Abu Jihad posted:Societies are built on a bottom up approach, not a top down approach.
Individual monads do not get together and say lets create a society. Societies are organic accretions that grow by happenstance but once they reach a certain size an emerging governing problem demands the over laying of a consensus superstructure as a social cement to retain of group cohesion. But I am not here to discuss best social strategies. I think democracy is the best.
We are discussing whether the splintering fragments of toxic groups espousing Islam can be purged so the societies in which they exist can survive. That purge as you know is by deinfestation as with ISIS and by critical self examination of all especially those of the faith from which these groups emerge. They have a responsibility to the rest of us.
What motivates these groups may be multidimensional but it reduces to a quintessential core understanding that these are lifelong Muslims who somehow fell away from that is touted as mainstream Islam into a bizarre world of extreme and protracted brutality. I am saying that the idea of mainstream Islam has a tragic flaw. Hubris. Is cannot accept this so it brokers no discussion as to the foundations of its faith, take umbrage to interrogation of its tenets and consequently is intellectually brittle hence the cracks and splinters and engenders these aberrations of the faith.
In its present form as practiced in the world where the outlook is to be monoclonal, it is suspect. If it cannot trust itself to be true and respect others to do the similarly in the same social space it will always be unstable in a world increasingly given to plural faiths and belief systems in heterogeneous societies.
That Muslims like you stand back aloof and pretend via your superior airs that you do not have to stand in defense against the decay of your faith into jihadist that begins in the faith means you are betrayers of what you sanctimoniously term "Muslims". It means that those like me who do not give a crap about religion will not take you seriously and inevitably a mask of ignorance and intolerance grows and then the faith gets lumped into one basket.
That unfortunately is a global reaction against Islam and it is palatable. In places like china the ethnic uighurs are already being ground into the dust and no one cares. The same in Burma. Europe and the West already hold it suspect and while the dominating creed is tolerance that is increasingly not going to be the case. The majority does not know the faith but hears and sees its disease. Islam needs a global reformation movement to solidify what it is and what it is not. If it is not Jihadism then much of the ME from Yemen to Syria to Africa does not know it so it rots and reeks and the world smells it and is troubled.
I really do not care. I just do not want the rot gets to me. Those of you in the ummah should care. It is your house that is being brought to disrepute. I just see the disease. I see the ravages of a faith made insular by rituals and secrecy and arrogance and authoritarian dominance as Christianity was up to medieval times.
Nothing gets destroyed if healthy critical analysis becomes part of its tradition. It just becomes less brittle and easier to be sustained in a rapidly changing world. Just to top it off, none of these abrahamic faith has ever done well as fundamentalists faiths. If they cannot coexist in a secular world where progress lives they will eventually all die.