Why conservatives should be more discriminating when they criticize

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We often hear of the so-called "Islamic Golden Age," but, during that period of time, a very specific kind of Islam was prevalent: the sect of the Mu'tazila.

This sect of Muslims rejected what are called the hadiths (which I'll come to in a moment), and believed that reason was the pre-eminent authority among mankind. They were essentially equivalent to the Deists of the 17th and 18th centuries (like the Founding Fathers of America).

This sect was eventually conquered and wiped out by the competing Asharite sect under al-Ghazali in the 11th century A. D. This theologian "closed the gate of ijtihad" (discourse about Islam), and the dogma of that day has remained exactly the same ever since; so too has the Islamic world lain in darkness.

What people don't know is that ninety nine percent of the objectionable things in Islam are to be found, not in the Qur'an, but what are called the hadiths, those very same things with the Mu'tazila rejected. The hadiths are a set of traditions about Muhammed that were written down 300 years after the composition of the Qur'an. It is here that you see stoning for adulterers and apostates, paedophilia, perpetual war against infidels, and all the other terrible things in Islam, justified. The Qur'an itself is so mild that it does not even speak of a death penalty for crime.

There are people equivalent to the Mu'tazila today called Quranists, those who wish again to reject the hadiths; but they are a small and persecuted minority. But instead of speaking about "Islam" and the "Qur'an" as something bad in and of itself, I think that conservatives should be more discriminating about Islam and its history, and do everything they can to support these dissenters.

One of them is a man called Ahmed Subhy Mansour, an academic who was expelled from his university and forced to flee Egypt when he professed himself a Quranist. You can read about him here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Subhy_Mansour