By Liaquat Ali 01/08/2001
Islam, at its core, is anti-slavery, gender equal, pluralistic, individual-centric yet community and environment friendly.
Strong monotheism, individualistic reward and accountability, non-intercessional role of "clawless" clergy, emphasis on mutual consultation, universality of scope and encouragement of philanthropy provide a strong foundation for the application of the Qur’anic Laws in a society that is interested in creating an ideal human existence.
Islam, as it was revealed to the Beloved Prophet, does not need any fixing. The "Number 2 Islam" or N2I that is being fed to us through the Mullah Mafia is the problem. Please refer to the following article:
http://www.isbny.org/whatsnew/Quranic_Laws_and_Number_2_Islam.htm
Since many people are not able to differentiate between the Real Islam and the N2I, they come up with adjectives, such as, Liberal, Moderate, Progressive, American, etc., to define a humane version of Islam that is not as irrational, dogmatic and bigoted as N2I.
Adjectivized Islam may provide euphoria to limited number of activists and intellectuals, but will never resonate with Muslim masses. The Real Islam is what humanity in general and Muslims in particular are yearning for.
Whereas N2I represents fossilized sets of interpretations of Islam that were done more than a millennium ago, the Real Islam is based on Divine Laws that are preserved for humanity in the form of the Qur’an. Therefore the Real Islam can be simply extracted using a process that I call, “From the Qur’an Outwards” or FQO.
I will explain FQO in a different article. In short, it is a process of the interpretation of Islam where the Qur’an sits at the driver’s seat, and all other sources of knowledge, though extremely useful, take the back seat.