For Muslims, secular Koranism is reinventing the wheel so that it doesn’t roll quite as well. (Islam gives us everything SK could, and much, much more.)
The premise or conceit of Secular Koranism is that it is a New School of Sharia claiming to interpret the Koran better than normative Muslims in their 1400 years of history. What makes them so sure that their interpretation is by definition better than mine by dint of being Muslim when they have lost their Caliphate and are the permanent victims of Western imperialism with their countries widely regarded by the rest of the world to be “shitholes”? If they had interpreted their Koran properly, wouldn’t they be the ones with the global empire instead of the ones always complaining about being the victims of Western foreign policy?
Muslims have an admirable 1400-year history of not forcing their rules on non-Muslims, since “there is no compulsion in religion” (2:256).
It is actually my thesis that the First Amendment is supported by 2:256 of the Koran. There is a White House Koran which belonged to Thomas Jefferson who drafted the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom which later became the First Amendment.
The Prophet Muhammad is already on the frieze of the US Supreme Court. It is my contention that the American Republic was founded on Islamic principles. What Westerners think of as a liberal achievement - the First Amendment - is in fact an Islamic human right.
I don't hear any Muslim arguing in this way. It appears that they think they can just get the overwhelming majority of Westerners who are Islamophobes to become Muslim by their shining example of Islamic virtue, assuming they, their children, grandchildren and descendants do not first fall victim to the policies of Sodom and Gomorrah the US government is energetically promoting and stuffing down their throats.
If apparently believing Muslim men are too timorous to propose that Americans get themselves an official religion which supports the First Amendment, then let a lone non-Muslim female agnostic do so on their behalves!
The word secular means “denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis” (Oxford Languages) and the Qur’an’s rules obviously DO have a religious and spiritual basis.
I called my new moral and legal political system Secular Koranism because it is a legal system - that is, not a belief system - that can be used by non-Muslims. By this I mean non-Muslims could in theory use it eg the Jews in Israel, the Chinese in China, the Indians in India.
This means that belief in God would be optional, that is, neither compulsory nor forbidden.
This is not difficult to understand, but my detractors like to use this tired argument again and again to deliberately misrepresent it. While I can understand Islamophobes would not wish to give Secular Koranism the oxygen of publicity, the reason Muslims refuse to support it must be because they are so complacent as to think they do not need it as a tool of dawah, or prefer not to alienate their Christian overlords by identifying with the radicalism of Secular Koranism.
The word secular has a negative connotation for most Muslims, who link it to attempts to remove religion from its rightful place in the public square. (There is no “separation of church and state” in Islam.)
Perhaps these Muslims do not understand that public morality is supported by legislation, or that the law, as you would expect, inhabits the public square.
This appears to be another misunderstanding of Secular Koranism which may be deliberate for the reasons I have already explained above.
The word Koranism implies radically revising Islamic law to make it derive entirely from the Qur’an without reference to ahadith or any other contextual material. That sharply conflicts with the Islamic scholarly consensus, which holds that the Qur’an must be understood in context, most obviously in terms of asbab un-nuzul (occasions of revelation, i.e. the issues in the early Muslim community that the Qur’an addresses in specific verses).
I can say that having read it, the Koran is a perfectly reasonable and even liberal document. What outrages and disgusts Westerners is what I would call the Hadithic shit that is so beloved of Muslims who have mostly not read the Koran and don't care what it says as long as their non-English speaking imam tells them it is halal. Westerners do not need those cultural and historical encrustrations of Islamic political expediency, particularly when it blatantly contradicts the Koran. Nowhere does the Koran mention the stoning of adulterers or even the practice of stoning. It is only mentioned in the Hadith, and the story goes that it was actually in the Koran on a piece of parchment that a goat happened to eat. I do not know if this is better or worse than the excuse so beloved of children who say "The dog ate my homework."
The primary source oif the Word of God should always trump the words of mortal and fallible men in the Hadith. I do however understand that most Muslims do not have the capacity to make these arguments or even understand them, preferring to take as gospel whatever their non-English speaking imam tells them to think.
Secular Koranism concerns itself only with the legal dimensions of the Qur’an without reference to its indispensable spiritual dimensions.
