"Boxed and Packaged Islam" Trying to Pass Itself Off as Mainstream Islam

by Raheel Raza
October 17, 2014 at 4:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4792/boxed-packaged-islam

In one short interview, the two Muslim speakers had ensured that: a Zionist conspiracy is in place; ISIS is not really dangerous; the West is at war with Muslims, and the killing must continue; Muslims must not speak out on Western media about violence within the faith, and those who do are liars desperately seeking the limelight. So most Muslims stay silent.
This brand of boxed and packaged Islam, started by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, has been so cleverly marketed that most Muslims do not even know what hit them.
Then there are those have moved outside the box -- scholars, reformers and academics, who, like me, are considered heretics but are still part of the faith. We do not accept the branded, "boxed" version of Islam -- exported largely from Saudi Arabia on the wings of billions of petro-dollars in unobtrusive packaging -- that is trying to pass itself off as mainstream Islam.

The debate about "Moderate Muslims" has gone viral. From Bill Maher to Ali Rizvi in his Huffington Post article, it is trending.

As someone who used to call herself a moderate, I am now moving away from that terminology. One reason is a recent interview a cable TV talk show called Bilatakalluf.

On the program were two members of The North American Muslim Foundation (NAMF) -- Imam Shehryar and Farooq Khan -- and the discussion was about ISIS and being a Canadian Muslim. Below is a translation of some of the "quotable quotes":

"I honestly think the news about ISIS is extremely exaggerated – there are other interests fanning the flames -- we do not know if ISIS is Muslim or not, could be anyone."
"When we look at history and the way the West has lied, it is obvious... I refer to Iraq -- this drama has been done before, so the reports we are getting are not credible as they are coming from Western media, which has a track record of being No. # 1 liars -- once you tell a lie over and over again it becomes credible -- look at the Jihad/Sharia hype?"
"We must establish authenticity of the [beheading] TV clips -- it is a man wearing a niqab so how do we know whether he is a Mossad guy or ISIS?"
"I have heard reports that some people living under ISIS are peaceful -- at least the Sunni areas are better patrolled."
"Having a Caliphate is an integral part of faith. Every believing Muslim prays for a true Khalifah."

And on the topic of Canadians going for Jihad?

"There are one million Muslims in Canada... only 0.13% have "allegedly" joined ISIS, and they have gone for many reasons -- it is a hot issue with media -- 150 Jewish Zionists have gone to Gaza for a one-sided slaughter."
"Mossad had an integral part in creating Hamas. The PLO Al-Fatah meetings in 1960's were held in the house of a guy who was an Israeli agent -- a Jewish Zionist Israeli agent."
"There are vested interests -- 1.8 million Muslims cannot be digested by the powerbrokers so they aim to keep the area troubled -- the grand policy of the West is to have rivers of blood flowing -- they don't say it, but they are at war with the Muslims. The West will keep propping up proxy groups so that the violence does not end."

There is more, but suffice it to say that this was enough. Today, that is the voice of so-called moderate Islam. This cable program reaches over 100,000 homes across North America. These are the voices heard in Muslim homes, where they have credibility because they come from an Imam and his sidekick who are well dressed, well-spoken and articulate. In one short interview, the two speakers had ensured that: a Zionist conspiracy is in place; Western media are liars and cannot be trusted; ISIS is not really dangerous; the West is at war with Muslims, and that the killing must continue to adjust the world population.

Is there concern that most Muslims will believe what was said on this show? Yes. They live within the "Box of Islam," where the majority of Muslims hide today, to avoid facing reality. They are not interested in discussion or debate; they look upon the best years of Islam as during the early Caliphates. This boxed and packaged version of Islam was first branded by Iran's then Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who wanted to export his revolution in the late 1970s. At that time, the branding was that of a fiery bearded Mullah with an extreme message.

Since then this brand of Islam has taken on a modern, moderate look; it is "the new normal." Today, it is being exported largely from Saudi Arabia on the wings of billions of petro-dollars in an unobtrusive packaging. Case in point: There is a version of the Quran that is given away free at Dundas Square in Toronto, where the opening prayer has been tampered with. The original ends with the words "keep us on the straight path and not the path of those who have gone astray." To the "Dundas" version have been added the words "like the Jews and Christians."

