Introduction The killing of off-duty soldier Lee Rigby on May 22nd , 2013, in Woolwich, UK, overshadowed completely the NSA scandal that came out around the same time. The revelations by journalist Glenn Greenwald-through thousands of documents leaked by the former security company employee1 Edward Snowden-that massive surveillance operations are being carried out by the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK, shows that there is no place to hide,2 to borrow from the title of Greenwald's book. The transnational Islamic political group, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) Britain's leader Imran Waheed spoke on this issue a couple of weeks later-at a half-day event organized by HT, which seeks to establish an Islamic State in the Muslim world through ideological (non-violent) struggle, in East London-stating that Prism (the clandestine surveillance program under which the United States National Security Agency [NSA] collects internet communications from at least nine major US internet companies) is not just being used to monitor Muslims, but everyone. I argue that today's monitoring of Muslims goes hand in hand with the notion of the need for Islamic reform (or, put differently, the reformation of Muslims). Muslims across the board have internalized the (Western) logic of the need to reform, and cannot help but do so, given the ways in which (dominant) discourses function, that is, they go into creating people's everyday sense(s) of being, living, and thinking-as a type of self-surveillance, even as many abjure the notion of reform, as the ideas of the need for "reformation" and "enlightenment" constitute the modern Western "unconscious of knowledge:3' I examine Imran Waheed's criticisms of British governmental (media-political) pressures on Muslims to reform, and the "Marrakech Declaration,"4 where "hundreds of Muslim scholars and intellectuals from over 120 countries, along with representatives of Islamic and international organizations, as well as leaders from diverse religious groups and nationalities, gathered in Marrakesh ... to reaffirm the principles of the Charter of Medina:5' I also examine a conversation between the director of the "anti-extremism think tank," The Quilliam Foundation, Maajid Nawaz, and Sam Harris-one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism" alongside Richard Dawkins, Daniel Denet, and the late Christopher Hitchens-published as Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue,6 in which the question of the need for Islamic reform is front and center. Performing Islam: Muslimness and the Politics of (Islamic) Reform On May 22, 2013, two Muslim men, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale murdered off-duty British Army soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, claiming vengeance for the lives of Muslims lost as a result of the War on Terror. The media-political maelstrom that ensued is significant because the killing was and continues to be cast as "(Islamic) terrorism," which assumes Islam is inherently violent. The "political" motivations of such acts-which are notably spectacular, that is, they are conceived of as a "spectacle"7 - are subsumed within a notion of "the religious;' which, when applied to Islam, becomes the specter of an atavistic reflex that must be expunged from the collective human body. Islam, in other words, is the obstinate reminder that portions of humanity still need to be brought into the modern world-by persuasion,8 or, what is becoming more and more common, by coercion. And persuasion and coercion are both part and parcel of the discourse surrounding the need for Islamic/Muslim reform. HT organized a half-day conference, attended by roughly 300 people mostly of Bangladeshi descent, following Lee Rigby's death, in East London titled "Muslim community under pressure: How should we respond?"9 The three speakers were: Jamal Harwood, Imran Waheed, and Taji Mustafa. The Chairman of the Executive Board, Dr. Imran Waheed, begun his presentation with the comments that every time there is an "action" like this Muslims think: "I hope this person isn't a Muslim!" This sentiment is shared by all Muslims I know, as well as by all liberal non-Muslims I know-the unstated understanding being that if it was indeed a Muslim who committed the "action;' then the repercussions against Muslims, both home and abroad, would be significant, and, most likely, disproportionate. Waheed commented also that the NSA scandal was eclipsed in the media by the Woolwich murder. Waheed posed the question: "Why do we-Islam and Muslims-get blamed?" I believe this again is significant because of the manner in which Islam and Muslims are conceived within the wider Western imaginaire. It is, it could be argued-drawing on David Tyrer's The Politics of Islamophobia 10- because of the manner in which Islamophobia is part of the wider politics of racism. Tyrer writes: The attempt to deny the racist nature of