Secular Koranism is a legal system whose purpose is to serve as a moral system on which to base your legislation for the purpose of peace and prosperity providing for the spiritual and material needs of the people. Secular Koranism has no intention or capacity to prevent anyone from imbibing of the spiritual dimensions of the Koran.
Secular Koranism’s interpretation of certain legal dimensions of the Qu’ran departs sharply from Islamic scholarly consensus.
It is admitted that the interpretation of Secular Koranism will be considered controversial by normative Muslims. However, no Muslim is going to pretend that Muslims currently have any Islamic scholarly consensus bearing in mind that they have no Pope and there are four different schools of sharia as well as innumerable branches of Islamic jurisprudence. Sunnis and Shias will have their theological disputes, but they are of no concern to Westerners who can easily remain above the fray. The whole purpose of Secular Koranism is to give Western governments the ability to interpret the Koran in their own way according to their own legal traditions. Even they do not all agree with each other, it would still be better than the policies of Sodom and Gomorrah being pumped out by America in that any country that adopts Secular Koranism would have its own National School of Sharia.
If America were to adopt Secular Koranism, there would be Secular Koranism with Alabaman all the way through to Vermonter Characteristics, with each state interpreting the Koran in its own way.
If it were to be adopted by the European Union, there would be Secular Koranism with EU Characteristics with Islamic EU Directives applying to every Member State in much the same way that it works now but perhaps without the free movement of people which amounts to mass immigration that so many people find so alarming and distressing.
Secular Koranism, as Claire presents it, seems linked to the Noahide laws (a short list of laws that some Jews would like to impose on all non-Jews). Muslims generally sympathize with the content of the Noahide laws, but given their history of not imposing their own laws on non-Muslims, they are not likely to sympathize with Jews who want to impose Jewish laws on non-Jews.
It is not generally understood that the purpose for which I am applying the Noahide laws. I only ask rabbis to rank the four gentile religions according to their conformity with the Noahide laws producing the following ranking:
1. Islam as most Noahide because it is "Judaism Lite"
2. Buddhism as less Noahide because it is an atheist but ethical philosophy which assumes reincarnation takes place but without the role of a directing moral intelligence
3. Hinduism as idolatry because it is undeniably idolatrous
4. Christianity as the worst and least Noahide of all gentile religions because of its idolatry and blasphemy. The Trinity requires Christians to worship an executed blasphemer as the co-equal of the God of Israel who is also Allah resulting in the absurd conclusion that the supreme and eternal Abrahamic God who created the Universe is also the son of the Virgin Mary.
Rather predictably, the rabbis I approached have told me they would rather not offend their Christian overlords declaring the course of action I propose to be dangerous for them, reminding me of how Jews suffered under the Inquisition and the Holocaust.
It is ridiculous to expect gentiles to submit themselves to Rule by Rabbi and it can be predicted that Orthodox rabbis want nothing to do with gentiles who only mean trouble for them. Their role in this matter is simply to rank the four gentile religions in the way that I imagine they would if they were directing their minds properly to the matter.
As can be imagined, rabbinical consensus on the matter is very far from being reached on how they should be promoting the Noahide laws. My recommendation, if followed by Orthodox rabbis, would discharge their duty as God's Chosen People to be light unto nations lighting the way of gentiles away from the idolatry and blasphemy of Christianity to the least unkosher religion of all that is Judaism Lite.
Once this ranking is widely published and discussed, Jews will be considered to have discharged their duty and be free finally to assimilate into a righteous Noahide nation as Muslims, if that is what they wish. For Jews - whose existence is to be a warning for gentiles against idolatry - to be marrying Christians - who are idolaters and blasphemers and possibly really Amalek whom they have a religious duty to exterminate - is the worst example of sleeping with the enemy.
Only in a Noahide nation ie a righteous gentile nation with righteous gentiles would Jews be free to assimilate without attracting the divine punishment of antisemitism.
Islam has shown remarkable resiliency over more than 1400 years, despite lacking an official bureaucracy, because Muslims have been able to forge a consensus on the most important issues. Secular Koranism radically departs from that consensus in many ways. Check out this refutation of SK by William Breiannis.