This brand of boxed and packaged Islam has been so cleverly and cunningly marketed through the mosque pulpits, print media and electronic media that most Muslims do not even know what has hit them. It is beamed directly into their homes and hearts; they are not encouraged to dissent. This point was made by the Imam on the Bilatakalluf talk show: he said that Muslims should not speak out on Western media about sectarian issues or about violence within the faith. He went on to say that those Muslims who do speak out are liars desperately seeking the limelight. So most Muslims either stay silent or deflect the problems into conspiracy theories.

"Boxed" Muslims therefore now believe (among other issues) that anyone who does not toe their line of Islamist thinking is an infidel and will go to hell; anyone who leaves the faith by choice is an apostate (the punishment for which is death); homosexuals should be thrown off the highest cliff; Sharia law and jihad are benign; an authentic Muslim woman must wear a niqab or at least a hijab; every problem across the Muslim world is due to outside influences; adultery should be punished by 100 lashes, and that hanging and amputation of hands is justified.

Then there are those who have moved outside the box -- scholars, reformers and academics who, like me, are considered heretics but are still part of the faith. We do not accept the branded, "boxed" version of Islam that is trying to pass itself off as mainstream Islam. We believe that there are many paths one can follow and that there really is "no compulsion in religion" (from the Quran); that all believers are equal; we accept that there is special mention of "people of the book" in the Quran that includes Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians, whom we must respect. Sharia law needs to be reformed and brought into the 21st century; we cannot live with archaic laws any longer. Armed jihad is no longer valid. The Quran asks women only for modesty, but the hijab has become a political symbol. The Quran does not speak about killing homosexuals but prohibits lust; and beheading, hanging and cutting off hands should be abolished along with slavery.

The author Ibn Warraq says that "moderate Muslims" do exist, but that he does not believe "Islam is moderate." He is also not optimistic about how quickly moderate Muslim theologians will be able to bring about a religious reformation that will be acceptable.

What does this make us who are genuinely moderate: progressive, liberal or heretics? Whatever we are "branded," we will continue to speak out and light a fire under the feet of all of us: the reform needs to begin.

Raheel Raza is the President of the Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow.

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Recent Articles by Raheel Raza

Radicalization of Kids: A Global Threat, 2019-07-25
When Hate is Promoted by Religious Leaders, Why Blame the Followers?, 2016-06-27
No More Hug-A-Terrorist, 2016-03-23
Muslim Reform Movement, 2015-12-06
The Other Face of Terrorism, 2015-04-18

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Comment on this item

13 Reader Comments

David Apfel • Oct 19, 2014 at 16:09

I have often seen the phrase "no compulsion in religion", but just like there are verses promoting tolerance, there are also verses promoting violence and armed Jihad.

Just as in Judaism where we have the Talmud which are lengthy dialogues which try to explain what the written word (Torah) means, there are also writings in Islam that expound on the written word (Quran). The Hadiths are just one example of this. In Judaism you can't just take the Torah without the Talmud and in Islam you can't take the Quran without the Hadiths.

My main point really is who in the Muslim world has the authority to define what Islam is. The often heard comment that Islam is a religion of peace is actually irrelevant. To determine what a religion is we need to look at how the adherents to that religion behave. It may be that Muslims in the western world are more moderate than their counterparts in Muslim majority countries, but when it comes to living strictly according to strict Sharia, I think that the majority of Muslims strive for that.

All due respect to Raheel Raza, but just as with Reform Judaism, if Muslims try to reform Islam, then is it still Islam?

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Laurie Dinerstein-Kurs • Oct 18, 2014 at 22:36

To appreciate democracy, free speech and equal rights flies in the face extremism - in any venue. Coming to grips with the 21st century is NOT on the agenda of extremist groups. With that in mind, it is up to the true moderates to be LOUDER and MORE public - Silence is also a vote. As long as there are MORE of us than there are of THEM.....we have a chance to make the difference. But, as long as it is the squeaky wheel that gets oiled and the silent one ignored...it is a decision moderate people all over the world need to agree on and SPEAK OUT, write laws prophylactically to disallow sharia, keep our free speech laws strong and adhered to, and ensure that ALL people enjoy freedom from intimidation for living their life as they do.

