Reply to s/o 'Moderate Muslims' , another Huffington post blog piece

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm the PP who gave the first reply to this thread. I'll reply in-line  :)

[quote=Anonymous]Thanks

We are and we aren't. . theologically we trend more sufi but in the way that Ahmadi Islam is practiced it is very close to orthodox Hanifi school Sunni Islam, most women wear hijab, we practice the 5 pillars etc.. Our translations of the arabic in the Holy Quran are very different from the traditional Suadi/wahabi translations. [/quote]

Very interesting, thanks for explaining. I didn't know about those theological distinctions. I'm mostly very attracted to the Sufi practices of devotional love, the idea of being intoxicated with love for the Divine Beloved. And of course, Rumi is a big source of inspiration for me.

[quote]
The thing is if you approach a text being mysogonistic or hateful/violent then that is how you are going to view the language.[/quote]

[quote]
Like the verse about cutting off at the neck- its actually brilliant  strategy- it doesn't mean behead people, it means that you go at the root of the problem and finish it, strike at the heart of the hydra, not at its multiplying heads. [/quote]

Oh, I 100000% agree. And it's the same thing in Hinduism (I'm Hindu). We have a tantric Goddess, Chinnamasta, who beheads herself and lets fountains of blood spurt from her neck and into the waiting mouths of her daughters. She is God and her self-decapitation is an act of supreme love, mercy and self-sacrifice - for the spiritual seeker, her self-decapitation is meant to show death of the ego, death of illusion, etc. I would be very interested in reading an Ahmadi version of the Quran because it's exactly this kind of spiritual interpretation that I would love to read. Can you recommend an English version of the Ahmadi Quran?

[quote]We believe that the applications of the verses change as the world we live in changes. We are thankfully not living in the premodern era, human civilization has come a long way since then and we should embrace that development and not try to go back to a past where no-one had access to modern medicine and education.[/quote]

Yes, and it's not a trouble unique to the Quran either. Hindu and Christian and Jewish scriptures all have some seriously misogynistic, disturbing stuff, but we try to apply those scriptures to the modern era. So it's not fair that the Quran should be singled out for its period-era writing - all religions have that problem.

[quote]
of course orthodox sunnis don't like this at all because then they can't blame the evil west and colonization for all of our problems  and can just wallow in anger and nostalgia (wow- they sound like trump supporters) but actually have to face the problems of building a healthy society dealing with the forces of modern technology and globalization.[/quote]

This is why I actually consider Wahhabis to be real "moderate Muslims", because their way of life and thinking is not based on Islam so much as it's based on culture and politics. They're VERY against actual Islamic mysticism and for me, personally, mysticism is the true extreme level of religious engagement. You can correct me if you disagree with me. They're exactly like the fundamentalist Tea Party Christians who, in my opinion, aren't actually interested in engaging with Christ and surrendering to the Holy Spirit, they're just interested in preserving an Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture and way of life.

I'm rambling now but basically I agree with you that in order to counteract the crazy fanatics AND the reactionary Islamophobes, it's really important to demonstrate committed Islamic practices in a peaceful way, not try to be "lukewarm". I would actually really love to see a lot more Sufi Islamic outreach and visibility, personally. I'm pretty sure that reminding the world that Islam gave us Rumi would be really useful.  :)

And personally speaking, I also want to smash the distinctions between "liberal religious practitioner" and "orthodox religious practitioner" because liberal again has connotations of being lukewarm. I'm very politically and socially liberal, but I'm also a committed and somewhat crazy Hindu mystic who goes into ecstatic trance and becomes intoxicated by God, so there's nothing lukewarm about my religious life whatsoever. We need to let the world see that there are Muslims like that too.[/quote]

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