In The UK, A True Muslim Reformer

Dr. Taj Hargey is a Muslim Cleric who blames British mosques for the 7/7 bombings, says multiculturalism is a disaster and would throw Islamic fanatics out.
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The Daily Mail has posted a great article about Dr Taj Hargey, an outspoken Muslim cleric and history professor who is trying to lead a revolution against the Wabbists in the UK. He is a devout believer in the Koran, but he spouts a unique philosophy when it comes to the Hadiths upon which so much of the radical Islamist philosophy of Wabbism relies. Dr. Hargey teaches his flock not to honor the Hadiths unless they are, one, not in conflict with the Koran and, two, they make logical sense. Well, perhaps it is not too unique, as even Turkey is attempting to provide a modern interpretation of the hadiths that divorces them from their 7th century tribal foundation. But it does make Dr. Hargey stand out as a true Muslim reformer, along the lines of Tawfiq Hamid and our own Zuhdi Jasser.

At any rate, here are some excerpts from Britain's Daily Mail article on Dr. Hargey:

. . . In an age when the highest-profile Muslim preachers are bearded, anti-Western firebrands such as Abu Hamza or Omar Bakri Dr Hargey seems an anomaly.

He does not care much for male facial hair. He believes that women can be both seen and heard, even in a mosque at Friday prayers.

And don't even get him started on the sort of fanatics who blow up London buses, or the poisonous teachings that inspired them.

After three men were cleared this week on charges of assisting the July 7 bombers, there have been calls for an inquiry into blunders made by the security services.

But Dr Hargey has little doubt who, and what, is truly to blame for unleashing such terrorism on our streets.

'It is the extremist ideology present in many UK mosques which is the cement behind nihilistic plots such as this,' he says. 'They are twisting Islam.'

He has little or no time for the Government's 'pussyfooting' policy of encouraging multiculturalism.

'That is the biggest disaster to happen to Britain since World War II,' he says. 'It has given the extremist mullahs the green light for radicalism and segregation. We have to, we must, adjust to British society. And we can do so without losing our faith.'

Hardly surprisingly, such statements have made him wildly unpopular among those who adhere to the brand of ultra-conservative Saudi-funded Wahhabi Islam which currently makes most noise in Britain and around the world.

Certainly, if you Google Dr Hargey's name you will find him vilified as a 'charlatan' on any number of Islamic website forums.

In return, he is quite happy to describe his critics as 'fanatics'. Recently, one hostile publication went too far.

When we meet, Dr Hargey, 56, is still basking in the glow of his successful libel action against the English-language Muslim Weekly newspaper, which had accused him of being a heretic.

Earlier this month it agreed to pay him a five-figure sum and issue a grovelling apology, which was a little more esoteric than most heard in the High Court.

It stated: 'Dr Taj Hargey has never subscribed to, belonged to or been affiliated with any sect or minority group, religious or otherwise. On the contrary, Dr Hargey has consistently and openly reiterated his unconditional belief in the absolute finality of prophethood in Islam and Mohammed (peace and blessings upon him) as God's last prophet and final messenger.'

Afterwards, the cleric described the case as a 'watershed moment' in the battle between 'progressives' such as himself and what he called the 'Muslim McCarthyists', after the U.S. senator who accused opponents of being communist and 'un-American' with little or no evidence.

But despite his victory, or perhaps because of it, when his phone rings now it is still almost as likely to be an anonymous death threat as a request for spiritual guidance.

Certainly more people hate him than follow him.

'The masses have been brainwashed by the mullahs,' he says.

Which begs the question: can this intellectual Oxford imam really succeed with his ambition to lead a 'reformation' of British Islam? Or will medieval orthodoxy triumph in the end?

. . . His latest venture is the Muslim Education Centre of Oxford, of which he is founding chairman.

He also leads the city's Summertown Islamic congregation. 'The most progressive pulpit in the land, from which we do everything in English except prayer,' he states.

From a borrowed Masonic hall rather than a dedicated mosque, his enemies sneer.

The ideological core of his opposition towards the fashionable Islamic fundamentalists lies in his rejection of the absolute importance of hadith and Sharia law.

To explain, the Koran is the teaching of Allah, handed down to the Prophet Mohammed.

The hadiths, meanwhile, comprise the sayings and actions of Mohammed, as recorded by others, some time after his death.

For many Muslims, the hadiths are a fundamental guide and part of their faith. For Hargey, they are often unreliable and an obstacle to the integration of Islam into contemporary society. He believes the Koran is all.

