Defanging Islam ll

   The Mutazia were condemned as philosophers who were corrupting Islam with the Greek heritage. They were hunted down and killed being labeled infidels and atheists. The end of the Mutazia appeared to come as the imams tried to consolidate their power and "sharia" lost its reflective dimensions and emphasized the laws of the immams to reorient Muslims to the power and control of the leader instead of the "ummah", the people. The Mutazia had been very democratic insisting that the imman be established by free votes. Naturally, the immans in power wanted to remain that way, and "sharia" was modified to give them tyrannical power.
    However, the ninth century belonged to the democratic and rational Mutazias, and this was the century of freedom which meant that people were let alone to make their choices. Great men made great inventions, such as algebra and trigonometry. Reason, openness, democracy, thinking, freedom, honesty, and any other human virtue was prohibited as the Iron Curtain fell on the Mutazia Renaissance. Sharia demanded that Islam become a religion for compliant simpletons, if you toed the present party line which of course was "divinely ordained" and everything else too. The Iranian Shahrastani in his twelfth century book, Revealed Religions and Fabricated Beliefs put it succintly: "A Muslim is he who believes and obeys. Religion is obedience. An obeying Muslim is religious. He gives who gives priority to his own opinions is a modernizing innovator and a creator." Horrors! The Renaissance was over. During the ninth century, Islam had defanged itself and flourished. But people desperate for the power of violence over others could not leave a peaceful Islam alone.
    Peter Nickerson, Philosophy Major, Class of '68, William and Mary.
"The measure of a man
  Is not what he says,
  But what he does,
  And what he allows,
  Others to do in his presence."
   - Navy Seal Instructor