Is the idea of New Age Islam merely a restructuring of an unhealthy faith?

Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam

27 Mar 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

Is the idea of New Age Islam merely a restructuring of an unhealthy faith?

Does New Age Islam then not become a creation of Man and no longer a theology inspired by God?   Date:    Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:26:09 -0700 [03/25/2009 04:56:09 AM IST] From: Scott Bowen To: Sultan Shahin Editor@NewAgeIslam.com   Subject: Curious About Your Site...   Dear Sir,   First of all, your site is interesting and thought-provoking. I believe that is what you're going for: thought-provoking.   I am not consigned to any given faith, so my questions are unbiased.   The question is that your site seems to defend Islam only on select passages of good intention, such as God creating us to get to know one another and so forth, but what of the other passages of malice? If your goal is to create a New Age Islam, does that imply that you ignore some aspects of the faith and apply others?    It comes down to this: is Islam inspired by God or not? If God is perfect and the Koran is perfect, then why has Man found so much fault with it? It seems that the idea of New Age Islam is merely a restructuring of a faith many people have come to realize may not be a healthy faith. If you have to restructure a faith to make it seem more palatable to mankind, does that not make God and His so-called revealed word obsolete? New Age Islam then, becomes a creation of Man and not of God and therefore is no longer a theology inspired by God.   Again, this isn't some attack on Islam. You call on your readers to think. Here I am thinking.   Best,   Scott Bowen -----------------------------------------   This seems a very honest and sincere question from an avowed non-believer in any faith. Readers are invited to think and express themselves on whether we should be engaging in Ijtihad and seeking to understand the relevance and practicability of some controversial aspects of our faith in the present New Age.   This brings us back to the question of those belligerent verses in the Holy Quran, asking us to kill the non-believers wherever we find them. Only the enemies of Islam and the Jihadis own them as relevant and meaningful and binding on all Muslims for all times and in all situations but the rest of us too do not want to disown them and yet we claim to be a peaceful religion fit to be allowed to live in peace and in close proximity to others. Do these verses continue to provide us guidance today in the present situation and are they binding on us today? And if that is so, is the rest of the world justified in being afraid of us? Are we encouraging Islamophobia of the world by owning bellicose verses of the Holy Quran as our guide unnecessarily today, verses which provided us necessary and appropriate guidance in a certain situation in the 7th century A D., but clearly are no longer relevant in the present situation?   Should we explain to the world that the Holy Quran is not a book that was revealed in one session, but is a collection of verses that were revealed to the Prophet (PBUH) at different times over a long period to guide us to tackle both universal questions of spirituality and day to day problems facing the community in those initial days and the relevance of these latter verses in the present age has to be judged by us individually and collectively on merit in case of each verse before we come to a conclusion if they are our guides in the present situation.   Setting the agenda for a New Age Islam is clearly not just about the relevance or irrelevance for us today of the bellicose verses of the Holy Quran. There is a whole host of issues that we have to rethink and reconsider in order to be able to live in peace not only in relation to other religious or non-religious communities but also with and within ourselves. But certainly the issue of clarifying our stand on these war-like verses is the most urgent. Are they still relevant or are they now obsolete as our guide in this New Age is the question that brooks no delay.   – Sultan Shahin, editor, New Age Islam   URL: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1276