There has been any amount of electrons wasted in these boards in endless discussion about the nature of Islam. My impression is that there is no central authority or regular structure to the faith comparable to , for instance, the Roman Catholic Church. It looks like just about anyone can set themselves up as a religious authority and, assuming enough fellow believers go along, set himself up as an authority on the faith, social behavior and government. It doesn’t look as if there is any connection between Islamic leaders in Nigeria and Islamic leaders in Egypt or Pakistan. Is this right? Is there any central authority that all, or a substantial portion, of Muslims acknowledge?
Your take seems to agree with the “Handy Religion Answer Book”
No single individual or institution has universal authority over the global Islamic community. For Sunni Muslims the nearest approximation to centralized teaching authorities are religiously affiliated educational institutions in Egypt and Saudi Arabia…Nowadays, a senior jurist somewhere might on very rare occasions issue a legal advisory (fatwa) claming universal force, so that every Muslim ought to abide by it…but rare claims of that sort do not have the binding authority of a centralized institution like the papacy.
Doug Bowie, I am not familiar with the Big Golden Book of Handy Religion Answers, but I take it that your understanding of the hierarchy if Islam is essentially the same as mine–it is an every man for him self sort of thing. If this is so, why then do some of our friends on this board insist on seeing Islam as a monolithic faith that universally observes murderous hatred of Western culture as a fundamental tenant of the faith? Given a non-centralized and culturally diverse body of believers, why is it that the otherwise informed and reasonable participants in Straight Dope leap to the conclusion that a fatwah issued by some third rate mullah in the arid periphery of the Sahara Desert is demonstrative of the view and objectives of the great mass of Muslim any where in the world? Is it equally reasonable to take the rantings and frothings of the Rev. Mr. Falwell as illustrating the position of all Christendom? We know that the Pope claims infallibility on spiritual matters but his edicts on birth control as a central precept are ignored by more than a few devout Catholics.
Are we dealing with the tendency to want to put a simple label on complex matters and then assuming the simple label means a simple truth lies behind it? It seems more likely that the present situation reflects not a monolithic Islamic tendency to terror, but rather the unabashed appropriation of religion to further a secular political end–be it a lust for power or a horror at the introduction of strange new ideas in a conservative, not to say reactionary and sometimes backwards, society. As soon as we say “Islamic Radical or Fundamentalist” we also say by implication that the Bin Ladens and Hamhases of this world are simply Islam carried one step further and that terrorism and violent reaction are inherent in Islam. That, it seems to me, is patently false --like saying that because Al Capone was of Italian heritage and a nominal Catholic, all Italians and all Catholics are inherently gangsters, or that all Northern Ireland Prodestents are murderous thugs.
The only rational I can see for this whole tendency toward the equating of Islam and terrorism is the need to find a scapegoat quickly – someone we can beat up and then pretend that we have struck a blow for security from indiscriminate terror. It seems to me that it is a self deception that makes us more at risk, not less. Sooner or later we must deal with the world as it is and give up on the fanticy of a world where all the answers are simple answers and all problems can be resolved in 40 minutes plus time for commercials.