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Skeptic • Oct 18, 2014 at 19:50

This author is deluding herself. She wants to cherry-pick the parts of the Koran which appeal to her and jettison the rest. That is her personal choice for how she lives her own life (if she lives in a western country). But no Muslim who believes that the entire Koran is the word of God is going to accept her views.

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Liza Jones • Oct 18, 2014 at 13:35

I have complete admiration for this great woman. She is truly a light in a world of Islamic darkness. I want to shout her worth and sanctity from the rooftops, to plaster her photograph all over the city, tell everyone I know about her, how she brings sanity, logic, psychological normalcy to a terrifying creed which many of us feel is a very real threat to our way of life. How can we help Raheel Raza? What can we do to support her cause?

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Albrecht U. • Oct 18, 2014 at 07:35

If the entire edifice, as practised by the majority, is presently as rotten as the author says, surely it can't be renovated but has to be demolished.

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Bart Benschop • Oct 18, 2014 at 00:22

Dear Sir,
Islam means submission and by that is meant submission to Al Shari'iah, the Law of Allah, His Name be praised. This law being from Allah is absolute. There is no mainstream Islam, nor radical Islam, nor moderate Islam, nor any other Islam.
In the 19th century attempts were made to revise Al Shari'iah. Al Ulama, the body of eminent Muslim recognized scholars changed some finer details. It did not take long for these attempts to be abandoned and Al Shari'iah went back to what it was before.
Anybody who questions or criticizes Al Shari'iah commits an enormity punishable by death.
A lot of Al Taqiyya, lies in the Name of Allah are spread to deceive and lie to non Muslims.

In Iraq there are two main Islamic sects: ~65% are Shia and ~35% are Sunni.
In the days of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni were in power and after him the Shia are in power. ISIS is simply the Sunnis trying to regain power. To this they also try to incorporate the Sunnis from Syria. In Syria, ~75% are Sunnis and ~13% are Shia, the rest are Christian and minorities. The Government in Syria is Shia also.

This battle between Sunni and Shia started some 13 centuries ago and it waxes and wanes but never stops.

The ISIS idea of a Caliphate is just a Muslim dream of being able to resurrect the united Islam of early days.

Kind regards,

Bart Benschop

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Frumious Falafel • Oct 17, 2014 at 20:31

(for whatever this is worth) -- You sound like an exceedingly reasonable Muslim to my ears. I suspect however that you face an immense uphill battle. It's totally unclear to me if Islam can ever be fully "reformed" in the ways even you listed. Perhaps anything can happen and I'm being naive. But I do know that the underlying tenets of any system of thought / religion have strong "upwards" influence. And so unless various parts of the Koran are effectively stricken -- which is *exactly* by the way what the Rabbis did with comparably offending portions of the Torah -- then the religion will remain outside Western civilization.

On the other hand, it took the Jews 2,000 years to get to the point where they were ready to begin to do some serious, "striking out" of certain lines in the Torah. So by that measure, Islam still has time, right? It's still a "young religion" at only 1,400 years old. I suppose we should revisit in another 700 years(!)

This truly gives one a feel for the "immensity" in time of Judaism -- and the relative youthfulness of Islam.

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Everett Benson

Frumious Falafel • Oct 25, 2014 at 07:31

With all due respect to Frumious, he has the facts entirely wrong. It did not take thousands of years for Judaism to interpret away Torah passages relating to war. The passages he refers to were, first of all, not oriented to universal war as in Islam, but only in regard to the Seven Nations of Canaan, and they became obsolete and indeed impossible of fulfilment within the first two or three generations of settlement of the Jewish people in Canaan. They therefore needed no "reinterpretation." They no longer applied. This is because despite a few battles in Joshua's generation, the Children of Israel settled in the uninhabited high places of Canaan, intermarried with the Canaanites and even began to take up their ways. Since the two populations had become mingled, any total wars against the Canaanites would have had to be wars against the Israelites too. This made such wars impossible. In the end, due to centuries of urgings by prophets, priests and sages to avoid idolatrous ways and return to the Torah teachings of one God and therefore mercy and justice in society for all those in it, the entire population ended up Jewish, and it was as such that they were exiled in 722 BCE in Samaria, and 586 BCE in Judea.

