The latest developments in Iraq are deeply troubling, but as the United States considers military and diplomatic responses to the actions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) action, we should be clear that U.S. troops on the ground cannot go a million miles near a sectarian civil war-it's simply not an option.
To win that war [with radical Islamic extremists] we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.
Certainly there are various trans-Islamic political movements, which try to appeal to Muslims in all societies.
My father decided that he was such a admirer of Ibn Rushd's philosophy, thinking that he changed the family name to Rushdie. I realized why my father was so interested in him, because he was really an incredibly modernizing voice inside our Islamic culture.
We can not imagine that an Arab population forming more than 80 percent of the Iraqi society will allow the article reading that Iraq is part of the Islamic world instead of mentioning that we are part of the Arab nation, as if they want us to be linked to Iran and not to the Arab nation.
Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa to that effect, which was then given effect in the Islamic Republic of Iran, so in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it's flexible enough to allow for sex changes, and it encourages sex changes. But if you want to change your religion in Iran, you've got some serious problems. There are other problems. You're allowed to change sex, but if you want to be a homosexual, theoretically at least, you face the death penalty. Quite how often these penalties are carried out is a moot point, but it's there on the statute books.
One of things that surprised me when I was in Iran was to find out that the country finances seven times as many sex change operations as the entire European Union. And the reason for that is because Ayatollah Khomeini himself, in the early 1960s, in the same time that he was developing this other idea of an Islamic state, also hit upon the idea that if a person is born into the wrong sex, it was entirely proper for them to change sex.
There's crucial distinction that has to be drawn between the Shari'a, which is this hugely expansive vision of cosmic order that I've been describing, and principles of Islamic law, known in Arabic as "Fiqh" - a word that means understanding. If you're a devout Muslim, you don't argue against the Shari'a; the Shari'a is the path that God has laid down. But what you can do, and what people are doing all the time, is arguing over the correct interpretation of the Shari'a, arguing over the Fiqh. That's something that has been going on throughout Islamic history.
The one fatwa that everyone here is probably familiar with is the Salman Rushdie fatwa, but a fatwa doesn't have to be a violent thing at all. A fatwa is simply a ruling on Islamic law; there can be fatwas on clothing.
There were periods in Islamic history when things like apostasy and blasphemy were made punishable. So you know it kind of depends - there's no argument, quite apart from the question of the divine or otherwise nature of the Qur'an, that huge swathes of Islamic law are man-made. Clerics here - in maintaining their power, will often try to elide that and say "Well no, actually this isn't man-made at all. Stoning is part of the divine revelation." It isn't in the Qur'an but the way this has been done over the years is to take the Hadith.
The politicized version of Shia Islam that we see in the Islamic Republic post-1979 clearly is very conservative, but, there are other things one could say about Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of a Shia state because that in itself is a blasphemy as far as most Shia clerics are concerned. There's a theory that he developed in the early 1960s in the town of Najaf talking about - well not liberalism, necessarily, but flexibility though.
I work in the human rights field and there are serious conflicts between certain interpretations of Islamic law and human rights. That's something which I don't make any bones about at all, it's something which I think is very important for everyone to address, including the Muslim community, and many Muslims are addressing that issue.
The first rules about Islamic law weren't even written down for a century and a half after the Prophet's death, and it was another five centuries, half a millennium, before they assumed anything like a definitive form. So there have always been huge arguments over what Islamic law actually requires. There are four main schools of law in Sunni thought and there's a separate school of law in Shia thought, so these arguments do take place.
To then say that our own actions in combating evil have led to evil, is nothing more than saying, "Islamic terrorists are somewhat justified, at least we can understand why they hate us because we've done things to make them hate us. ... We have been evil ourselves, and we are evil and that justifies them being evil."
The entire Washington political class and establishment cannot see Islamic terrorism when it happens. Well, they actually do see it. They just don't want to call it that, and they don't want anybody else calling it that.
Saudi Arabia is militant Islamic extremism, Wahhabi Islam is extreme and violent. These are the people that execute gays. These are the people that stone women who show their face in public. You don’t hear much about it, but it happens.
Progressives are concerned about reports of Muslim students feeling 'marginalized' and discriminated against after the shooting massacre by an Islamic terrorist in Orlando, but there is little concern that - for years - students in the United States have been taught to dislike their country.
The law enforcement agents believe they cannot call terrorism "terrorism" unless and until they uncover evidence proving that the Muslim mass murderers have some tie to a designated non-Islamic terror group like ISIS or Al-Qaeda, and bingo, bingo. What do we get today? "There's an ISIS connection," and once again none of this has anything to do with Islam. That's how it works at the highest levels of our government.
If the cops come upon a mass murder attack that is clearly instigated by Islamic doctrine, they are not permitted to conclude that it is terrorism because they have been directed by their superiors in law enforcement to maintain that Islam is against terrorism.
What are the policy implications of the government and this fantasy Islam, what are the policy implications of a United States government that believes Islam is as anti-terror as you and I are? Well, it means that Islamic doctrine can never be cited as the cause of terrorism, as a matter of policy. And it never is. It never is.
Al-Qaeda, ISIS, they can't be Islamic. Islam is the religion of peace. They are bastardizing it. They are frauds. They are calling themselves Islamic and they are calling themselves Muslim, but they're not. Because Islam is as anti-terror as you and I are. Islam is the religion of peace. I'm telling you what our government's position is. The US military position.
To the government, terrorism committed by people who are Muslim is not a reflection on the legitimate interpretation of Islam, even if Islamic supremacist ideology, which endorses jihad violence - Islam, standard, mainstream Islam endorses jihad violence, but our government doesn't want to admit that or deal with it. Here in America, as in Western Europe, this is the key to understand.
Islam, the religion of peace and any terrorism that happens, is not really Islamic or Islamic inspired. This is called a willful blindness. It's also political correctness.
Our government denies that terrorism is caused by Islamic doctrine. Now, that is true, and it is a declarative statement. It's not arguable.
You know, Obama says we can't use the word "terrorism." We can't use the word "foreign." We can't use any of these provocative words that insult them. "Islamic terrorism" is a phrase not permitted to be used by the US government.
