Islam and secularism

[Endovelico]

Some of you may not be aware of this Moroccan scholar and of his views on Islam. Worth listening to and researching:

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Ahmed Assid is a Berber and therefore heir to a much more tolerant culture than the typical Arab. No wonder he can therefore be both a Muslim and a supporter of secularism. People who use Granada and Cordoba, in present Spain, as an example of past enlightened and tolerant Islam, may fail to realize that those Muslim kingdoms/emirates in the Iberian Peninsula were mostly populated and ruled by Berbers - as well as by Muwallad (Christians converted to Islam and their descendants). Non-Arabs were about 80% of the population.

[Ibrahim]

Ahmed Assid is a Berber and therefore heir to a much more tolerant culture than the typical Arab.

Sounds like a stereotype. Also not historically sound, given extremist Berber states in North Africa, which subsumed the more tolerant Arab-Andalusian states of southern Spain in the 11th century.

No wonder he can therefore be both a Muslim and a supporter of secularism.

If I'm understanding you correctly you're saying that he is able to hold these views because he's not an Arab? Arab secularists instigated a revolution in Tunisia.

People who use Granada and Cordoba, in present Spain, as an example of past enlightened and tolerant Islam, may fail to realize that those Muslim kingdoms/emirates in the Iberian Peninsula were mostly populated and ruled by Berbers - as well as by Muwallad (Christians converted to Islam and their descendants). Non-Arabs were about 80% of the population.

Andalusia was an ethnic mix, but the political elite were mostly Arab, along with smaller numbers of Berbers, Jews, and Christians. Berbers did not become politically dominant until the Almoravid invasion, and they were religiously extreme.


My point here being that people have proven themselves to be secular or religiously extreme regardless of ethnicity.

[Endovelico]

Countryside Moroccans are mostly Berber and there you see a very independent people, not given to fundamentalist Islam, and where women are very much the equal to men. That's why I said that Ahmed Assid's views may have been influenced by the fact that he belongs to that tolerant Berber community.





Berber women do not cover their faces. They would never wear a hijab, and much less a burka.

It's interesting that until about thirty years ago, women in the Portuguese countryside wore very similar head scarves.

[Ibrahim]

Countryside Moroccans are mostly Berber and there you see a very independent people, not given to fundamentalist Islam, and where women are very much the equal to men. That's why I said that Ahmed Assid's views may have been influenced by the fact that he belongs to that tolerant Berber community.

I would just be careful about what you extrapolate from such observations. There are certainly extremist Berbers. The fashions re: veils are different in the Sahara than in Arabia, but this doesn't mean that theological conclusions can or should be drawn from that difference.

Ahmed Assid's views may, in general, be laudable, but I wouldn't extrapolate from them that Berbers are fundamentally different than Arabs. Class, background, education, and geography will ultimately determine more about the religious views of an individual than whether or not they are Berber or Arab.