'This is a big fight for the hearts and minds of Islam. There is nothing in the Koran which is incompatible with (living in) British society, unlike what I call "Mullah Islam" and their reliance on hadiths.'

And so he explains his position: 'These people say they have a right to stone adulterous women. We say show us where it says that in the Koran.

'The Koran must have precedence. It must be sovereign. Everything else is supplementary or subservient. All that stuff about jihad, women's rights, apostasy, all these issues come from the hadiths.

'We do not say get rid of the hadiths. But we do say that every hadith must pass two litmus tests.

First, it must not conflict with the Koran. Second, it must not conflict with reason or logic.

'One of the hadiths, for example, says the majority of people in Hell will be women. But let's do a forensic examination of this. First, let's look at the fact that 88 per cent of crimes are committed by men rather than women.

'How then, logically, can there be more women in Hell? Theologically, the Koran says that every human irrespective of gender will be rewarded for what they did and punished for what they did not.'

Of Sharia law he is even more dismissive. 'The Koran is clear that blasphemy is dealt with in the next life by God. The Sharia, meanwhile, is a medieval compilation of religious opinion which is not immutable, not eternal.

'How can we be dependant on 10th-11th-century jurists and scholars? It makes no sense.'

He also wants Muslims to integrate more with mainstream Britain.

'The (Muslim) reaction to 9/11 was to withdraw. I think the best way is to go out and belong.

'If you met me walking down the street, for example, would you know I am a Muslim? No.

'I know I am a Muslim in my heart and my actions, not in my beard or the niqab face mask. The niqab only comes from a hadith and even that only refers to the Prophet's wives. This is a big fight for the hearts and minds of Islam. There is nothing in the Koran that is incompatible with (living in) British society.'

Of the cries of 'heretic' to which he is frequently subjected, he argues: 'Faith is between the person and God. No one can pronounce you a heretic (in Islam) and I think that is a wonderful thing.

'But we do need a reformation in Islam. We have to go back to the pristine principles in our faith. We need a British Islam and by that I do not mean a compromise.

'Christianity was once an alien faith. We have to integrate in a matter of decades rather than centuries.'

But what of the accusations that he is simply a State stooge? This angers him.

'I have called for Bush and Blair to be indicted at the international criminal court for their wars. What kind of stooge does that make me? We have a multicultural community of men and women, including converts. We are not fanatics and appeal to a very broad constituency. We do not appeal to those who have been brainwashed by the mullahs.

These people refuse to debate with me and instead send their minions to do their dirty work on the internet or via anonymous phone calls. We get death threats, intimidation and blackmail tactics. But it does not dissuade us.

'Our group is based on the "Three Es": Enlightenment, Egalitarianism and Erudition.

But the Government, with its anti-terrorist strategy, has never contacted us, even though we say violence and suicide bombing are against the faith.

'What a mistake. In this city we have the Wahhabi-backed Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. It preaches the most repressive and egregious theology.

'We want to establish an Oxford Centre for British Islam. We will have a mosque and the leader could be either male or female.'

So, for example, he has supported a state school which banned the niqab, much to the fury of his Muslim foes.

And last October he hosted the appearance in Oxford of Professor Amina Wadud, a female Islamic academic, who gave a sermon at Friday prayers before a mixed-gender congregation, which was anathema to the extremists.

Dr Hargey says: 'She is the undisputed authority on women in the Koran. We invited this heavyweight intellectual and the people who made the most protest outside our prayer hall were women dressed in niqabs who had been brainwashed by their menfolk.

'It was like the time of Emmeline Pankhurst and the suffragettes agitating for the vote.

'Then, many of the women were conditioned to think their behaviour a scandal. Now look at all those women walking past us who have the vote and think nothing of it.'

He also frowned on the recent extremist demonstration against the troops parading through Luton.

'While we feel it was an illegal war, you cannot punish the average squaddie for what is done in the name of New Labour and that toxic Texan.

'Yes, the war was wrong, but you cannot call soldiers murderers, or cowards. My life's work is to make British Muslims integrated.'

He is also utterly dismissive of the Muslim Council of Britain, which until the Government's recent reversal of policy, was the state's contact point with British Islam.

'They are Indo-Pakistani and sexist,' he says. 'It's a reactionary group, infused with the repressive ideology of the Wahhabis.

'If we go along their path we will have a ghetto mentality, segregated and giving our enemies such as the British National Party the opportunity to target us like the Jews in the 1930s. Isolation is our greatest peril.'

For the record, he supported BNP leader Nick Griffin's recent appearance at an Oxford Union debate, although he certainly did not endorse his views.

'We should not silence him. We should expose him.

