Syrian Muslim creates "Euro-Islam" for migrants - Russian Muslim leader slams the attempt as misguided and ignorant

Pravda.ru
Wed, 27 Dec 2017 18:01 UTC

© Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters

Syrian Muslim and Islamic scholar Bassam Tibi developed a new version of Islam - Euro-Islam, an adapted version of Islam for refugees who want to settle in the countries of the European Union, but seem to be unable to integrate into European life because of a number of religious principles.

In particular, Euro-Islam proposes separating religion and politics, rejecting jihad and Sharia law, accepting democracy and tolerance, in which people of different faiths are equal, rather than subordinated to each other. Euro-Islam also envisages renunciation of superiority of Muslims over people practicing other religions.

Only an unbeliever could make such proposals which in general do not hold water, chairman of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Mufti Khadzhimurad Gatsalov, told Pravda.Ru.

"I believe that only a stupid and sick man could propose this," he said.

"There is no arrogance in Islam - there is tolerance in Islam instead. Islam has all the things that the Western world has been propagandizing for long already. As for the rejection of Sharia - Sharia is the basis of Islam, the legal justification of Islam, this is Islam as it is. There is no Islam without Sharia. Only a non-believer could come up with something like this. I can not give any assessment to this, because those proposals do not hold water.

"Basic principles of Islam are good for all mankind. There is no jihad in Islam in the understanding that exists in the world today. Genuine Islam does not have all the negative things that some Muslims have contributed to it.

There is mercy, kindness, perfection of the human soul. Therefore, any person who adheres to Islam, is good for any society. If a person does not adhere to it and calls themselves a Muslim, such people are a problem for any society, including for the Islamic one.

"What kind of European democratic values does this person speak of? For me, there are absolutely no democratic values in Europe. My values are here in Russia, and they are above all European values, because in Russia, there are such things are humanness, kindheartedness and morality. There are no such things in the West.

"When someone starts telling me that Europe is a territory of democracy, it sounds ridiculous to me. There is no place for religion, including Orthodoxy, in the place, where people propagate gay marriage, trample upon morality and destroy the very essence of morality.

"Those who come to Europe have a lot to work on. Many things that those people do when they come to Europe - they do not pray, but treat others in a very rude way, insult and harass women, etc. - all those things are strongly condemned in Islam.

"The problem is not about Islam. The problem is about the people, who do not understand Islam and its history. I always oppose such a thing as the war of civilizations, because all of us are children of human civilization, but different layers of this civilization have different levels of education and culture. Different cultures may confront each other, but Islam has nothing to do with it.

"If people adhered to genuine Islam and other religions, including Christianity, we would be living in peace now. Islam teaches everything that the West propagates, albeit only verbally - electivity, mutual respect, freedom, equality, brotherhood and many other things."

Comment: Islamists would beg to differ. They represent the "true, genuine Islam". Just ask them. They'll cite chapter and verse to justify their positions on everything - just like every other religious fanatic, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist... That's the problem: religious texts are like massive Rorschach tests. You can read whatever you want into them, and be perfectly justified in doing so. The problem with the true believers is that they can't just say, "Yeah, that bit right there - wrong. Just ignore it." Instead, they force themselves to engage in contorted mental gymnastics, when a rational person would just concede the point. Face it: most religions contain stupid, out-of-date, destructive ideas. As long as they do, and as long as believers are convinced they are the holders of the "genuine, God-given, totally true" ideas and interpretations, there will always be room for crazies to justify just about anything in the name of their religion.

But in the meantime, Mufti Gatsalov's approach at least has the advantage of propagating an interpretation of Islam that not only counters the Islamists, but propagates values that are universal enough that everyone can get along to a reasonable degree. The question is, can it do what Tibi's "Euro-Islam" was designed to do? If not, what is the solution?