MUST READ: ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF ....WHAT?!?

Islam is a religion of....what?
Warner MacKenzie

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare. So, with Shakespeare in mind, aren't the accepted meanings of words common to all peoples, all languages? If one mentions the word rose in the English, Spanish, German or Chinese language, surely the same imagery appears in the mind of the listener? Well, at least one would think so……. What about more abstract concepts like love and peace? Don't they resonate with the same import in the minds and hearts of all cultures?

Personally, peace for me, would invariably conjure up an image of tranquility, calm, and in human relationship terms, individually or globally, an absence of hostility and the presence of a tolerant, harmonious co-existence.

Well, it appears that “It ain't necessarily so”.

Despite most of the world's inhabitants agreeing with the above definition there seems to be one theological school of thought which has an entirely different idea of what constitutes peace, according to Syrian born Dr. Professor Bassam Tibi, who teaches political science at Goettingen University in Germany.

Dr.Tibi, who claims to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, is a member of a small worldwide Muslim reform movement which calls for a renovated, Europeanised Islam that is compatible with Western secular democracy. He recently warned the West against wishful thinking in any dialogue it entered into with Islam.

"The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other," Bassam Tibi said in an interview with United Press International.

So, what's the fly in the ointment?

Well, it turns out, that the problem is the understanding, peculiar to Islam, of the word peace!

In the final analysis, it becomes all too clear that we are not, in fact, talking about the same concept at all.

Islam understands peace to be a different bird of a different feather, altogether.

And it's not a dove ….

...




Pertinent Links:

1) Islam is a religion of....what?