How do you give an Orthodox perspective on Islam?

[Fr. George]

Malcom X spent most of his life working for the Nation of Islam, which was a VERY violent and hateful group...

Define "very violent".

Virulently racist and 100% opposed to MLK's pacifist movement.  While X never did, many of his brethren were abusive to their wives also.

The Nation of Islam was actually quite peaceful in terms of day-to-day behavior. It didn't encourage killing people, or having riots, or fomenting revolution. It awaited God's Judgment on Western civilization, yes, but that would be God's doing, not man's.

Eh, sort of.  They encouraged the sometimes violent taking of the rights that belonged to African-Americans.

Now, if like Malcolm, you started speaking publicly about the inner foibles of Elijah Muhammad, sure, that could get you into trouble.

X had encountered true non-racist Islam in Mecca, and began to call Elijah out about it.  Truth is, the Elijah-bashing wouldn't have started without X's conversion to a non-political Islam.

[88Devin12]

I thought X's trip to Mecca occurred after his break with Elijah?

[Alveus Lacuna]

For the early Christians being entirely peaceful, they sure did love to desecrate the pagan temples whenever they could get away with it.  They would mar the images of the gods, steal many of the temples' gold and relics, and sometimes even burn them down.  This stuff really picked up after the Edict of Milan.

If that were happening today, then such people would easily be called terrorists.  "Radical Christianity", the media would call it!

[Fr. George]

I thought X's trip to Mecca occurred after his break with Elijah?

Not to delve too much further into this aside, but... Elijah's health was deteriorating (and quickly), and many of the lieutenants around him were very jealous of X's fame (something Elijah predicted).  But the trip to Mecca was the big turning point for X.

I'd be interested to hear (maybe from folks who remember it firsthand) the image of Islam that was being projected by the Nation, versus what we've seen lately.

(It is interesting to note that of the two big Civil Rights personalities of X and MLK, one was a womanizer and a drunk and the other wasn't, and most people guess wrongly when posed with the question of "guess who?")

[Seafra]

There was a big article in "National Geographic" about Pakistan a while ago, and it said that there is a very serious revival of Sufism there; it's a very interesting "mystical" sort of Islam, very peaceful, absolutely non-violent and striving to reach unity between different peoples and cultures.

That self-proclaimed Sufis are universally non-violent is a bit of a myth. One of the major Chechen jihadists is a Sufi.

Classically understood, Sufi's practice a 'mystical' or 'inner' path of connecting to God.  Sometimes, Sufi's conduct their research within the 'boundaries' of Islam but often times they fall outside the pale of Islam (if we understand 'Islam' as the sum total of the Qur'an and Hadith -but even here we run into definition problems as many Muslims mix Islamic beliefs with other beliefs such as Muslims from Indonesia who also incorporate animist beliefs or Muslims from Azerbaijan who incorporate Orthodox Christian beliefs sometimes).  

Sufi's, because of their willingness to go outside of 'orthodox' Islam to reach their goal of uniting with God, have been persecuted and at times been outright denounced as heretics worthy of the death penalty.  If we look at the meaning of the word 'jihad', we see that there are two meanings that run side by side.  'Jihad' is an Arabic word that comes from the tri-consonant root word 'jahd' or 'jhd' which means something like 'to make an effort' or 'to struggle'.  Understood in a religious context, where it is usually understood, it means to fight our impulses to sin against God and our fellow man and thus, to unite ourselves with God through love.  The lesser meaning of 'jihad' is to defend one's family, friends, country and religion against an attacker.  Most Sufi's almost exclusively employ the first or 'higher' meaning of jihad and so are far less prone to physical violence.  Western Sufism has almost entirely, save for the Arabic or Persian language, lost it's 'Islamic' connections.

I have been wanting to learn a lot about islam and comparative studies to orthodoxy. I see that many of the modern peaceful muslims ascribe to what Gabriel posted. I have a hard time saying that this is true islam personally i believe that the actions of their prophet should speak for the nature of the religion and he was a very violent greedy and  ambitious man, however i do believe he sincerely thought he was keeping the will of God. modern islam on a whole has various sects conflicting with the interpretation of the koran so there is no doubt that modern muslims dont even know what true islam is anymore... some say all Christians are at war with God for not following and deserve to die other say its much more of a physical thing such as opposition with force. As far as a religion goes I agree that Islam is not truly a religion the purpose of the organization is to increase sharai law, the supposed law of God. As before stated the adherence to the law is what makes you a muslim.


*Edit* I was hoping others could elaborate more on their understanding of orthodoxy and islam as i would love to learn more!

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