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Originally Posted by kindlekitten
one of the reasons Islam is the way it is now is that it has not gone through its own reformation. that would help a lot I would imagine, but I also think it is almost impossible at this point.
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Possible, but not easy, with violence probably involved.
There are any number of strains of Islam. Start with Sunni vs Shia, evolving from a dispute over who Mohammad's proper heirs were. The Saudi's have a strain called Wahabi. There are moderates and fundamentalists on all sides.
An old friend, commenting about the ongoing strife in Iraq, commented "They're shooting at each other! We just happen to be in the middle!" I think he's quite right. Irag is a simmering mass of ethnic and religious divisions, beginning with a Shiite majority ruled by a Sunni minority. Saddam Hussein kept a lid on the pot by main force. When we went in and removed Saddam, the lid came off, and the pot promptly boiled over. This
should have come as no surprise to anyone. (The fact that it came as a surprise to the US is a source of despair over our efforts at foreign policy. If you don't understand how the other guy thinks, you
can't successfully deal with him.)
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I thought he was fascinated by Judaism and studied with Rabbis?
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I would not be at all surprised. Christianity derived from Judaism, and I can see Mohammad trying to "get back to the roots", as it were, in clarifying and codifying his own beliefs.
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Dennis