Delusions of Progressive Muslims: Critique of Shaykh GF Haddad

Introduction - first draft :P - to a paper by Shyakh Gibril Haddad, "Amina Wadud's Innovation of Misguidance"



There are two ways to shake, challenge or try destroying the Pillars of Islam: from outside without using any argument from Islamic Tradition, and the second is to manipulate arguments, evidences from within to make a caricature out of the religion to meet a given ideological, political or cultural agenda. 

I've no problem with the first mode or type of critique on Islam. The proponents of that type are usually academic in their style, many of them are honest in their critical statements which are in congruence with their own world-view, and are not usually stimulated externally to attack Islam. I cannot pass the judgment of these type of critics as being truly intellectual, although the challenge is intellectual in its appearance, because rationalism is not Intellectuality (see works of Rene Guenon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and other 'traditionalist' writers).

The second type of critique of Islam is not critique or critical at all, but a set of cacophonies - usually by pro-regressive Muslims & Islamophobics - aimed at twisting, modifying, and changing the rituals, practices, doctrines and overall world-view of Islam as such. I also include world-view because they hardly understand the genius of Islamic world-view and since they are purely sentimental, reactionary or politically motivated in their approach, it has nothing to do with any sort of systematic world-view. This explains their utter contradictions and huge blunders. This is the lowest of all kinds of attacks on any religion, because these stem from the stimulation to surrender a divinely revealed religion to one's whims or to satisfy others. And it is exactly in this category that the Progressive Muslim movements fall. 

The beginnings of these movements can easily be traced to post-establishment of colonial rule in Muslim world, when 'spirited' "thinkers" of the ummah relegated to themselves the task of defining the orientation of the efforts, inclinations, thoughts and inspirations of all Muslims: namely, to reform, modernize, and colonize Islam so as to catch-up with more "advanced" nations. One wonders what has reforming a Divinely revealed religion to do with gaining expertise at man made things we call technology. The contradiction was evident. The self-proclaimed reformists were not moved by the ideals and philosophies of Islam to present the world with alternatives to atheistic and man-made ideologies/discourses, but by their unchangeable inferiority complexes vis-a-vis the glitter of Western world. Many of them, even today, also in West, mistake the success of profane physical sciences with Western social sciences (see, 'Origin of Western Social Science', by Dr Asad Zaman).

Come 2004, post-9/11, Muslims needed to go many steps further to please New Colonial/Imperial masters of West. It was America's turn to launch war of ignorance coupled with that of terror to neutralize once for all the 'edges' in Muslim - intellectual, cultural and political - that threatened for centuries the Europeans. American academia may not have been fervent at all about taking the propaganda of Orientalists of reformation or an Islamic renaissance a step further - of the sympathetic ones perhaps. The urgency was felt more in westernized circles of pro-regressive Muslims who are the lowest of lowest in character than their predecessors in British and post-British Raj.

And this brings us to Amina Wadud. I would not like  to spoil the show for you with my incoherent, non-scholarly ramblings about such an "esteemed liberator" and her "magnanimous movement," namely, that of Progressive Muslims. Please read and benefit from this scholarly paper by Shaykh Gibril F Haddad, a Lebanese Islamic scholar. It's in PDF format with beautiful type-font and 2-column format that makes it more readable.

Amina Wadud's Innovation of Misguidance

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Further reading: 

1. Quran-only Feminists by Shaykh GF Haddad

2. For forensic and direct exposition of treacheries and lies of Islam-sellers in USA and West, visit the archives of: Dr Maxtor's Blog