Why Islam Will Never Have A Reformation
A mantra that is often chanted by many Islamo-skeptics is that Islam could be compatible with the Western world, if it could somehow go through a Reformation such as what happened with Christianity in the 16th century. However well intentioned this statement may be, it is nonetheless not applicable, because the Reformation of Martin Luther and John Calvin, is in no way comparable to the reformation Islam needs and secondly, it is inherently impossible for Islam to suffer a reformation and still be Islam.
Man consider this topic to be a moot issue, considering the strength of the so-called “radicals” but it ultimately is a necessary topic to explore if we are to understand true Islam.
In understanding this fallacy, there are two main points in recognizing the impossibility of Islam to reform itself. Firstly is understanding the contrastings between the Christian Reformation of the 16th century and the “needed” Islamic reformation and secondly, noting the impossibility of an actual reformation of any kind happening inside Islam.
If we are to assert that Islam can and needs to be reformed, just as Christianity was once reformed, that presupposes then that the radical Islam of today is comparable to the Catholic Church of the 1500s and the reformers would be more akin to the Protestants. But what the average person fails to realize is that the Protestant Reformation was based upon challenging a bureaucratic network that had captivated the Christian Church and led it doctrinally astray. It was an attempt on the part of the reformers to bring Christianity back to orthodoxy, not to “modernize” the Gospel message.
In contrasting radical Islam with Catholicism, the problem with the Islam of today is that it is not Islam that has gone astray as the Roman Church did in the 1500s. But rather the brand of Islam the so-called “radicals” follow, is the Islam of Muhammad, it is the original Islam. If the roles of the Protestant Reformation were brought into a modern day context, the roles of Martin Luther and John Calvin would be played by men such as Osama bin laden, Al Zawahiri and Kalid Sheik Muhammad.
But even more foundationally than this, is the sheer impossibility for a free-thinking reformation to happen inside Islam as did happen in Christian Europe. Foundationally, the Catholic Church of the 1500s, despite its authoritarian overstretch, was far more liberal and open than Islam is today. For example, Luther was allowed to operate inside the system of the Roman Church for a long time before being excommunicated. Luther and the other reformers also found a political, aristocratic and clerical establishment that found sympathies with the message of the Reformation.
And as already said, despite Catholic Church’s authoritarianism, it was not totalitarian as Islam is. Roman Catholicism had put previous attempts at a reformation down via violence, but regardless of this, this practice was not universally endorsed throughout Christendom. The Reformers almost always found a home for security in the lands of an aristocrat or nation that had sympathies with the Reformers, because even under the iron fist of Rome, free thought and expression was allowed on a basic level.
If a reformation was to be created in the Islamic world today, there would be no land where a contingent of Islamic reformers could stand against the “fundamentalists” and any Islamic leader who attempted to endorse free thought would be murdered (i.e. Anwar Sadat) This desired reformation will never happen with endorsements from the top down, because the power centers want Islam to remain orthodox, for two reasons. Firstly because they are devout believers of Muhammad’s original message and secondly, because orthodox Islam aids the sustaining of power for dictators and oligarchs. In the time of the Reformation, many leaders not only found sympathies theologically with the Reformation, but politically as well.
The reformation that spawned in Europe, was in the wake of a spiritual and intellectual vacuum that the Catholic Church had created in Europe. No such vacuum exists in the Islamic world, the overriding trend in the Islamic world (and Islam in Europe for that matter) is towards a more pure, ancient form of Islam—the Islam of Muhammad. The only time would have perhaps been during the so-called “Golden Age of Islam” during the late Middle Ages in which the Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian scholars residing in the Islamic courts were copying and proliferating the works of Classical Greece and creating the scientific inventions that helped empower the Islamic culture. But if it could not happen at this time, when Islam was actually exposed to higher Western intellectual though, then there is far less of a chance now.
Foundationally, if Islam was to be reformed, it would no longer be Islam. The Five Pillars along with Jihad form the basis of the Islamic religion. Once the concept of slave like submission to Allah and the Caliphate is removed and the jihad struggle against the infidels is also removed, Islam as Muhammad received it ceases to exist and all that Islam is left with is a set of moral principles that Moses and Jesus Christ reiterated. Islam would them effectively become nothing more than a cultic version of Judaism or Christianity. Islam would cease to stand as a relevant religious force in the world that is distinguished from the other major world religions.
The Protestant Reformation was more of an issue of “housekeeping” inside the Christian world rather than a total transformation of the Christian faith. If Islam was to go through the same reforms, it would be more than housekeeping, it would be a revolutionary transformation of Islam to fit inside the modern world (that the Protestant Reformation spawned) by repudiating many of the core beliefs of Islam that Muhammad laid down inside the Quran and Hadith.
The truth must be faced head on in the Western world, that the only way to defeat so-called “radical Islam” is to encourage a perversion of Islam and accept the truth, that Islam is not peaceful, Muhammad is not like Jesus and Muhammadism is in no way connected with Western Civilization.
Once this realization takes place (as it is in many parts of Europe and beginning in the United States) then the identities, traditions, laws and religions of the West can experience a new birth of freedom from both political correctness and the inevitability of a new dark age. It must be remembered that Islam is ultimately not the root problem inside Islamic culture, the problem is post-modern secular humanism which doggedly advances this creed of multiculturalism down the throats of the West. It is not Islam that binds us with political correctness that inhibits us to critique and scrutinize Islam, it is radical humanism. It is radical humanism that demanded that the West abandon the God of the Bible and embrace a New World Order of pluralism and secularism.
The fight against Islaminization is tied at the hip to the fight against political correctness. If the West could only again assert itself with conviction in contrast to the religion of Muhammad, then in the process, political correctness will begin to unravel as people begin to see the futility of sustaining this suicidal ideology.
