Islam Then And Now?

[des]

Hi. Yesterday I was watching Book TV on CSPAN. Yes, yours truly is an egghead.

But not enough of an egghead not to have tv! :-) (Or say maybe read the books.)

 

Anyway, one of the authors was a Roya Hakakian on her book "Journey from the land of No: a girlhood caught in revolutionary Iran". I really want to read this. But what it is about is an autobiographical story of a Jewish girl (there were lots of Jews at one time) growing up in Iran.

 

What struck me, as I have read a lot of what I think are perhaps quite racist things about Islam lately, but Islam is quite a bit more fundamentalist than it used to be. Or that at least there are more vocal and fanatic Moslems than there were. Because she lived an pretty normal girlhood with close Muslim friends and never knew she was particularly different.

She commented that a friend of hers had objected to her using "coexist" because it implies that they would be living different worlds. Anyway it was an Islam and Iran we don't usually hear about.

 

The following are some more or less racist views I have heard lately. I think many of them are perpetuated by fundamentalist Christians btw. But I did read some of these on another liberal Christian forum, not sure which one as I have seen so many. One is that Islam is inherently a radical fundamentalist (you don't always hear that word) religion and there is no such thing as a moderate; that women always hold a lower status (they should read Paul, as I'm sure they have)-- it isn't the culture; that stuff like female genital mutilation is an Islamic practice; etc. This certainly did not jive with things I heard on this.

 

BTW, for more fun you can go to:http://www.theocracywatch.org/index.html

This lists the aims of some Fundamentalist Christians who seem to be seeking many of the same Moslem ideals. Actually it's pretty frightening!

 

I'm interested in others take on Islam. I think we aren't too well educated on it.

 

--des

[BeachOfEden]

Yes, I agree with you. One time on beliefnet that advertised that there IS NOW,actually a Progressive Islam Network. I have often thought that maybe they experince the same sort of problem as us..which is the fundamentalist have all the radio time, tv time and so their voice outshots everyone. It might be worth reseacrhing to see if this "Progressive Islam" network can be found on the web.