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Foreign Affairs
James Matkin !

!1!

The Great Theft:

Wrestling Islam
From the Extremists
By Khaled M. Abou El Fadl
Reviewed by L. Carl Brown
FROM OUR MARCH/APRIL 2006 ISSUE

Is
Islam the solution or part of the problem? Abou El Fadl depicts
an ongoing struggle between puritans and moderates to define
and apply Islam today. Those he labels puritans embrace an
absolutist and intolerant orientation. The moderates draw on
the more humanistic heritage hammered out by generations of
ulama (religious scholars). That heritage has been badly
undermined in modern times by the replacement of Islamic
legal thought and institutions with Western courts and codes,
but most of all by the intolerant doctrines of the Wahhabis,
spread with the help of Saudi oil revenues, and of those groups
known as Salafis, whose ideology stems in part from

Wahhabism. The moderate Muslim outlook that Abou El Fadl

champions can, however, build on that battered tradition -through a dynamic process engaged with a changing world, not
through restoration of a supposed lost golden age. A scholar
trained in both Islamic and Western law, Abou El Fadl presents
a brilliant brief for that humanistic Islamic tradition while
getting in some well-placed blows against those puritans. He
takes on tough issues such as Islam and human rights, the
status of women, and jihad. In the process, he serves up one of
the more engaging primers on Islam available.

James Matkin
The Great Theft: Wrestling
Islam From the Extremists
Discussion on Foreign Affairs !

!
James
Matkin 3 minutes ago !Sadly,
while the topic of Professor Abou El Fadl's book,
rescuing Islam from extremists, is vital, his analysis with
hind sight seems deeply flawed. The good professor
writes that he will ignore the differences between the two
great Islamic denominations, Sunni and Shia, because in
his typology extremism comes from the difference
between the "puritans and the moderates" or literal
versus figurative interpretations of the Koran and both
denominations have these two contrasting world views.
Yet the recent bloody wars in Iraq and Syria, and the rise
of ISIS, prove the implacable and vicious schisms
between Sunni and Shia are now the source of
extremism poisoning Islam.!
Professor Paul Valley writes this week in the Independent

News:! "Sunni and Shia are locked in conflict all across

the Shia Crescent. As each!side steps up its activities, the
other feels more threatened and hardens its!response in
turn.!Sunni-Shia tensions are increasing across the world
as a result. They are on the rise in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia,
Malaysia, Egypt, and even in London as issues of
identity, rights, interests and enfranchisement find
sectarian expression.!The tensions are deep-rooted in
wider economic and geopolitical concerns. But the risk given the long history of division and tension - is that
predictions of a transnational civil war between Sunni
and Shia could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. See
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...!The tragedy Valley
explains is that these "jihadists have come from across
the Islamic world but they are backed by Saudi cash."!