In Denial

True Islam and Its Modern Heretics 

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair assures us that Islam does not have a problem, per se.  Rather the problem lies with particular elements within Islam.  This is the consistent line taken it the West by the United States, the UK, and Nato countries in general. When atrocities like the Woolwich murder of Drummer Rigby occur, this is the standard, PC line.  The real question is whether  the standard, official line is merely propaganda, or wishful thinking, or an inability to tell the truth (first to oneself, then to one's coterie, then to the nation.)
Firstly, let's review Blair's comments as reported in The Independent: 

“There is not a problem with Islam,” he wrote. “For those of us who have studied it, there is no doubt about its true and peaceful nature. There is not a problem with Muslims in general. Most in Britain will be horrified at Lee Rigby’s murder.

Islam has a "true" and "peaceful nature" not on display in the Woolwich beheading.  To Blair's credit, he acknowledges that heretical Islam--for that is how he is positioning it--is strong, growing, and significantly influential.

The Islamist ideology, he said, is “out there” and “isn’t diminishing. . . . [t]here is a problem within Islam – from the adherents of an ideology that is a strain within Islam. And we have to put it on the table and be honest about it.”  He said that while there are radical activists in other religions, the Islamic strain is “not the province of a few extremists”.  It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies,” he said.

Blair's fantasy balloon was pricked rather neatly by  former Conservative Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind.  He . . .

told the paper that though “much of what Tony Blair says is sensible”, he “appears to be still trying to justify the Iraq War rather than acknowledging that that war provided an unprecedented opportunity for the Sunni and Shia extremists to slaughter so many of their co-religionists”.

That is the prick point that bursts the "heretical Islam" theory about Islamic terrorism and violence.  Most Islamic violence and bloodshed is intra-mural Islamic violence--the slaughter of co-religionists--fellow Muslims, often women and children and civilians.  So who are these heretics?  Are they Sunnis, or Shia?  For the violence is common to both groups.  And most of Islam is either Sunni or Shia.  So, are both Sunni and Shia doctrines heretical?  If so, which ones?  What, then, is true Muslim doctrine as represented to us by Blair?  Who or what is the true believer, and who is the heretic?  Arguably the strongest commonality between the two leading Islamic groups is a commitment to the use of violence and force to get control. 

But it's even harder to maintain the heresy theory when we consider that the split between Shia and Sunni emerged within one generation of Muhammad in the seventh century, and violent clashes between the two have racked Islam ever since.  What we see occurring in Islamic countries today is nothing new at all.  It's just that the Commentariat (in this case as represented by Tony Blair) steadfastly refuse to acknowledge it.  Rather they continue with the fabrication of a "not truly Islamic" theory.

Finally, was Muhammad mistaken or lying when he gave his farewell address: "I was ordered to fight all men until they say 'There is no god but Allah.'"  Usually farewell addresses contain the abiding essentials of one's doctrine.  And given the Muslim doctrine of revocation, whereby latter revelations or teachings revoke all previous teaching, surely Islam itself would see this as not a temporary measure, but an abiding obligation and command of the religion--not a heresy, but a core component of the faith.

Now, of course, there are many wilful Islamic apologists in the West who would hasten to assure us that the "fight" (jihad) Muhammad was calling for was a moral, ethical, and ideological struggle for hearts and minds.  He was not talking about actual physical warfare.  But does that accord with the Koran and the practice of his followers immediately following his death.  How did they understand his instructions?

Well, the Koran is not silent about the kind of struggle Muhammad had in mind.

"slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush." In this spirit [and in accordance with this teaching] Muslim armies launched a century of successful conquests. [Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion (New York: Harper One, 2011), p. 201.]

This Islamic heresy of oppression, violence, killing, and subjugation is historical Islam, both as it faces pagans and as Islamic societies face one another.  We repeat, the greatest violence done by Islamic believers today is being perpetrated on co-religionists.

So the question is begged.  What is the great Islamic heresy of our day?  We believe it is the West's revisionist recasting of Islam.  It is Tony Blair who represents heretical Islam.  His version of Islam, whilst certainly more condign with and comforting to the West, represents a heretical Islam which is not true to the Prophet, nor to Islam's teachings, nor to the historical practice of the religion, nor to intra-mural Islamic relations today.