Islamophobia is of utility in extending a particular racial politics without risking the accusation of racism, and in doing so it also centers problematic ideas of phenotypal racial difference, not by labeling Muslims as biologically bounded, but by contrasting Muslims against other minorities who are held as such.11 In other words, by denying that Islamophobia is racist, "Islamophobes" 1 2 both reconfirm a politics of racism, where society is organized hierarchically by "race;' and they make disparaging comments regarding Muslims and Islam (that they and their religion is/ are backwards, that they need to "reform," that they are "irrational;' that their religion is "inherently violent" and so forth). What Tyrer is arguing, therefore, is that Islamophobia is a constituent element of the wider politics of racism, and is not separate from it. Put differently still, because Islam and Muslims are seen as constituting an undifferentiated bloc-"Muslims are depicted as a collective body that is (or ought to be) responsible for the misdeeds of its criminal element, who have "transformed" the faith into an ideology"13- and, as such, because the sins of one person makes the entire group responsible, we may begin to answer Waheed's question: "Why do we-Islam and Muslims-get blamed?" Waheed refers to the murder of Lee Rigby as the "action"-a (self-) consciously chosen word. Waheed mentioned in his talk that there were more condemnations of the "action" by Muslim leaders than there were condemnations of the then documented 1,600 drone strikes (against primarily civilian populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan).1 4 The psychology of the drone is such that it views (and mirrors) its operators as gamers (there is active recruitment from within the gaming community into the military; indeed, games manufacturers work closely with the US military).15 The medium is not just the message (a la Marshal McLuhan16 ) , it is also fundamentally constitutive of who we are.17 And if we-or the drone operators-are gamers, then the images of those who are killed on the screen are just that-images of people, simulacra ... and "terrorists" in addition to that, so they are so many times removed from Western consciousness that they are a shadow of a shadow of a shadow of who "we" (the gamers) are (within this post-modern moment of Western consciousness). We-in the age of mass social media proliferation are all expected, more and more, to be actors (and players) in our own movies (and plays), whether on YouTube or on Facebook or on Instagram or SnapChat or YouPorn-conceive of others (and Others) as actors and players in our personal stories and plays that are increasingly disjointed and meaningless, as we are progressively concerned with "presentism;' (which, according to Douglas Rushkoff, is an ever elusive state of being always and forever at the peak of a digital world of being-ness that is endlessly unfolding) struck as we all are by "present shock;' unable to formulate and follow with any depth serious narratives).1 8 For us it is very apt to refer to ourselves and others as actors, more so than ever before in history. We are all eking-out our non-Hollywood existences, upon our non-Hollywood stages, which we snap and chat and film and narrate, in an attempt to give it all a sense of meaning where there is none. To be Muslim in the media-political atmosphere of Britain, and responding to or keeping silent regarding various "actions"-as are dramatized for Muslims on the media-political screens of the world, wherein they are actually not their own subject-is fundamentally "performative:' This performance entails "being" in relation to dominant-white-Western-heteronormative structures. At the same time, it relates to the idea of being "good Muslims"1 9 who are endlessly in "reactionary" /"defensive" alertness. To bring it back to the murder of Lee Rigby: the idea of the end of narrative Rushkoff writes about in Present Shock-and the need for creating a presentist narrative for ourselves, shorn of history-is in many ways what Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale were re-creating as Adebolajo "narrated" to onlookers holding up their phones.20 Waheed's point with regard to the lack of condemnation by Muslim leaders of drone strikes carried out by Western powers is that Muslims are performing roles of subservience and pliancy and "moderation" (and self-reformation) in relation to the wider audience. In the act of performing conventions, by inscribing ourselves-our bodies and our minds-with those ideas and fictions, we make them appear natural and necessary. By performing conventions we make them "real," although they are always artificial. Judith Butler concerns herself with "gender acts" that lead to changes in one's ideational and bodily selves: "One is not simply a body, but, in some very key sense, one does one's body and, indeed, one does one's body differently from one's contemporaries and from one's