There is only true Islam

The NY Times reports:

A Saudi Morals Enforcer Called for a More Liberal Islam. Then the Death Threats Began. ...

Mr. Ghamdi’s colleagues at work refused to speak to him. Angry calls poured into his cellphone and anonymous death threats hit him on Twitter. Prominent sheikhs took to the airwaves to denounce him as an ignorant upstart who should be punished, tried — and even tortured. ...

The first thing many Saudis will tell you about Wahhabism is that it does not exist.

“There is no such thing as Wahhabism,” Hisham al-Sheikh told me the first time we met. “There is only true Islam.”

The view that there is only one Islam is very widespread. Not everyone says it includes killing infidels, but a lot do.

Harvard law professor (((Noah Feldman))) tries to explain Islam in the NY Times:

Muslims have a wide range of different beliefs about what Shariah requires in practice. And all agree that humans are imperfect interpreters of God’s will. But to ask a faithful Muslim if he or she “believes in” Shariah is essentially to ask if he or she accepts God’s word. In effect, Mr. Gingrich was proposing to deport all Muslims who consider themselves religious believers.

Start with a crucial distinction. Shariah doesn’t simply or exactly mean Islamic law. Properly speaking, Shariah refers to God’s blueprint for human life. It is divine and unchanging, reflecting God’s unity and perfection. It can be found in God’s revealed word in the Quran and in the divinely guided actions of the Prophet Muhammad. ...

But almost all faithful Muslims would say that they believe there is a single, truthful answer that lies in Shariah — we just cannot be absolutely sure as humans what that answer is.

In public discourse both in majority-Muslim countries and in the West, Shariah has come to take on other meanings. Advocates of political Islam — roughly, people who buy into the slogan “Islam is the answer” — sometimes use the term to describe a government that complies with the dictates of Islamic law.

There is a problem when people believe that there is a divine and unchanging blueprint for human life. You cannot reason with such people, and such beliefs are not consistent with Western civilization.

A vast majority of Muslims reject the use of Shariah to legitimate terrorism.

Unfortunately, that is not true. Polls show Muslim support for terrorism varies from 10% to 80%, depending on the country and how the question is asked.