of "whether such actions benefit our Ummah or not". Clearly we know the question of that. It does not.

Secondly conferences are all good but when they don't result in anything they are not worth it. A good example is the Arab League. Fine, theoretically a Arab organization (the most powerful one) that is supposed to work in the interest of the Arab world and where the most important regional issues can be discussed. But the reality is that the conferences success versus its potential and in my opinion DUTY of serving the Arab people (not the individuals who are there) have totally failed. I can manage many examples and reasons but this is not the thread for it.

What I am trying to say by this is that we net people in the "field" who can put proposed ideas into practice. Either by education, example or something else. Otherwise it will just be beautiful but empty words.

In the OP the GFC is more like a university research institution funded by OIC or Muslim states collectively where Islamic scholars (Ulema) from different countries and regions will actually live in close proximity and do research together. Doing research on Fiqh and reaching consensus I believe is a much easier goal, compared to something like Arab League which wants to unify all Arab countries into a kind of Union.

Thirdly poltiical and actual Islam need to be DIVIDED. COMPLETELY. Look at the Iranian Shia school of thought that mixes politics with Shia Islam. It originates from the city of Qom and is totally different from the traditional Shia centers of thought in Karbala and Najaf in Iraq.

So if you see Awlaqi or another self-proclaimed cleric then don't take his word for granted but seek knowledge in the Holy Qur'an, the Prophet of the Sunnah, your local religious community or elders. Always be critical and use your knowledge correctly as taught to us by Prophet Muhammad (saws).

This is exactly the problem I want to address. Islamic Madhabs have been deviated in recent history, political Islam is one result of this deviation. Some took it to extremes and there is no global body to declare that they are crossing the line of acceptable reinterpretation according to established practices in Islam. For example, OBL and Zwahiri declared war on the West. If we had a GFC, it could call a meeting, reach a consensus and declare that OBL and Zwahiri have no right to make such declaration, and their Fatwa's are null and void, based on exactly what Fiqh grounds. This could then be carried and propagated to all part of Muslim world and declared in Khutba's in mosques. You see what I am getting at.

Most importantly EDUCATION is needed. And education again. Religious and non-religious because without education you can make a kind man into a devil with the right rhetoric and if that person has personal problems or in a situation where he is inclined to follow actions which he usually would denounce.

Also poverty. This goes hand in hand with education. We can all see a tendency that transcends ethnic groups, religion and geography, region in our world. And that is the lack of education and poverty. It is probably the most dangerous mixture because it leads to hopelessness and ultimately to everything that is denounced by Islam and common sense.

I agree that more education and poverty alleviation of the poor Muslim population will go a long way to solve this problem, but we need something in the interim to control extremism among the poor uneducated Muslim masses, while we work on long term projects to remove poverty and improve education.

Also be proud and don't be afraid to speak your mind. Unfortunately many Muslims are silent when they hear Islamophobic speeches/tendencies instead of acting with a harsh hand with logic (words in other words, LOL). To show that the people who are guilty of that, that they are misinformed. Invite them to Islam. Don't denounce them from a Muslim perspective.

For example I read that there are Shari'ah patrols in UK that target non-Muslims. Imagine if you were a non-Muslim and some violent/threatening Muslim comes up to you and says that you need to wear a hijab in Coventry for example while UK is a non-Muslim land that is not governed by Islamic lw. Would that invite them to Islam or scare them away. Would individuals who were exposed to such a behavior ever feel attracted to Islam? My guess is that they would get a bad reputation of it which is not the point. We are supposed to make da'wah not scare people away. Also Muslims CANNOT (I cannot state this more clearly) command non-Muslims in a foreign land to follow Shari'ah or pass judgements. This is left alone for the religious council during a trial under Shari'ah law otherwise every single Muslim could make judgements to Muslims and non-Muslims alike based on his own interpretations and observations. That's not how a Islamic society works.

There are probably 1000 of other things you could do but that's some of my answers.

Reducing extremism will be just one of the goals of the GFC, but I believe that a GFC will be effective against other problems among Muslim population:

- reducing shia-sunni conflict
- foster more unity among Muslims of different ethnic groups, countries and regions

 

[kalu_miah]

I am reviving this thread, specially with regards to the Terrorist attack on Boston marathon.

The prime suspects are Muslims (of Chechen ethnic origin, who grew up Central Asia and the US), although it is too early to tell if they were the actual perpetrators. I guess it will become clear with time.

In the meantime, I am hoping to hear more opinions on this issue, as extremism and the resulting terrorism is affecting all Muslims of the world, where ever we happen to be. We need to stamp out this menace from among our midst and nothing so far has been working. I maintain that this GFC idea will work.

 

[PeaceGen]

This was posted before in another thread so this is a cross post.

