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Would you wear a Hijab in solidarity?

Not really. The kind of Protestantism you're describing really only emerges as a major cultural force in the nineteenth century in the United States, and the large slice of the Christian pie it now claims is a result of, on the one hand, aggressive proselytising efforts by American churches among previously non-Protestant populations in Africa, Asia and South America, and on the other, by high rates of apostasy among Catholic, Orthodox and Mainline Protestant Churches. From a historical perspective, it's a novel and really quite bizarre phenomenon, enabled by the unique political and economic circumstances thrown up in the American West.

Protestantism secularism was not, for a very long time, what we recognise as secularism. It was about protecting the church from the state, rather than the state from the church, and it was still expected that the state would govern very much in line with religious principles and with the approval of religious authorities; Scotland was a virtual theocracy until the 1960s, despite the Kirk having been disestablished at its own request in the seventeenth century. This actually parallels certain strains of Islamic thought, which have tended to regard the state as something a bit grubby and disreputable and which should therefore be kept at arms length from the sanctity of the mosque and the madrasa, while still operating in accordance with the moral truths which those institutions propound.

Rather, modern secularism really emerges from the thought of French and English liberals, who lived in decidedly unsecular countries- England, to this day, has an established Protestant Church. We associate secularism with the Reformation largely because that was the mythology constructed by New England radicals during the American Revolution, who wanted to draw a line from their own secular revolution to their Congregationalist forebearers, and in doing so conflate the religious pluralism of the radical Reformation with their own modernising secularism.

You're... kinda digressing, don't you think? However much the Reformation was responsible for secular thought, their innovations were very much compatible with the modernizing world. Islam has been undergoing a revolution of its own, but it's only produced fascist-theocratic groups like ISIS who want to return to the golden days of Muslim conquest.

It's interesting to think on what would have happened had Salafism/Wahhabism gained this kind of power early on in the century. It does seem to ring the same tones as fascism and communism, and might have ended up the same way.
 
You're... kinda digressing, don't you think? However much the Reformation was responsible for secular thought, their innovations were very much compatible with the modernizing world. Islam has been undergoing a revolution of its own, but it's only produced fascist-theocratic groups like ISIS who want to return to the golden days of Muslim conquest.
That's asinine. Religions don't follow a single trajectory modeled after Christian Europe. Even Christianity doesn't follow the supposed Christian trajectory: the majority of Christians to this day subscribe to Catholic or Orthodox doctrines. The Reformation was a thing that happened, not a necessary, inevitable or even desirable step in a religion's historical development.

At any rate, it's inconsistent to claim that Islam has an overly-rigorous scripture, and then point to ISIS as somehow representative of where Islam is going, when the doctrines of ISIS are no more representative of all Sunnis, let alone all Muslims, than the Branch Davidians were of all Christians. That in itself is proof that the Quran is as subject to as diverse and conflicting interpretation as the Gospels are, it's simply that contemporary Muslims are simply more reluctant that contemporary Christians to acknowledge the openness of their holy text.
 
That's asinine. Religions don't follow a single trajectory modeled after Christian Europe. Even Christianity doesn't follow the supposed Christian trajectory: the majority of Christians to this day subscribe to Catholic or Orthodox doctrines. The Reformation was a thing that happened, not a necessary, inevitable or even desirable step in a religion's historical development.

I didn't say it was, only that Christianity is compatible with a secular-individualist society.

At any rate, it's inconsistent to claim that Islam has an overly-rigorous scripture, and then point to ISIS as somehow representative of where Islam is going, when the doctrines of ISIS are no more representative of all Sunnis, let alone all Muslims, than the Branch Davidians were of all Christians.

Wahhabism/Salafism is the only large-scale Sunni reformation movement today. Shias are tolerant of other religions, but they also have a fascist side to them (seriously, the entire movement is about who they believe was the rightful leader of all Muslims).
 
It doesn't dictate how society should function (which isn't necessarily a good thing, but it's better than Islam in my opinion).
 
Does too. Western governments just don't let it. How about in Sub-Saharan Africa, though? Lots of governments that more or less promote Christian ideals there, and they're just as bad as Islamic theocracies.
 
Isn't the OT full of that stuff? Even if not, what is "law" for the individual also becomes "law" for society depending on how ingrained into a society that religion is. We have many historical examples of Christianity playing such a role.
 
I didn't say it was, only that Christianity is compatible with a secular-individualist society.
It was made compatible, often against the will of church leaders. It didn't start that way, and the Reformation didn't necessarilly play an enormous role in that, at least not directly. As I said, most Christians remained within the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and Protestants were not necessarily secular in their outlook. You're talking

Wahhabism/Salafism is the only large-scale Sunni reformation movement today. Shias are tolerant of other religions, but they also have a fascist side to them (seriously, the entire movement is about who they believe was the rightful leader of all Muslims).
It doesn't follow that all non-Wahhabi and non-Salafi Sunnis are of a single mind. It's not even true that Wahhabi and Salifi Sunnis are of a single mind: both movements include large numbers of "quietists", who deliberately withdraw from political affairs. You can't flatten the attitudes of a billion-odd Sunnis like that, any more than you could say that all Western Christians are simply Catholic or Protestant.

