In Reply to: Search for substance and you will find it. posted by Zither on March 28, 2006 at 17:45:47:
Thank you for linking me to the website for this Islamic organization. While they're interested in promoting democracy, conservative economic policies, free trade, AND they condemn terrorism, there isn't any mention of peace studies, i.e., the discipline of nonviolent resistence to injustice. They're moving in that direction by publishing articles from Islamic scholars on social justice "life" issues like the death penality and abortion, but this isn't the primary focus of their mission.
What I'm trying to find is a group that is the Islamic version of Christian Peacemaker Teams or Pax Christi. (See http://www.cpt.org/ and http://www.paxchristiusa.org/)
I think an Islamic group of this nature may exist, but I haven't been able to locate one. When I thought about why, it occurred to me that there is a relationship between "extreme" forms of religious belief (such as a stance of nonviolence in a dangerous world where many types of aggression and violence can be justified as self defensive action) and the separation of church and state.
I can preach, teach and practice nonviolence in the good old USA all I want, and nobody sees me as an enemy of the state--yet. I'm just labeled and dismissed as an unrealistic religious idealist. I can even get a military exemption as a conscientious objector if push comes to shove. However, if the majority of Christians in the USA shared my convictions, it would be really difficult to fight wars on foreign soil, wouldn't it? Whatever threat my beliefs might pose to the power of the state, I am tolerated because the state cannot sanction me on the basis of my religious convictions.
There have been two periods in western history when peacenik Christians were allowed to preach and practice this version the faith: Up until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in 312 and after the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. During the 1,200 or so years in between these two events, the Roman Catholic Church could use the power of the state to control people--and vice versa--the state could use religious edicts to control people. Guess when the Crusades went down? Gee, what a great convergence of religious and political interests. Armies of children marched off in the name of the faith and the Holy Roman Empire.
I do not think that peaceful versions of Islamic belief and practice can emerge in countries where there are theocracies or Islam is the official state religion for the same reason that peaceful versions of Christianity could not exist between 312 A.D. and 1500 A.D.
To the extent that the group you located represents "democratic" Islam, please take note of the country in which this phenomenon emerged: USA! I do not believe this group could exist so openly and freely in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, or Afghanistan if their version of Islam was deemed a threat to the power of the state.