'I love this country, I follow Spurs and I go to the pub, if only to drink orange juice. I am also a Muslim. But I am not a threat. If people like me are smothered then we will all sleep less safely in our beds.

'These people are religious fascists. The view that Islam is incompatible with British society is something that the Muslim Council of Britain and their hangers- on have promulgated.'

And with that, he adjusts the knot in his mustard tie, drains the last drop of his (non-alcoholic) drink and leaves the bar.

He may be a deeply controversial imam. But he is undoubtedly a brave one.

Read the entire article. And while I may dispute his political views on the war in Iraq, I think he is precisely on target on all else. Indeed, one of my first posts on this blog was to give a thumbnail history of Islam and make the case that Islam desperately needs to go through its period of Enlightenment and a Reformation - acts being desperately fought by the Wahhabi Islamists that pose such a danger to not only the West, but all of the Islamic World.

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Will Turkey Lead A Revolution In Islam?

Turkey is proposing a far reaching revision and reinterpretation of the Hadith. This could mark a titanic event in the world of Islam which has come under increasing Salafization over the past decades. I have little trust in Turkey's pro-Islamic AKP government, but the scope of the proposed revision portends to far reaching and much needed.

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I harbor very significant doubts about Turkey's Islamic movement today. The pro-Islamic AKP party is blurring the line between Church and state secular, it shows the hallmarks of Salifization, and it was only a few weeks ago that AKP PM Erdogan was in Germany, exhorting Turkish expatriates not to integrate into German society. Everything that I see tells me that Turkey is, at the moment, a trojan horse and its entrance into the EU would spell the death knell for Europe.

Almost a year ago, I posted in a lengthy essay that what Islam most needed was to go through its periods of Reformation and Enlightenment. In tracing the problems of modern day Islam, I noted:

Turkey, home of Sufi Islam and the caliphate presiding over the majority of the Islamic world, came into World War I on the side of Germany and was ultimately defeated. Its Middle Eastern empire was divided up among the European counties. Attaturk took power in Turkey and divested Islam from politics, secularizing the country. This was, in essence, the first step towards a revolution in the Islamic world – the divorcing of religion from the nation state and limiting it to the private lives of Turkish citizens. Unfortunately, as time has gone on, Wahhabism has infected Turkey, and today we see the creep of [Salafi] Islamism into the state apparatus. Turkey has withdrawn from the precipice of a revolution to moderate and modernize Islam that its combination of secular government and classical Sufi Islam may have led.

Read the entire post.

Yet today there is a major surprise in the news that Turkey is planning what has the potential to be the first major reinterpretation of Islam since the gates of ijtihad were closed near a millenium ago. This is potentially momentous - and it is a direct challenge to the 7th century Wahhabi / Salafi interpretations of Islam being spread across the world with billions in Saudi petrodollars.

Before becoming too excited, we must of course wait to see the finished product and assess its impact. It is possible that this could be nothing more than a PR movement aimed at gaining entrance into the EU by allaying very real and reasonable fears of EU nations. Possibly, but even with that in mind, the scope of this proposed revision is promising indeed. This from the BBC:

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.

Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it.

The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University's School of Theology.

An adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, says some of the sayings - also known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.

"Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says.

"You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."

The argument is that Islamic tradition has been gradually hijacked by various - often conservative - cultures, seeking to use the religion for various forms of social control.

Leaders of the Hadith project say successive generations have embellished the text, attributing their political aims to the Prophet Muhammad himself.

Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the Prophet.

But this is where the revolutionary nature of the work becomes apparent. Even some sayings accepted as being genuinely spoken by Muhammad have been altered and reinterpreted.

Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example.

"There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or more without their husband's permission and they are genuine.

"But this isn't a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet's time it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary ban for safety reasons."

The project justifies such bold interference in the 1,400-year-old content of the Hadith by rigorous academic research.

Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said "he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone".

So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet's goal was.

Yet, until now, the ban has remained in the text, and helps to restrict the free movement of some Muslim women to this day.

. . . According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey from Chatham House in London, Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy.

He says that to achieve it, the state is fashioning a new Islam.

"This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation," he says.

. . . Significantly, the "Ankara School" of theologians working on the new Hadith have been using Western critical techniques and philosophy.

They have also taken an even bolder step - rejecting a long-established rule of Muslim scholars that later (and often more conservative) texts override earlier ones.

"You have to see them as a whole," says Fadi Hakura.

"You can't say, for example, that the verses of violence override the verses of peace. This is used a lot in the Middle East, this kind of ideology.

"I cannot impress enough how fundamental [this change] is."

Read the entire article.

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