I propose a project:

Global Fiqh Council (GFC)
(Fiqh means Islamic Jurisprudence)
Fiqh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Headquarter must be in a high gdp Muslim country, I recommend either Turkey or Malaysia. It should be a research institution in an Islamic university. Every country and ethnic group of Muslims with at least 5 million population will get to send one Ulama from their community. So there will be approximately 320 Ulama representatives from around the world. Around 280 from Sunni communities and 40 from Shia communities.

The project should be funded by OIC.

It should have living quarters for all Ulama, library, class, conference centers etc. Qualified Ulama's will teach classes at the university, others will do teaching assistant job and research.

Their job will be to come up with a standardized one version of Sunni Islam, one version of Shia Islam and then make sure that these standardized versions do not have any conflict between them. There can be standardized sub-versions for individual Madhabs.

Once these standardized versions are finalized, then all previous versions will be considered null and void and made illegal if possible. New text books (in every language that has significant Muslim population), research books, position papers will be published by GFC.

Then it will become mandatory for all Mosques, Imams, Mullahs, Madrasa, Islamic teaching institutions etc. to follow these teaching materials in every OIC member countries. OIC will also have to make treaties or agreements with countries with significant minority Muslims such as India, Russia, EU, USA etc. to make these materials available to their institutions, which will go a long way towards preventing deviant ideas among their Muslim population.

My motivation for this proposal is the following:

- Islam and Muslims have been a world power since its beginning
- Mongol invasion was a major body blow and many say Islamic civilization never recovered from it
- West which luckily got spared from Mongol invasion due to death of Ogedei Khan right before the invasion, later got more powerful and superseded all civilizations in rest of the world
- decline of Islamic civilization and empires specially became acute in last 3 hundred years, with loss of Mughal Hindustan, which went under British and finally divided in partition, Ottoman fragmented in WW I and Iran also lost land such as Azerbaijan to Russia
- after the fall of Mughal, Deoband started in India, and after fall of Ottoman Salafi became powerful in Arabian peninsula and others started spreading ideas of political Islam such as Hassan Al Banna, Syed Qutb, Jamal Al din Afghani, Taqiuddin Nabhani, Abul Ala Moududi, OBL, Zwahiri, Awlaqi etc. Since 1979 Shia Islam had their own supremacist ideology developed in Qom.
- the thing to note about all of the above ideas/ideology is that these are product of fragmented societies without backing of any state power and hence are fundamentally devoid of legitimacy and are bound to be full of deviations
- Salafi is an exception as it is tied to a state, but its origin is from a rebellious area who never had to administer a large empire with this ideology. Its management of Saudi Arabia and allowing funds to spread to other parts of the world was detrimental to the Muslim world
- the recent Shia ideology developed in Qom since 1979 has so far badly mismanaged Iran and shia affairs by spreading these ideas among other Shia population. One effect of this has been constant conflict with Sunni Muslims in many parts of the world
- so due to lack of interest or understanding of how important it is to manage religious and ideological matters and manage them centrally in one place, amateurs have taken over in this area with their ad hoc efforts in many parts of the world with catastrophic results
- the solution I believe is pulling together a team from all corners of the Muslim world and then properly manage all religious matters centrally in one place and thus take it out from the hands of amateurs

If we can get this project going, I think we will be able to address some critical problems Muslims and Islam are facing, such as Shia-Sunni divide and conflict, terrorism and violence by rogue Islamic groups, groups like Taliban banning education for Girls without any basis in Islam and many others.

The GFC can be a seed for solution to the problem of fragmentation, conflict, chaos and become a vehicle to promote unity, tolerance and peaceful coexistence with people of different faith among 1.6 billion Muslims.

So is this going to work? If not please tell us why not and provide alternative ideas that may work.

If you can get the funding and approval and enough member countries, then yes, it could work.
The timing sure seems right for a version of the Quran that does away with the old inter-faith hatred and oppression of the older Qurans. You might even recruit western / jewish money to get the job done that way. I hope your intention is to create a Quran that not only solves the Sunni-Shia problems, but also the Muslim<->rest-of-the-faiths problems.

But be prepared for resistance from the very 'governments' that you seek to sell this new Quran to.
They might not want even the inter-muslim unity you propose.

And you should be prepared for a lot of resistance from those who want to cling to an older version of the Quran.
While I'd love a more friendly Quran being forced onto all muslims, I doubt it's a practical angle.
You have to plan for your book being just one of many being promoted.
Only a book that is authorized by all the rulers who have to enforce that that's the book being read, stands a chance of being 'adopted' quickly by what is still force (you mentioned it should be "mandatory", and I wonder how you're going to force people to memorize *your* book instead of the book of their own parents)..

 

[notsuperstitious]

If you can get the funding and approval and enough member countries, then yes, it could work.
The timing sure seems right for a version of the Quran that does away with the old inter-faith hatred and oppression of the older Qurans. You might even recruit western / jewish money to get the job done that way. I hope your intention is to create a Quran that not only solves the Sunni-Shia problems, but also the Muslim<->rest-of-the-faiths problems.

