Originally posted by sonhouse
So why hasn't the muslim world put out a death warrent on Bin Laden?
In Pakistan where he seems to be holed up, there is a lot of support for him and the Pakistani government is almost treating him with kid gloves. It seems Muslim law is still looking the other way because they see a common enemy in christianity.
As a technical matter, the “Muslim world” does not speak with one voice—any more than, say, Congregationalist churches. (See my prior posts here on fatwas.)
Why did not the civilized, intelligent, German Christians stand against Hitler when he was coming to power? (A few did; not the majority church, however.)
But that is not an answer either—I know you well enough for that! The broader question may be, “Why do members of any group that professes certain virtues that you and I would agree upon, allow their group to be used by some for purposes that run exactly counter to those virtues?” Fear, complacency, disempowerment?*
Do me a favor—since this thread has been specifically Christian versus Muslim in tenor, and I think your critique goes far deeper than that—take a look at my last post in the “7 Questions” thread, where I have tried, probably badly, to at least put the “core” question...
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* I want to point out that, although I think the Islamic protests need to get broader and more vocal—as does, say, Abou el Fadl—the media coverage of such is not always great. For example, from Karen Armstrong’s biography of Muhammad:
“Far more coverage was given, for example, to the Muslims who vociferously supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s
fatwa against British author Salman Rushdie than to the majority who opposed it. The religious authorities of Saudi Arabia [hardly liberals!] and the sheikhs of the prestigious mosque of Al-Azhar in Cairo both condemned the
fatwa as illegal and un-Islamic: Muslim law does not permit a man to be sentenced to death without trial and has no jurisdiction outside the Islamic world. At the Islamic Conference of march 1989, forty-four out of the forty-five member states unanimously rejected the Ayatollah’s ruling. But this received only cursory attention in the British press and left many people with the misleading impression that the entire Muslim world was clamouring for Rushdie’s blood.”
This example is dated—but I recall the sparse coverage in the US given to Muslim denunciations of 9/11 (often relegated to page 3, etc.).
But then, how many people are reading Abou el Fadl’s book?
Dschihad versus crusades
08 Nov '06 18:36
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