embodied predecessors and successors as well:'2 1 To misread Butler (in the Bloomian sense): One is not simply a Muslim body, but, in some very key sense(s), one does one's Muslim body-in thesartorial sense (how one wears or does not wear the hijab; how one wears or does not wear one's beard; how one wears or does not wear one's hair); in the somatic sense (how one walks-with head held aloft in pride for being Muslim, or cowering in shame for the same reason); in the linguistic sense (how one speaks, with what kind of accent, with what kind of register, with what kind of expletives)-indeed, one does one's Muslim body differently and similarly-in conversation with, in tension with, in opposition with-one's contemporary "fellow" Muslims and one's fellow(?) "non-Muslims," and from one's embodied and intellectualized (not that embodiment and intellectualization happen separately) predecessors and successors as well.22 While we tend to believe, in this (post)mode rn-Western moment we all inhabit, that our subjectivity is the source of our actions and modes of being, Butler contends our sense of independence and self-willed subjectivity is a retroactive construction that comes about through reaction to, discussion with, and re-interpretation of social conventions: The act that one does, the act that one performs is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene. Hence, gender is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in order to be actualized and reproduced as reality once again.24 And the Muslim actor "acts" both in speech and lack of speech, in actions and lack of action. Thus, the "Islamic" act that one does and performs has been going on before one arrived on the (mise en) scene. The "Islamic" actor-the Muslim-is notonly enacting actions that she/he "traces" back through her/his tradition, she/he is in a very real sense enacting religiously, politically, actions that are inseparable from their always already being constituted-through colonial history-and refracted through the critical (that is, criticizing) lens of the secular liberal imaginaire. Hence, Muslimness-and Islamic practice-is an act which is always in the process of being re-rehearsed and re-realized by individual Muslims as a reality that struggles to find its self-origins.25 The Marrakech Declaration, Harris and Nawaz, and the (lm}Possibility of Islamic Reform It is in relation to this narrative-and self-consciously constructed posturing and performance-that theMarrakech Declaration must be, at least to a degree, understood. The Marrakech Declaration26 - which seeks "the historic revival of the objectives and aims of the Charter of Medina [vis-a-vis the rights of non Muslims in Muslim countries], taking into account global and international treaties"-came in response to ISIS as well as Western governmental pressures in the West upon Muslims to "prove" their belonging in the world, and not just in the West. I spoke to Usama Hasan, one of the signatories to The Marrakech Declaration a week prior to his trip to Morocco for the purposes of attendingthe conference that culminated in the signing of the declaration. Hasan is also the senior Islamic studies scholar at the Quilliam Foundation-co-founded by Maajid Nawaz, who is a former member of HT-which bills itself as the world's only anti-extremism think tank. I spoke to Hasan about the question oflslamic reform, and, indirectly, regarding Saba Mahmood's critique of (liberal) Islamic/ Muslim reform, and the degree to which it is influenced by Western policies (for example, the US-funded Muslim World Outreach, which backs Islamic initiatives and Muslim actors who seek to bring Islam more in line with secular liberal principles27 )- a line of critique that has parallels with HT's criticisms of moderate Muslims, when they say that they are "sell-outs:2'8 I also posed to him Wael Hallaq's provocative question "can the shari'a be restored ?"29 and his suggestion that it cannot be. Hasan responded that while he considers Hallaq to be an "excellent academic," the problem he has with his work is that he is not engaged with "realities on the ground" in the way that he and others are. For him, the reality is that Muslims have ongoing issues and concerns that pertain to everyday living, which Muslim scholars have to deal with on a daily basis. Hasan commented that what he is really concerned with is the aspect of "mercy" that is-he stressed-all-too-often forgotten in relation to how the shari'a is imagined in many circles (Muslim and otherwise). He argues that, no matter which terms are used-whether islah (repair) or tajdid (renewal), both of which are Qµr'anic terms30 - his work is geared towards the rethinking oflslamic law in the Western context. Hasan (who is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, as well as having studied.fiqh under his father, Shaykh Shoaib Hasan, a respected Wahhabi scholar based in London, for many years) has given controversial fatwas about the permissibility of drastically shortening the length of one's fast during the month of Ramadan, when the day can be as much as eighteen hours long. Even more controversially-as he received death threats as a result-Hasan has argued that Muslims should accept the theory of evolution, and not engage in "school-grade level discussions" on the topic. 