But be prepared for resistance from the very 'governments' that you seek to sell this new Quran to.
They might not want even the inter-muslim unity you propose.

And you should be prepared for a lot of resistance from those who want to cling to an older version of the Quran.
While I'd love a more friendly Quran being forced onto all muslims, I doubt it's a practical angle.
You have to plan for your book being just one of many being promoted.
Only a book that is authorized by all the rulers who have to enforce that that's the book being read, stands a chance of being 'adopted' quickly by what is still force (you mentioned it should be "mandatory", and I wonder how you're going to force people to memorize *your* book instead of the book of their own parents)..

If you think he's proposing anything as radical as writing an altered book, you should read his posts in BD section about non muslims in BD and other places.

 

[Developereo]

I am hoping to hear more opinions on this issue, as extremism and the resulting terrorism

Islamic terrorism will disappear if there are strong Muslim militaries. Fanatics in other religions vent their anger by joining the military and shooting up Ay-rabs or Moos-lims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine or Mali. Muslim fanatics have no such outlet so they carry out terrorism.

Case in point: if a strong Muslim military had "liberated" Chechnya, there would be no Chechen terrorists.

 

[Wright]

Islamic terrorism will disappear if there are strong Muslim militaries. Fanatics in other religions vent their anger by joining the military and shooting up Ay-rabs or Moos-lims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine or Mali. Muslim fanatics have no such outlet so they carry out terrorism.

Case in point: if a strong Muslim military had "liberated" Chechnya, there would be no Chechen terrorists.

There are plenty of strong muslim militaries. Many GCC nations rank among the top spenders on military hardware. There are also plenty of non muslim armies which are weak. I point to Iceland, Japan, Poland as examples.

 

[Developereo]

There are plenty of strong muslim militaries. Many GCC nations rank among the top spenders on military hardware. There are also plenty of non muslim armies which are weak. I point to Iceland, Japan, Poland as examples.

I meant 'strong' in the global sense where the Muslim militaries can hold their own against the major powers. "Liberating" Chechnya, for example, would require a military that could checkmate Russia.

Israel gets away with it because it is the regional power, backed by the world's superpower.

 

[ExtraOdinary]

I meant 'strong' in the global sense where the Muslim militaries can hold their own against the major powers. "Liberating" Chechnya, for example, would require a military that could checkmate Russia.

Israel gets away with it because it is the regional power, backed by the world's superpower.

Are you serious??? Even hypothetically if there is such an army it would lead to nuclear war and more chaos. Education is the only way to eliminate ignorance. And that holds true for all religious nutjobs.

 

[Dubious]

Well, I agree to a certain extent...

I mean if we have the West taking some form of interest like Germany's New Islamic Centers: Funded by Taxpayers :: Gatestone Institute and 2011 - Society - Qantara.debeing 1 of the ones that was brought to my knowledge by a German priest who is also a friend of mine...who asked similar questions as to why Muslims have not united under 1 hood?!

Note: Both articles are of the same center

I mean we have small centers spread around everywhere, why not pool them under 1 umbrella...not sure if it will be for good or worse...But at least we can have a references point which once upon a time the Egyptian Al-Azhar uni used to hold...but after some of their scholars started spreading nonsense fatwah it lost its name....

 

[Developereo]

Are you serious??? Even hypothetically if there is such an army it would lead to nuclear war and more chaos. Education is the only way to eliminate ignorance. And that holds true for all religious nutjobs.

So Russia, China and the US being 'strong' has led to nuclear war?

There is the 'good fences make good neighbors' school of thought which believes that a multi-polar would be a more peaceful world. If Muslim countries could defend their interests from the superpowers, there would be less resentment and less chance of nutcases blowing things up.

 

[Audio]

Note: Both articles are of the same center

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan uses DITIB to control over 900 mosques in Germany -- to prevent Turkish immigrants from integrating into German society.

During a trip to Germany in November 2011, Erdogan said that Berlin's insistence that immigrants who want to live in Germany must integrate and learn the German language is "against human rights."

Sounds good....from one of the links you provided. Fucking backward mentality.....

 

[ExtraOdinary]

So Russia, China and the US being 'strong' has led to nuclear war?

There is the 'good fences make good neighbors' school of thought which believes that a multi-polar would be a more peaceful world. If Muslim countries could defend their interests from the superpowers, there would be less resentment and less chance of nutcases blowing things up.

Don't you think military intervention against Russia's sovereignty, that you propose, would lead to an all out bloody conflict??

If you think he's proposing anything as radical as writing an altered book, you should read his posts in BD section about non muslims in BD and other places.

yaar hamare alawa kaun jaata hai BD section