Are Muslims Muslims? Who are Muslims today? Which Islam do we defend?

When it is against Islam, against whom and what it actually is?
Why is, for example, Tariq Ramadan defending Islam, when those who are being "The Muslims" (in the minds of those who accuse Islam of being the words religion today), don't even consider Tariq as a Muslim, at least not "the right kind of Muslim". Not only the Wahhabis, but the majority of non-Wahhabi Muslims might think that. Of course, Tariq is aware that there are millions of people who do think like him, who do consider the religion to be something related to faith, not geography, who don't blindly listen to the schollars. But the majority of vocal Muslims who get to get space in the media are the ones who would stop and think before saying "Tariq Ramadan has a point". I think at least half of the Muslims do believe that stoning is written in the Qur'an, or that it is approved by the Prophet. Large percentage of the Muslims do believe that what the schollars say is correct, ignoring the fact that the earth is large, and that there are Muslims elsewhere. 

Who are the Muslims?

It has been noted that the scientists who represent the Golden Age were heretics to the Muslims back then. And indeed, the people who represented the Golden Age, are today’s Wahhabis heretics. If the scientists of Islam who lived 1000 years ago showed up today, the Wahhabis and all the Muslim leaders educated in the Middle Eastern Wahhabi-sponsored universities, would consider them heretics. In some violent versions, they’d be sentenced to death.

Good point, indeed. But it wasn't that Mutazalite heretics were heretics according to Islam, but according to this stream of Islamic dogmatists who are now known as the Wahhabis.

The heretics of Islam – according to the “mainstream Islam” -  indeed need to reconsider if it's Islam that they want to defend and retake the name of the religion they are part of. There are obviously more than one Islam. Every Islamic sect, or most of them, acknowledges other sects, with all the differences that are there due to geography, but one - the Wahhabi sect – says that all the sects are invented by heretics, and moreover, who need to die.

The Wahhabis run the "holy" places to all Muslims, and for the unfortunate truth, most Muslims who are not Wahhabi respect the region and believes that students from Medina are better Muslims and better in teaching Islam. Well, those students are only better in teaching Wahhabism. Example close to me, Bosnia and Herzegovina. People studying in Medina, getting jobs at Islamic faculties, writing columns for certain portals, and basically claim all the Wahhabi claims to be OK. Those include banning traditional Muslim gatherings, traditional Muslim festivities, liberation of thought, liberation of women, Sufism, free thinking, science, and questioning of everything.

Do we surrender to admit that Islam is now taken over by the Wahhabism? Maybe.
But 600 years ago, there was strong Islamic thought in Bosnia that was based on reason, and rationality. Don't know about Abdullah Bosnevi? This wikipedia article is not going to help you find out much. You'll have to read his book. Now, it is hidden and told by small groups of Sufis. I am sorry to see that not many Muslims know that there were times when Islam was free to offer many different opinions about God, about the Prophet, about the tradition, about the practice of the prophet, about the importance of geography in shaping religious behaviour – not just the Wahhabi or similar versions.
There was a time when Muslims could question everything, and prominent names respected in some Islams, but regarded as heretics in some other Islams, questioned everything, denied the dogma.

Again, I am pointing out, many of whom the Wahhabi leaning Muslims regard as heretics, as Mansur Al-Hallaj, Omar Khayyam, Rabia of Basra, Ibn Arabi, and some others, are highly respected Muslims and thinkers and spiritual leaders in Islam. Well, in some of versions of Islam. Sufism, for example.

I remember when my friend said to me: “The paradise that the Imams speak of is false. I want this paradise that is here and now. Not some imaginary somewhere, nobody knows where”. He paraphrased Omar Khayyam, who is by the Wahhabis regarded as a heretic. Or Mansur Al-Hallaj, who said: “I am the truth”. He is most definitely heretic for the majority of the Muslims.

So isn’t the majority of Muslims what represents Islam? Isn’t it? Am I defending Islam, that the majority of Muslims even don’t agree with, or am I defending my version of Islam, that majority of Muslims might not even think of as Islam at all?

I am aware that the rest of the world doesn’t give a damn about mine Islam. I am not alone, and I am not alone to write about it. From the famous people, I’d add with me the thoughts of Reza Aslan, Tariq Ramadan and his uncle, who wanted to filter the “hadith” – but was rejected by the mainstream scholars.
I am trying to achieve as shorter as possible paragraph in which it would be known that my Islam is 100% based on what the Prophet of Islam wanted it to be. I say, “based on”.

My example is this.

When the city of Medina was attacked by the army of Meccans, the Muslims were sure they’d be defeated. A Persian slave had an idea. He said that a trench should be dug. Muhammad the Prophet accepted his idea. And is that the sunnah? Of course it is. But, not to dig a trench, but to accept other people’s ideas, who come from other cultures. By the way, this trench thing was apparently a new way of military defensive strategy back in the day in Arabia, as the Meccans were surprised by it. After several days of the siege, and a wind, the Meccans had to retreat. So the Muslims survived because of an idea from a slave who’s not even an Arab. The prophet said then, and repeated similar idea often: This guy is not from the Meccan Muslims’s group, neither he is from Medina’s Muslims group – he’s from my family.

Today, we have arabized Islam which is the representation of Islam.

When people say the terrorists are using Islam to gather new recruits, that’s true.

But, it’s also true that the rest of the billion Muslims uses the Qur’an to not recruit the terrorists.

It’s not true that all non terrorists are my-version of Muslims. I am sure that a large majority would consider me and my ideas, which I have not yet written about, as not Islamic. But they are. I am reasoning them on the Qur’an, and on the history of Islam. So I am a Muslim, and my thoughts are Islamic, and I am representing Islam in its core, stripped off all the national and dogmatic additions. And those additions were apparent even in the time of the Prophet. But some were part of daily life. I suggest ignoring all those.

It is an unfortunate fact that what many non-terrorist Muslims do in the world, like subjugating women, forcing their children into marriages, believing and approving beating of wives, even if it’s a tenth step necessary (which is wrong), is based on Islam. But, I say, the majority doesn’t understand it. Because the majority doesn’t care for it. Of those who care, I’m sure there are three types; those who get it very wrong, and use it for their cause, those who get it wrong, but think it should not be used for a personal cause, and those who get it right.

The wrong ones for the cause are the ones who act upon it while harming others – the terrorists. The wrong ones who don’t act upon it are the majority of scholars. Omar Khayyam said to them: “Did god reveal to you something he didn’t reveal to me? I have the same book, and I can read.”

Well, Khayyam is not a Muslim, or not a true Muslim, right? Wrong. He was a Muslims, and he stood against the corrupt clergy. Actually, he was a mathematician, and he didn’t that much bother with the clergy, but in his spare time, he wrote poetry to inspire the Muslims to think for themselves about their holy book.

Let’s do that again. But, not because Omar Khayyam did it, but because the prophet had told the Muslims so.