Moderate Islam???

Karen Armstrong said:

It would be as grave a mistake to see Osama bin Laden as an authentic representative of Islam as to consider James Kopp, the alleged killer of an abortion provider in Buffalo, N.Y., a typical Christian or Baruch Goldstein, who shot 29 worshipers in the Hebron mosque in 1994 and died in the attack, a true martyr of Israel. The vast majority of Muslims, who are horrified by the atrocity of Sept. 11, must reclaim their faith from those who have so violently hijacked it.

I think Dalia Mogahed agrees. She thinks that the violent, radical Islamofascists have hijacked the Muslim religion. She thinks they are the original reformists because they have reinterpreted the original meaning of the texts in the Qu'ran....the classic interpretation of the Qu'ran)  to incite violence and hatred.  She does not believe that was the original intent. She believes that the PLO...or Al Queda...radical Islam has "reformed" the texts...reinterpreting them in a violent way.  

Irshad Manji disagrees.  She thinks many of the texts in the Qu'ran were violent in their original rendering...and that modern Islam...reformed Islam must reinterpret them in a way that does not promote violence.  I found their discussion on Fora.tv very interesting. 

Also...in the comments section of a recent post, Timothy Furnish provided some links to his writings about Islam.  The first one I checked out was a discussion about whether there actually is a moderate Islam. The article is transcript of a three way discussion with opinions ranging from "no way Jose'' to "ALL Muslims are moderates."  I think Mr. Furnish is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. Check out the discussion HERE....and check out his website HERE.

More to come...in fits and starts since I am so easily distracted. Blogworthy and thought worthy topics ABOUND EVERYWHERE.  So much to read and think about.  So little time!!!