31 It is my contention, however, that Hasan's position on the one hand, and that of Mahmood and Hallaq on the other, essentially make up two sides of the same coin. Both positions try to-or are in pursuit of-(re)imagining a more "authentic" Islam, all the while positing the radical Otherness of secular liberalism. As such, neither are separable from the very paradigm they are critiquing/ trying to think through, given that both positions live and breathe the very air of secular liberalism. Be that as it may, Hasan believes he is doing important bridge-building work, between "the West" and "Islam:' The Director of Quilliam, Maajid Nawaz, a former member of HT had a "conversation" with Sam Harris. Harris-a self professed atheist and a significant figure amongst the so-called New Atheists (which includes the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the late journalist Chris Hedges, and the philosopher Daniel Dennet)-has written seven international bestsellers, six of which deal with the intellectual and ethical pitfalls of religion, and how humanity at large must embrace an enlightened reason. Harris, who has referred to Islam as "the mother lode of bad ideas," writes in Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue,32 the book that emerged out of the discussion with Nawaz, published by Harvard University Press: The tensions you've been describing are familiar to all religious moderates, but they seem especially onerous under Islam. The problem is that moderates of all faiths are committed to reinterpreting, or ignoring outright, the most dangerous and absurd parts of their scripture-and this commitment is precisely what makes them moderates. But it also requires some degree of intellectual dishonesty, because moderates can't acknowledge that their moderation comes from outside the faith.33 The concerns that Nawaz raises ("taking a snapshot of the state of Islam and Muslims today and assuming that's how things always were;'34 that "variety in [Islamic] theology will lead us to secularism and liberalism"35 ) to which Harris refers ("moderation comes from outside the faith. The doors leading out of the prion of scriptural literalism simply do not open from the inside"36 ) are held by such prominent "ex-Muslim'' critics of Muslims and Islam as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The way in which Harris posits the problem is similar to how the majority of commentators-from the right to the left-set it up: from within a largely predetermined framework. That is, Sam Harris's pointing out of the problem occurs within a prearranged, media-political framework-there are moderate Muslims, and there are extremists-and all Muslims fall into one of two categories-where the moderates are those who are more in keeping with modern, Western, secular, liberal values, and are considered "good Muslims," and the former are considered "bad Muslims" (a la Mahmood Mamdani). The framework of this discussion is set up in such a way that, increasingly (a la Hirsi Ali, Harris, and Irshad Man ji)37 the epistemological question is not whether or not there are in fact Muslims who are interested in "reform," but whether the religion is, in itself, conducive of reform. For Harris it is not, hence his comments that the impetus must come from outside-more so for Islam than any other religion. For Hirsi Ali, for Harris, and others, the question of Islamic reform is the most important question in the world. However, the question is not so much if Islam can be reformed. The concern is that Islam (as it is currently understood, as depending on the Qur'an and the Sunna) cannot be reformed to fit the prescribed modalities of a secular liberal worldview. 38 This is a concern that was raised by Waheed in the question and answer session at the event in East London. Waheed mentioned the example of former Home Secretary, Jack Straw, who said that "it is not enough for Muslims to denounce (Islamic) terrorism in principle:' What this suggests (and I have not been able to find the reference for this exact quote) is that the root causes of "Islamically-inspired terrorism" need to be identified and they need to be removed. The inherent assumption here, once again, is that it is Islam and Muslims who are to blame, and that they need to reform/be reformed. Also, the normative claims of secular liberalism are necessarily true.39 Thus, the question posed by Waheed: "Why do we-Islam and Muslims-get blamed?;' can be answered: Because Islam and Muslims are the archetypal Other of the Western imaginary. 