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Thursday, May 1, 2014

Tony Blair on the Islamist Threat

This blog post has been moved. It can be viewed HERE.

3 comments:

  1. Dear Mr. Durie,

    Thanks for helping clarify Mr. Blair's message.

    Though I agree 100% with the points you make, I find that your last point "In order to combat radical Islamic views we do need to have a frank and open dialogue about the dynamics of radicalization." is the most urgent.

    Not enough has been discussed on the role of the clerical class in this world wide Jihad. Your arguments that the Islamic texts themselves are the source of the problem are valid but will not convince those western liberal who resist discrediting Islam because, it is theoretically possible to abrogate every single jihadist verse in the Sunna. When there's a will there's a way.

    Assume this is true for the sake of the argument, then the real engine behind the relevance of the jihadist verses is the Islamic clerical class: a few tens of thousands of clerics, educated in the main schools of Islamic jurisprudence (no more than 15 institutions, counting the Sunni and Shia).

    I have read that Muslims do not self-radicalize, because unlike Christians they lack a tradition of reading the fundamental texts and interpreting them on their own. It appears that Muslims radicalize when they shop around for a cleric they like and fall under the influence of a radical. From then on it's downhill because unlike Christians, Muslim will ask the cleric for guidance in all aspects of life, as you well know. And unfortunately, 99% of the clerics are radical...

    I have been very impressed by the writings of Mr. Malik on this topic, especially on the role of multiculturalism in the radicalization of Muslims: http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/what-is-wrong-with-multiculturalism-part-2/
    saying that multiculturalism in the West empowered the most radical clerics and disenfranchised liberal Muslim individuals and liberal clerics within their own communities, with which I fully agree. (He says other things, e.g. that multiculturalism was a soft implementation of apartheid implemented by covert racists, which in my eyes blame the victim, but that is another matter).

    In the UK tradition there is no constitutional separation of Church and State, instead there was the Act of Submission of the Clergy. Do you see as possible a similar involvement of the state in the establishment and regulation of a UK school of Islamic jurisprudence that abrogates the jihadist verses? I really do not know enough about the relation between the Anglican Church and the state to even start to envision this...

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  2. Dear Rev. Durie,

    I find your analysis most interesting as it chimes with my own understanding. Some 25+ years ago, I taught RE at what was practically an all Muslim School in Birmingham. In order to make space for teaching Christianity, I used Islamic documents and sources to teach Islam. I could then tell them to open a Bible when teaching Christianity. They were fascinated by a Christian who believed what he taught and were keen to discuss the differences of our respective faiths. What became very clear was that they were convinced that Islam was the future. What was also clear was that the Islamic sources were such that I realised that armed conflict would be inevitable, not because we wanted it but because the internal logic of fundamental Islam dictated it.

    In my own blog, I gave an analysis of this about a year ago here: http://thealmondrod.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/do-we-need-islamic-reformation.html

    Very few people today understand the nature of religious reformation. If they did, we would have very different foreign policies.

    The problem is, very few people are listening. At least Tony Blair has started to move in the right direction.

    Every blessing in Jesus.

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  3. Tony Blair has failed to see that Islam is based on slavery. There is no equality between a Muslim and a disbeliever...that is...POLITICAL equality. The disbeliever is either a quiescent dhimmi or he must be executed by the Islamic state which does not permit freedom of expression in religious matters.

    Once the freedom of expression is removed, all other freedoms go with it. Tony Blair is not speaking the truth about Islam...though I am certain he knows this.

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