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[quote=Anonymous]Yusuf gave a 2 hour lecture at Oxford University on this subject. I watched half of the video last night. If anyone is interested here's the entire transcript. It's lengthy but discusses whether it would be permissible for Muslims to reform (or "renovate" ) the way Islam is interpreted. Short answer is yes.

I hope that what we all took away from the arguing on the Islam threads is that
1) There is no one interpretation of Islam that speaks for all 1.6 billion people
2) Peaceful Muslims can not be held resposible for the atrocities committed by extremists
3) The Sharia, hadith, or even scholarly views are not infallible and some parts may be corrupted
4) However, reform (or "renovation") is indeed possible. It's a long way off but possible.

Transcript for Rethinking Reform

Transcript Details
Event Name: Rethinking Reform
Transcript Author: Organization
Description: The Rethinking Islamic Reform organization transcribed their own event. Better to follow the link above, as their website has everything formatted nicely.
Date Transcribed: 1/1/2010 12:00:00 AM
Original URL: http://www.rethinkingislamicreform.co.uk/transcript

Transcript Text
Rethinking Islamic Reform conference on behalf of Oxford University Islamic society.
SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF HANSON KEYNOTE ADDRESS
 
SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF HANSON: Bismillah al-Rahman Al-Rahim. Allahumma salli wa sallim 'alaa Sayyidina Muhammad wa ‘ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallim tasleeman katheera. Wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah al ‘aliy al ‘adheem In the name of  God, the merciful, the compassionate and peace and prayers be upon the prophets of God and upon our prophet Muhammad. Alhamdulilah. #00:16:25-9#
 
YUSUF*[1]: I'm going try to address each one of these points that I've been asked to address but before that I would like to preface my remarks by talking about a specific problem that we have when we look at the Islamic tradition, when we look at Islam as a faith and when we are addressing an audience that contains both peoples from the Islamic faith of various obvious types and backgrounds and then of western people. In science, you have what are called 'non-complementary paradigms' and to give an example of that, Newtonian Physics is a certain way of viewing the world and it works at a certain level, but if you attempt to apply Newtonian Physics to Quantum Mechanics, it doesn't work - you have a non-complementary system attempting to address things that are very different and need a different language to describe them and a different theoretical basis to make sense of them. In many ways, the post-industrial, increasingly post-modern Western Liberalism is akin to Quantum Mechanics and the Islamic tradition is more akin to Newtonian Physics; and so when the two of us attempt to talk, we're speaking completely different languages and it really creates a massive barrier.
 
[ Edited to comply with copyright laws. ][/quote]

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