40 Muslims act, and are acted upon-and-subjectivated, so they are forced (that is pressured) to respond, and thus be. Endnotes 1. Rachael King, "Ex-NSA Chief Details Snowden's Hiring at Agency, Booz Allen;' Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405270230462680457936 3651571199832 2. Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2014). 3. Foucault writes of "a fundamental arrangement of knowledge" in his The Order of Things. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock, [1966] 1970), 157. According to Clare O'Farrell: "What [Foucualt] means by this is that each historical period orders knowledge and constructs concepts according to certain rules. These rules can be deduced from a study of the traces of past knowledge and practices. It is far easier to see these in hindsight than deduce the rules that underlie our current practices. Foucault also uses the terms "the unconscious of knowledge;' the "archive" and "implicit knowledge" and "conditions of possibility" to refer to the same ideas. Clare O'Farrell, Michel Foucault (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2005), 63. 4. Marrakesh Declaration, "The Rights of Religious Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Majority Communities;' accessed Dec. 15, 2016 http://marrakeshdeclaration.org/marrakesh -declaration .html 5. Marrakesh Declarat ion. 6. Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue (Harvard, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2015). 7. Guy Debord, in his landmark Society of the Spectacle, writes in Chapter 1, aphorism 3: "The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, and as an instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation:' Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (Kalamazoo, MI: Black & Red Books, 1977), 2. In other words, the spectacular nature of the killing of Lee Rigby became (for the Muslim actors as well as the non-Muslim media-spectators, who are as much a part of the production of the specta cle as the actors) a presentation of all of society-of Muslims experiencing the War of/ on Terror, and of"non-Muslims:' The spectacle of the murder of Lee Rigby-which takes on its discursive power, being as it is part and parcel of the post-9/ 11 world-becomes part of a discursive tradi tion of counter-terrorism, as well as a narrative of neo-imperial machinations in the Muslim world(which of course is also part of HT's narrative), which re-creates a false consciousness of Muslim exceptionalism, for Muslims as well as their interlocutors, thereby perpetuating the (myth of the) clash of civilizations. 8. See, for example, Alexandar T. J. Lennon, ed., The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Using Soft Power to Undermine Terrorist Networks (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003). 9. "HT urges Muslims not to compromise their Islam post-Woolwich;' Five Pillars UK,June 10, 2013, http://5pillarsuk.com/20l3/06/l0/ht-urges-muslims-not-to-compromise-their-islam -post-woolwich/ 10. David Tyrer, The Politics of Islamophobia: Race, Power and Fantasy (London: Pluto Press, 2013). 11. Tyrer, Politics of Islamophobia, 26. 12. Andrew Shryock argues that the epithets "Islamophobe" and "Islamophile"-while useful in political terms, are not useful in analytical terms: ''.Applying these labels is an exercise in negative characterization, a fact that makes the labels invaluable for political purposes, but potentially mis leading for analytical and interpretive ones:' Andrew Shyrock, Islamopobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and Friend (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 10. I still use the term/s because it is my contention that it is well nigh impossible to speak of "the Islarnic" political or otherwise-without being political. 13. Shryock, Islamophobia, 5. 14. Marina Fang, "Nearly 90 Percent of People Killed in Recent Drone Strikes Were Not the Target;' The Huffington Post, October 15, 2015, http://www.huflingtonpost.com/entry /civilian-deaths-drone-strikes_us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff. 15. This latter point is brought out in the excellent documentary Drone, Tonje Hessen Schei (director), 2014. InA Theory of the Drone Gregoire Chamayou (New York: The New Press, 2016) examines how drone warfare radically reconfigures laws as to who can or cannot be killed, and all beyond the oversight of a democratic polity. 16. Marshall McLuhan The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, 9 th edition (New York: Ginko Press, 2001). 17. See Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011). 18. Douglas Rushkoff argues brilliantly in Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (New York, NY: Current, 2014) that as a result of the dissonance between our digital selves-which is endlessly updating itself and being re-imagined-and our analog bodies, we have been thrown into a new state of anxiety: present shock. 19. See Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold Wa,:, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004). 