This Question of Islam

An issue which will remain unresolved in my lifetime, to which I have nonetheless spent and mobilised an immense amount of energy, investigation, dialectic exercise, vitriol, self-harm, perhaps - in the end - even scholarly wisdom at this point, is that of islam and its relation to the appendix of human achievement and culture described as, part derisively, and in any case partly of its loins, "Western civilisation". 

In this fight of values, posited by Samuel Huntington, negated by president Khatami, of a clash now seemingly well predicted, a late and very frequent contributor of sorts is the Swedish 

We may first state, or assume, the obvious and here unmentioned; that islam grew as an outgrowth or metastasis of Christian faith, that the writers, or infallible quoters of the Qur'uan certainly knew their theology as well as any patriarch or priest of Constantinople, and the heavy backbone of tradition eloped into greatness, now christened "Judeo-Christian" as well. And any voice that condemns islam as a force of regression either observes with delight (as I do) the fall of the Christian god as a meaningful power in the world of Western politics, indeed in Christendom (a term I know well how to spell, but even so my fingers hesitate) itself, or fails in his conclusions and conviction regarding the need to bifurcate and diminish the followers of Christ as well or as soon as those of Muhammed (who I will not refer to as "the prophet", more than I would Joe Smith or Lafayette Hubbard). In this matter, the sordid Mr. Jomshof MP has done little to some to maintain his consistency. 

The position of this islam in this "Western world" of ours thus posits the age-old question of tolerance, and to what extent the tolerant, or rather the faction of consensus, can commit to themselves the followers of another, sturdy fact or facet of a greater "truth" whose truthfulness is so beyond reproach it must be shielded by hooter and menace and blood, if necessary. My personal, and very polite answer is that to whatever may stand in the way of our great civilisation of tolerance will only destroy it if tolerance is permitted the liberty of absconding. This, however, cannot be described as the status now persisting, in which persecution - I should call it thus, at least pro tempore - of imams of particularly gruesome sermons, are coupled with the cry of abomination against those who hold, by whatever vitriol (insufficient to the believers) opinions widely regarded as quite reasonable. 

Why reasonable? Well, in this bifurcated society, where I will not presume to know a certain median, it would seem reasonable to assume that between those who flail at islam, and those who defend Islamic values to the point of "fundamentalism"; that is, usually questions related to sexual freedom and toleration, the separation of the individual from the family his usurpation by the state and its broader political goals - whether liberal, socialist or otherwise - is 

This question of what is fundamentalism, extremism, radicalism is at the heart of the debate on islam, and indeed of any such conversation regarding Abrahamic faith. While MP Jomshof presumes to know the nature of islam, and that whatever it is is far closer to a presumed bronze aged, primitive theocratic junta, embedded within the national consciousness of the nations of the Dar al Islam, now without a caliph, and ready to evolve (or regress) into the shallow and sullen cry of Allahu Akbar. Why he would posit this, in the case of Sweden, and not the case of Hindutva extremism, or of Shinto-Buddhist suicidal warfare, we need hardly ponder on. Everyone whose eyes are open, and especially gouge out or doused with acid, knows why the question of islam posits the hard question of our time regarding the intersection of culture and immigration, including in the merrily un-halal West. 

With this protest of islam as retrograde, authoritarian, sexist and so on, we have a growing phenomenon of Western islamitude, and even of Westerners tuning in to islam - though conversions, it should be said, is a rare freakshow, often resulting from personality crises and the decline of Christianity, which picks up its adhrents as well. This miniscule question of conversions aside, it seems we have not had enough conversing, and perhaps less and less of it. Even to invoke the words of an imam, except as some distant, raucous figure presumably violating a hate speech statute (one of the constitutional rights I would begrudge, and indeed defend enthusiastically, being that to preach and posit, even proselytise) would seem a distant unknown, even more so than the merry preachers of the ostensible far right (the imams, while not being branded as left, for obvious break of the brain, being posited as "anti-right"). 

In the face of this mess, and the misguided attention it undeservedly issues - both at the presumed defenders of Western secularism, such as Mr. Jomshof and his ilk, whether secular liberal or aggressive Christian nationalist (the second cousin of the "Islamism" properly described, when using the term, as the attempt at a "nationalism for the Ummah") and the presumed excesses of a supposedly growing, and eventually guiding, Islamic West, only the sound of mind survive. And while I would seem