The fiery Pakistani Islamists seen in the photo below (via @nytimes) are misquoting the #Quran.
Verse 8:59 that they apparently sloganized to justify "killing blasphemers" - their big passion - has nothing to do with punishing blasphemy... nytimes.com/2021/04/20/wor…
The verse says, "Those who disbelieve think they will escape; they will not."
According to great the Sunni exegete Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, this may be a reference to a punishment by God in the afterlife - not by Muslims on earth.
And even the latter option isn't about blasphemy.
Because the context of the verse makes it clear that these specific "Those who disbelieve" were Meccan polytheists who attacked and persecuted Muslims in the first place.
No wonder 2 verses later, in 8:61, we read:
"if they incline to peace, then incline to it [also]."
Now, there is a reason why Pakistani Islamists are misquoting the Qur'an here:
#Pakistan had the right approach to religion at its birth as the great Ali Jinnah put it:
“You are free. You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship; that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
I also said:
“Some of the #Orientalist critiques of the Islamic world have been indeed prejudiced and crude, but the defensive reaction to this problem has turned into another mistake, as it avoids the healthy self-criticism we Muslims need today.”
I often see hardcore #Sunni accounts condemning the #Shia, for the latter "denigrate the #sahaba," the Prophet's companions.
They can't realize that this is because the Shia have a different version of the history of early Islam.
And the Sunni history is just another version.
Personally, I would not condemn any of the early figures in Islam - but I would not sacralize them either.
#Ali and #Aisha went to war over power. The all glorious sahaba killed each other for power. Obviously this was a very human history, whose full truth we may never know.
Whether you are #Sunni or #Shii, the immediate post-Prophetic Islam isn't too rosy.
It includes coercive wars (on "ridda"), nepotism, tribalism, assassination, and lots of intra-Muslim bloodshed.
So, to say that Islam brought a "perfect political system" isn't convincing.