20. "London Woolwich Attacker Interview (Extended) - ITV News;' accessed September 19, 2016, https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsXa28BN2o. 21. Judith Butler "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory," in Sue-Ellen Case, ed., Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre (Baltimore, MD:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 272. 22. See Helen Vassalo's The Body Besieged: The Embodiment of Historical Memory in Nina Bouraoui and Leila Sebbar (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012). 23. Butler, "Performative;' 279. 24. Butler, "Performative;' 272. 25. If we consider the emergence of lslamic modernism, it was a movement that sought to cre ate an Islam that was in keeping with modern western thought (political, philosophical, scientific,sociological). Cf. Albert Hourani's classic work Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983). The movement, which is often character ized as Salafism today, has undergone many changes. See Henri Lauziere, The Mak ing of Sala.fism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 26. Marrakesh Declaration, http:/ /marrakeshdeclaration.org/marrakesh-declaration.htrnl 27. See Saba Mahmood, "Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation;' Public Culture, 18 :2, 2006. 28. Members of HT consider people like Hamza Yusuf (who played a major role in the bring ing about the Marrakech Declaration) and Tariq Ramadan as having diluted Islam to the point of unrecognizability for the sake of "pleasing" Western powers. 29. Wael Hallaq, "Can the Shari'a be Restored?" in Islam Law and the Challenge of Modernity, Yvonne Y. Haddad and Barbara F. Stowasser (editors), (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2004), 21- 53. 30. Samira Haj writes: "As many scholars have noted, contemporary Islamic revivalism is nei ther an innovation nor a novelty, for it is deeply embedded in the Islamic tradition, which concep tualizes human history as a continuum of renewal, revival, and reform (tajdid, ihya', and islah):' Samira Haj, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality, and Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 200). 31. Hasan, who considers the influential American Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf to be one of his major inspirations, differs in this regard from Yusuf, whom I have heard saying that if one understands the theory of evolution as it is understood and taught in Western schools and univer sities, one must know that it is unacceptable from the point of view of traditional Islamic cosmol ogy, according to which God created Adam ex nihilo. In the words of another influential figure, Seyyed Hossein Nasr-about whom Yusuf speaks very highly-"! do not believe that Christ came from the mud:' Incidentally, when I spoke with Reza Pankhurst in 2013-an academic and former member of HT, whose monographs are The Inevitable Caliphate?: A History of the Strugglej. for Global Islamic Union, 1924 to the Present and Hizb ut-Tahrir: The Untold History of the Liberation Party [op. cit.]-he criticized Hamza Yusuf (as well as Zaid Shakir, with whom Yusuf founded the first accredited liberal Muslim college Zaytuna College), accusing him of being a "sell-out:' As for someone like Usama Hasan-whose colleague Maajid Nawaz is the chairman of Quilliam, and a self-professed "ex-extremist," having formerly been a part of HT for many years, and having shared an Egyptian prison-cell with Pankhurst-he is quite beyond the pail. 32. Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015) . 33. Islam and the Future of Tolerance, 65 . 34 . Islam and the Future of Tolerance, 61. 35. Islam and the Future of Tolerance, 64 . 36 . Islam and the Future of Tolerance, 65 . 37. Irshad Manji, The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith (New York; St. Martin's Press, 2003). 38. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "Why Islam Needs a Reformation;' Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2015, accessed September 24, 2016, http:/ / www.wsj.com/ articles/ a-reformation-for-islam-1426859626 39. Harris references "scientific rationality, human rights, gender equality, and every other modern value ..." assumed as being necessarily true of Western secular democracies, such as that of Britain . Islam and the Future of Tolerance, 65. 40. See Edward Said's Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
1 Comment
6/12/2020 05:40:13 am
Islamic reforms are not here to hurt us. People always brand them as terrorists, and I hate that. We cannot judge people because of their religion, that would be too cruel. I hope that we can live in a world where people would be judged by their actual actions. Our belief systems may all be weird, but it is what we have. As long as we are not trying to hurt others, then that is what matters, I think that is true
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
October 2018
Categories
All
|