Yes, I would agree. Sharia theocracies in the world are Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen. The Vatican City doesn't really count because no one takes Christianity seriously now.
On the matter of Secular Koranism, I can only make recommendations and will be helpless against anyone who seeks to interpret the verses in a different way. I do however hope that I can make the reasons for my recommendations reasonably clear!
For some reason William Breiannis has deleted his "refutation" of Secular Koranism. I know he is two minds about even engaging with me since he knows doing so would have the effect of giving Secular Koranism the oxygen of publicity, yet on the other hand he cannot leave it alone.
https://radicalisedrabbi.blogspot.com/2023/06/a-response-to-review-of-secular.html is my response to his bad review of Secular Koranism extracts of which can be read in the post.
Claire Khaw Says Non-Muslims Should Follow the Qur’an’s Rules (Some of Them, Anyway)
I should emphasise that the methodology for the implementation of Secular Koranism with American Characteristics is not to cherry pick a list of my favourite verses, because that seems to have been the problem with fallen Islamic empires.
We know the Ottoman Empire broke the four wives maximum rule because we know it had an imperial harem.
We also know that since the mubahala in 632 CE, Muslims have not attempted to engage with Christians on their idolatrous and blasphemous Trinity to challenge and defeat them in theological argument. The Crusades and being the eternal victims of Western imperialism has been divine punishment to Muslims for their disobedience. It is however not too late for Muslims to remedy this omission by asking the Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury and the Patriarchs of the Orthodox Church
1) how Christianity is not idolatry and
2) how Jesus is God
on social media so Christians are in no uncertain terms that the Ummah is finally aware of their fatal weakness: the fact that the Trinity is morally and intellectually indefensible.
In order for Secular Koranism not to be just Claire Khaw's list of favourite Islamic punishments, the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States must read the Koran with a view to identifying, listing and numbering all the Commandments of Allah in the Koran and then working out which ones that can be made into legislation.
The intention is to incorporate Koranic principles and Commandments of Allah capable of being made into legislation.
The rest of the nation or even the rest of the world also undergoing this exercise would be an excellent opportunity for a global conversation on the desirability of global Secular Koranism with the West getting brownie points from God for repenting in time before WW3 which would be divine punishment for 2000 years of idolatry and blasphemy.
Once an agreed list of the Commandments of Allah has been identified, listed and numbered, they would become US legislation, implicitly repealing any existing law that is not in harmony with its principles.
But in that case why not just convert to Islam?
Most Westerners are atheists and Islamophobes. If I were to convert to Islam, I would be just another Muslim doing dawah to non-Muslims, which would not be quite the message I want to convey. I am saying that the solution to Western social, economic and political problems is to adopt Koranic principles of governance to restore social conservatism AKA the patriarchy and return the West to good moral order.
As a moral and political philosopher and a political and social scientist who is agnostic promoting the secular ideology of civic nationalism, it is important to make the point that a functioning moral system is required to maintain minimum standards of sexual morality ensuring that most parents are married parents properly parenting their legitimate offspring.
Currently, the West is a degenerate matriarchy prioritising the preferences of unmarried parents who casually conceived and parented their illegitimate offspring.
To reverse engineer the matriarchy, extramarital sex must be forbidden and punished and unmarried parents treated as sex offenders as 24:2 of the Koran prescribes. Since nothing short of public corporal punishment of sex offenders would be enough to discourage unmarried parenthood in the West, the point must be made through establishing the new moral system of Secular Koranism finally drawing a decisive line under the failure of Christo-Liberalism.
Making this point as a historically literate philosopher who is agnostic would make more waves than being just another Muslim calling Islamophobic nationalists and Westerners to Islam.
The fact that I started my political activism as a nationalist means I am well known in the nationalist community and also the liberal political establishment who will be aware of my ideas.
It is easy to argue as a philosopher that religion has the purpose of maintaining minimum standards of sexual morality which only the public corporal punishment of 24:2 of the Koran would effectively discourage in the shameless 21st century West. Arguing as a Muslim that Islamophobes should convert to Islam will not quite have the same psychological impact.
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