The Amalekites were a different matter. Despite numerous peace efforts by Biblical Israel they never made peace with the Jews, but only sought to annihilate them. That is why the commandments about the Amalekites endured. Defensive wars were in simple fact an on-going necessity, and continued for many centuries until the Amalekites were utterly crushed, their surviving members dispersing into surrounding peoples. Henceforth, according to Jewish authorities the only indication of Amalekite persons in other societies was that the person(s) involved made the core motivation of life the aim to wipe out the Jewish people. Against such unreasoning aggression it was still entirely justifiable to act in self-defense and wage war. Wars of self-defense, in short, were entirely legitimate. These teachings, in fact, as developed in Talmudic and later Rabbinic literature, became the foundation for the modern concepts relating to "Just War" in international law, and were explicitly cited as sources for those doctrines by Hugo Grotius, the 16th-17th century Dutch legal scholar who is credited with establishing those norms in international law.

There is another reason why Judaism and Islam are not comparable. Biblical Judaism taught that from the time of Noah God had entered into a covenant with the whole of humanity, consisting of recognition of one source for all things (whatever else was added as intermediaries) and obedience to basic moral norms governing the whole of society so as to protect life and preserve society itself. Anyone following those basic covenanted obligations was defined as a "righteous gentile" (the Book of Job is about one such person held up as a model also for Jews, and the account in Gen. 18 about Abraham's pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah, and the entire Book of Jonah showed that even evil and idolatrous societies might contain enough such righteous persons, or might repent of their sins, and then would receive God's forgiveness). As the Talmudic sages put it, "the righteous of all peoples have a place in the World-to-Come," i.e., no one had to be Jewish to be saved. Indeed, the vast majority of humanity would attain salvation, they said. So unlike either Christianity or Islam, Judaism has never endorsed wars of forced conversions, global violence to "save souls," or jihad.

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steven L • Oct 17, 2014 at 16:09

AK borrowed PC (political correctness) from the French PC (party communist) during his time in Paris or near by! As everybody should know by now, the PC originates from the USSR PC.
By the way this is the "logic" used by the American left who considers anything to its right as being extreme right!!!
There are many different recipes with the SAME main ingredient: Political correctness or the denial of free thought and speech.
The whole West is on a slippery-slope.
Copying is so easy. Creating is a lot more difficult. The leaders copy and the masses follow. Very few create and many distort or misuse.

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Sharon Isac • Oct 17, 2014 at 15:44

My opinion is based on my simple observations in Toronto, Canada: Thousands of Muslims show up for Al Qud's Day; George Galloway gets full house and standing ovation at an university lecture. Compare and contrast this to events organized by reform minded Muslims where only a handful show up.

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Ghulam Mohiyuddin • Oct 17, 2014 at 14:26

The two spokespersons of the North American Muslim Foundation quoted in Raheel Raza cannot really be called "Moderate Muslims". Warraq's assertion that Islam is not moderate is simplistic. No religion at its inception has moderation as one of its goals even if our Prophet did recommend the middle path to us. If the moderates do not aggressively define their ideology, both Jihadis and Islamophobes will try to wear that mantle! Moderate Muslims are those who hold liberal, progressive, secular, modernist and pro-reform views. I prefer the designation of "Reform Muslims" or Ijtihadis, but this may not find wide acceptance at this time.

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judithg • Oct 17, 2014 at 12:11

Just like the Israelis who display more courage than the entire western world to defend and protect their tiny nation from these savages, those Muslims who stand up are the righteous. they are always few in number and great in sacrifice that ennobles them even more deeply.

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FX MEANEY • Oct 17, 2014 at 10:32

For those who believe the Koran is the word of God, there are a lot of problems in the Koran for those who want to modern views to prevail. One huge step that can be taken without "violating" the core principle that many believe is to reject the doctrine of abrogation. That was decided not by Allah but by imams after deliberation. Life is complex. Not all contradictions can be reconciled. And maybe some transcribers got things wrong. At least give the "good" parts of the Koran a fighting chance.

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