Consider, as well: how many other religions have developed modernising reform movements? Where is the reforming movement in Buddhism, Hinduism or Sikhism? The only non-Christian religion to undergo a self-conscious "reformation", and really the only religion to do so with explicitly modernising intentions, was Judaism, and the supposed "Jewish reformation" was kind of a dud, attracting only a minority of global Jewry. Why, then, do we keep insisting that Islam in particular should imitate- well, not even Christianity, but American Protestantism's romanticised conception of Christianity? I don't disagree that some sort of change, some sort of "reform", is appropriate and necessary in the Islamic world. But I think it's misguided to insist that it should follow a logic and direct derived from a misinterpretation of Christian history.
 
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I don't think this discussion is really worth continuing (especially since we've digressed into basic theories of religious belief) so I'll just concede here.
 
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The only non-Christian religion to undergo a self-conscious "reformation", and really the only religion to do so with explicitly modernising intentions, was Judaism
Western Zen Buddhism is a deliberate Japanese export designed to provide a modern, reformed religion consistent with Hegelian thought.
 
but American Protestantism's romanticised conception of Christianity?

Only a minor correction, don't pin this all on American Protestantism, I regularly hear European protestants going on about how Islam needs a reformation.
 
Western Zen Buddhism is a deliberate Japanese export designed to provide a modern, reformed religion consistent with Hegelian thought.
Granted. But Western Zen is even more of a dud, demographically speaking, that Reform Judaism. (In fact, these days I'm given to understand that it's losing out to Westernised Tiberan Buddhism, which makes a keep of pointing all the mystical bollocks intact.)

Although Japan does give an other interesting example in Shinto, which was subject to a state-lead process of reform during the Meiji Restoration, with the goal of cobbling together thousands of local traditions into a coherent "national" religion centred around the Imperial cult. But if we want to argue that Reformations are individualist and secularising, we wouldn't find much support in that one.

Only a minor correction, don't pin this all on American Protestantism, I regularly hear European protestants going on about how Islam needs a reformation.
European Protestants don't generally argue that Reformation will make it more secular or individualistic, though, just less Oriental. These are people who usually take a very dim view of secularism and individualism in their own societies, after all.

And for the record, I'm not really intending to ascribe blame, just describing how the mythology of the Reformation has developed differently in Europe and America. The idea that the Reformation anticipated the democratic revolutions of later centuries is pretty peculiar to American Protestants, who as I said, have a tradition of drawing a straight line from the Ninety-five Theses to the Constitution via the Mayflower. That tradition, while not unheard of Europe, is much more marginal, and certainly doesn't have the status of national mythology outside of, I guess, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland.
 
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European Protestants don't generally argue that Reformation will make it more secular or individualistic, though, just less Oriental.

I guess I'll take your word for it. I guess I should have said "used to hear" because these people were active on a forum I used to be on which died an ignominious death. But the arguments I saw were typically exactly of the sort that you were criticizing - that Islam is currently barbarous, backwards, non-secular, and must undergo a 'reformation' to make it compatible with modernity.
 
I guess I'll take your word for it. I guess I should have said "used to hear" because these people were active on a forum I used to be on which died an ignominious death. But the arguments I saw were typically exactly of the sort that you were criticizing - that Islam is currently barbarous, backwards, non-secular, and must undergo a 'reformation' to make it compatible with modernity.
The difference is, the Americans are sincere. In Europe, this is a talking point only among right-wing weirdos who are trying to make themselves seem normal. ("Hello, fellow secular humanists, how do you do?") In America, the straight line from the 95 Theses to the UN Declaration of Human Rights is taken more or less for granted across the political spectrum, even by non-Protestants- as Mouthwash demonstrated.
 
Evangelicals are a bit different.
 
The difference is, the Americans are sincere. In Europe, this is a talking point only among right-wing weirdos who are trying to make themselves seem normal. ("Hello, fellow secular humanists, how do you do?") In America, the straight line from the 95 Theses to the UN Declaration of Human Rights is taken more or less for granted across the political spectrum, even by non-Protestants- as Mouthwash demonstrated.

Do Tom Holland or John Gray also fall into the category of 'right-wing weirdos?' Honest question.
 
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A couple of westerners who converted to Tibetan Buddhism and studied in India later left the religion after getting tired of the ideology that said the world was flat and similar very non scientific ideas, can make for interesting reading.
 
Do Tom Holland or John Gray also fall into the category of 'right-wing weirdos?' Honest question.
No, but it's not my understanding that either of them make the demand that Islam have a Reformation, as opposed to simply undergoing reform. The latter are commonplace in world history, and may be progressive, reactionary, or both, or neither, depending on how you wish to frame it. The former is distinct in that it is imagined as a single, world-historical event, a definite and irreversible step from Orient to Occident.
 
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