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Showing posts with the label wahhabism
I have just finished reading The Mosaic of Islam  (the ebook version) I have some comments and a couple of corrections. 
P. 38: "most Muslims do not understand Islam correctly." I find this shocking. It assumes that there is a correct Islam. There is a historical Islam not a correct or a wrong one. As Ahmad Shahab put it beautifully there are contradictions and coherence of what Islam is in most Muslims. It has been the case in most of Islam's history. And the spectrum is so wide from Mauritania to Indonesia.. 
 P. 58: There is no socio-political explanation of the reason(s)/background behind the emergence of Muhammaed and Islam. There is no mention at all of the state and the character of the new society as if the changes in the juriprudence just sprung from a Caliph's brain with no connection to the material life. 
P. 66: "Part of the reasons where there is so much chaos ..." How does the beginning of the chaos in Libya (an uprising and NATO inte
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"Robin Yassin-Kassab examines the axis of useful idiocy that responds to the rise of torch wielding fascism in the U.S. with whatabout-Hillaryisms, that defends British chauvinism as a tactic to combat globalism, and that defends the genocidal Syrian Regime as a hedge against 'Zio-Wahhabi' imperialism. "It isn’t surprising that the right sees every Syrian refugee as a potential terorist when the left has spent years  opining that the Syrian revolution is run by al-Qaida (or American imperialism, or Zionism). These beasts feed each other. The greatest threats today are rising authoritarianism, whether it calls itself leftist or rightist, and the preference for ideology over human reality, for simplistic conspiracism over complicated facts. This is going to get a lot more messy. We need answers to the politics of austerity and the undoubted tensions of a globalised and increasingly technologised economy. Nostalgia for the social compositions of earlier decades, and the
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This is an interesting argumentative essay on "Salafism". However, it is also a disappoitment. If I was to give a score, it would be 50\100. It is a good essay in terms of arguments and counter-arguments, etc. I have learnt a few things from it. However, I find such a way of writing too horizontal as if ideas emerge from people's minds with no connection to real life in their respective societies. I do not accept the excuse that I often hear: "Dealing with the social, economic, political, class, background of ideas is beyond the scope of this essay." A history which we can learn from is a history that is holistic with its interactive components and ingredients. Otherwise, it is sterile. I recall reading Assef Bayat, for example, analysing the Islamic movements in Iran and Egypt or Karen Armstrong dealing with how "Religion Fights Back" or how "Jihād" went global. There is a background, there is the vertical and the horizental. I have been d
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A historian with an Islamophobic approach and poor historiography, and a journalist with good arguments, but a partial take.  Lacking in Osborne's perpective is violence in historical "Islam". There is no "Islam, religion of peace" or violent "Islam". There is historical Islam with both peace and violence like historical Christianity, Hinduism, "capitalist democracy", etc. "No, Channel 4: Islam is not responsible for the Islamic State"
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