The Fight over the Meaning of Islam
Essay: Sadiq Al-Azm
This should immediately demystify the common notion – widespread both in the secular West and the Muslim East – of Islam as some kind of unique, ubiquitous and almost omniscient and omnipotent primary determining force for Muslims, dictating everything they do including their goals, strategies, tactics and so on. In the Muslim East this abstract and distorting notion is self-serving for the Mullahs and their religious power structures and is hence jealously guarded, propagated and manipulated by them. At the popular level, it certainly acts as a useful psychologically reassuring mechanism. In the secular West it provides easy explanations for baffling phenomena, hence its pride of place in the prevalent wisdom about Islam everywhere.
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