The two manuscripts, "A New Kind of Muslim" and "Brief Thoughts about a New Islam", have been combined into one volume. The essays are very readable; they make it easy to understand the epigrams in "Brief Thoughts". Maybe the world will notice this work, and maybe not. If the Muslim clerical establishment notices this book there may be a fatwah and there may be violence. Muslims do not take kindly to heresy, nor to anyone who suggests that he might be a modern-day prophet, or perhaps Al-Mahdi.
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Lorin Jenis. The Reformation of Islam
The Reformation of Islam
Preface to the First Edition
Salat in the Vernacular
The Uncaused Severity of God
How the Abrogation of Certain Verses in the Qur’an Changed History
Fear and Fearlessness in Islam
What Islam Means to Us, and Why We Should Hold onto Islam
Divine Madness
A Fourth Reich May Threaten Muslims in Europe
European Nations Ought to Care for the Muslims in their Lands
St. Germain and the Twelfth Imam
Was the Black Stone in the Kaaba Ever White?
The Satanic Verses Revisited
Aisha: An Unexpectedly Modern, Liberated Muslim Woman
Allah ki jaya
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Dedication and Verses
1-10. Hell
11-17. Priesthoods
18-23. Atheism
24-29. Prayer
30-37. Women
38-45. Revolution
46-50. Laws
51-54. Heaven
55-61. Books
62-69. Rightly Guided
70-74. The Voice
75-81. Freedom
82-87. Time
88-96. Spontaneity
97-99. The Human Spirit
Отрывок из книги
Containing the Revised Texts of
A New Kind of Muslim
.....
By now my reader will begin to see the parallels between the history of Islamic civilization and the ancient and medieval Indian civilization, and the medieval European civilization. The earliest sages of ancient India taught in Sanskrit because it was the common language of their time. The Buddha taught in Pali because it was his country's everyday language. Moses taught in Hebrew because it was his people's native language. Jesus taught the people in Aramaic because it was their native language, and the evangelists wrote the gospels in Koine Greek because it was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean. St. Jerome employed Latin in his translation of the Bible precisely because it was a common language of his time and place. The Prophet Muhammad taught in classical Arabic because every poor person in Mecca and Medina spoke Arabic. And finally Martin Luther translated the Greek texts of the Bible into German because German was the native language where he lived.
In every case the language that began as the language of unlettered people eventually became a sacred language known primarily to scholars, monks, and priests or imams. The pattern is consistent, that is, except in the case of the German Bible and the other vernacular Bibles that were created in the Reformation. Soon after the Reformation of northern Europe the Enlightenment practically succeeded in replacing religious culture with a scientific, secular culture. There are people even today who believe that God spoke the King James English, but they are marginal in a world in which nothing is sacred. Educated and thoughtful people in the West do not think that the German of Martin Luther’s Bible or the English of the King James Bible is sacred, and they certainly do not believe that German or English is the language of God.
