There is no single Islam anymore than there is a single Christianity. There are Muslims and there are Christians and each believer understands their religion differently. But in the case of Islam I am of the opinion that things started to go wrong when the Prophet's own choice of succession (Ali) was ignored. However, as the current state of Iran indicates, Shi'ites can be as messed up today as Sunnis. I think the main thing is that religions become old and corrupted. It is not like Muhammad did not forsee what would happen:
"The Apostle of God said: `There will come a time for my people when there will remain nothing of the Qur'an except its outward form and nothing of Islam except its name and they will call themselves by this name even though they are the people furthest from it. The mosques will be full of people but they will be empty of right guidance. The religious leaders (Fuqaha) of that day will be the most evil religious leaders under the heavens; sedition and dissension will go out from them and to them will it return.' " -ibn Babuya, Thawab ul-A'mal
While I tend to be very suspicious of hadith reports, I don't think they can be entirely discarded. They are the only sources we have to give context to what is in the Qur'an. What I think we need is a new science of hadith which utilizes modern methods of historical criticism. Still, I don't think even that will entirely solve Islam's problems. The truth is that not everything in the Bible, the Qur'an, of even authentic ahadith are suited for the needs of today. Should women really stay silent in church and let men run things? Is slavery which both the Bible and the Qur'an allow to be deemed acceptable anywhere? As Baha'u'llah puts it:
"The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.
We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable afflictions. We see it languishing on its bed of sickness, sore-tried and disillusioned. They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy. They have conceived the straight to be crooked, and have imagined their friend an enemy."
Hi,
I am told, that it requires mysticism and Qur'an only people to say what was truly there. And being a full blown mystic myself, it is not possible for anyone to normally separate the true mystics from the false one.
Normally, does not imply it is impossible, raher it is just difficult and even I can be fooled by false mystics. I was once for a few years, now he is outed to his church, and to me, and he is also hopefully going to stop saying he is God-type-of-Mystic.
The end result apparently, is God exists, and few people know Him correctly. However, God if the world did not intrude, sometimes in just a horrific upbrininging sufficent to cause problems, and as is said that way, even in The Bible, (my reference book), would be known by all.
Anyone who displays any no-remorse tendencies, the ones the Psychologists talk about, are the ones who have subverted Christianity and Islam I am now told, to what it is not. What each of them is now, is a mixture of some truth and a lot of untruth.
The untruth allows the Narcissistic Types (The Formal Intellectual Professional definition and no other.), to get what they want, at even the Religion's expense.
I still want to find, some Muslims who, are not of the Wolves in sheeps clothing class, as determined in Parable form, by being grape vines also and fig trees also, while professing to the world that they are grapes and figs.
LOVE,
