© Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters
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.
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 Face it: most religions contain stupid, out-of-date, destructive ideas.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?