I repeat, the guy stabbing Rushdie goes against Islam.
Appreciate all of your post, I’ll just address this last point and use it to better illustrate where I’m coming from. Apologies if it’s a bit long-winded.
As I’ve posted already, the death sentence passed against Rushdie appears to violate the legal processes which the mainstream Islamic schools of jurisprudence rule must be adhered to in such cases. Therefore on that basis alone, broadly blaming “Islam” for the act demonstrates a lack of understanding of the intricacies of Islamic law and involves tarnishing all those Muslims who accept the authority of those schools with the same brush as the attacker.
However, it does not then follow for the non-Muslim that the death sentence, or the attempt to execute it, necessarily “goes against Islam” or “has nothing to do with Islam.” For us, the question in this regard isn’t whether or not the attacker violated a particular law or committed a particular sin which places him beyond the boundaries established by the schools of jurisprudence. Or that due process according to those schools wasn’t followed. Since, as non-Muslims, we don’t acknowledge/accept the basic principles on which the authority of these schools rests, we must look elsewhere to determine if the attack can be understood to be in some way “Islamic.”
What matters then are two questions. First, did the attacker himself sincerely understand his motives primarily in terms of Islam? Second, can his act only be fully understood with reference to the historical processes triggered by the mission of Muhammad? If the answer to both these questions is “yes”, then the attack clearly, for me, has
something to do with Islam, is in
some way “Islamic”, without, of course, necessarily implicating anything more than a tiny minority of the world’s Muslim population.
Likewise with the status of the Isma’ilis, mentioned above. I acknowledge that there may be several or more doctrinal issues which place them beyond the fold of the established, orthodox position on the question of “who is a Muslim.” But again, my concern is not the question of whether or not Isma’ilis sin, blaspheme, or apostatize by engaging in these doctrines, and in doing so condemn themselves as un-Islamic. As a non-Muslim myself the boundaries established by orthodoxy in Islam are little more than the arbitrary product of historical process.
Rather, I must go back to my two questions: do Isma’ilis sincerely believe themselves to be Muslims? Can Isma’ilism only be fully understood with reference to the historical processes triggered by the mission of Muhammad?
(e.g. accepting the notion that the Isma’ilis are not Islamic requires us to consider that one of the great dynasties of Islamic history, the Fatimids, was in fact a non-Muslim dynasty and so somehow falls outside the category of “Islamic history.” This despite the fact that in this capacity they founded Cairo and al-Azhar, encouraged the building of mosques (some of which remain standing and in use in Cairo today) and madrassas, ruled Mecca and Medina for decades, and administered the Hajj. It would also require us to accept that the knights of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem from a rival non-Muslim power.)