In other words, you’re saying: “I don’t take these statistics as fact because they don’t conform to MY narrow understanding of Islam.”
The article’s “generalizations” were the result of a study conducted by a professor of law. It’s completely legitimate to criticize its methods, but to dismiss its results with no rebuttal is simply denial.
As for your qualms with American Muslims who are content with a secular system, let me ask you this. Why would Muslims want to establish a codified system of Islamic law in a non-Islamic country?
I think Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf puts it best in his book “What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America”:
Many American Muslims regard America as a better “Muslim” country than their native homelands. This may sound surprising if not absurd to many Americans, and Muslims outside America, but it is founded on the argument that the American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law.
Muslim legal scholars have defined five areas of life that Islamic law must protect and further. These are life, mind (that is, mental well-being or sanity), religion, property (or wealth), and family (or lineage and progeny). Any system of rule that upholds, protects, and furthers these rights is therefore legally “Islamic,” or Shariah compliant, in its substance. Because these rights are God-given, they are inalienable and cannot be deprived of any man or woman without depriving them of their essential humanity.
What I am demonstrating is that the American political structure is Shariah compliant, for “a state inhabited predominantly by Muslims neither defines nor makes it synonymous with an Islamic state. It can become truly Islamic only by virtue of a conscious application of the sociopolitical tenets of Islam to the life of the nation, and by an incorporation of those tenets in the basic constitution of the country.” By the same token, a state that does incorporate such sociopolitical tenets has become de facto an Islamic state even if there are no Muslims in name living there, for it expresses the ideals of the good society according to Islamic principles.
You, by taking it upon yourself to determine who is and isn’t a “true” Muslim, have assumed you have authority on this matter. The United States is home to an estimated six million Muslims, many of whom are devout and would never consider themselves secular. And by dismissing all of them, you’re also dismissing hundreds of imams who have been certified by the highest institutions of Islamic learning in the world, people who live in America yet have no desire to impliment Sharia because they feel that current systems of law present no conflict with living as a devout Muslim.
As for my response about “freedom” and “jihad,” my commentary was entirely sarcastic; its context may have been lost on you if you’re not American. I was mocking the anti-Muslim right in America who often claims, without reason, that Muslims are trying to politically infiltrate America through a philosophical jihad of sorts.
