AM, Can you totally divorce a philosophy or an ideology from its implementation? We all make judgments on secularism, democracy and capitalism based on their implementation and practice and not just on their stated highest ideals. The gentleman in question again created a thread to discuss the failings of these systems where the failings of specific states and specific instances of some supposedly discriminatory laws were being discussed (e.g. French ban on head scarves in schools was made to be a big issue while refusing to discuss the Saudi ban of the following of any other religion!).
While you may well say that a society may have failed to live up to an ideology in the best way possible, the two can't be totally divorced. If we don't have a single example of a well running functional Salafi state while the claim is made that there are 100s of millions of Salafis (and so there should be 10s of countries where Salafis are a majority and are in power), but not a single state where at least some of the ideals are being practiced (let alone all of them), then either the ideology is abstract and therefor not considered practical by their followers themselves or it doesn't at least have a self correcting mechanism and is liable to be misused. At the very least you should have a strong effort at correcting what is going wrong in the Salafi societies. Is there any evidence of that?
Yes you can - in fact if the implementation is completely out of whack from what the ideology preaches, why suggest that the implementation reflects the ideology?
A better means of addressing the issue is by qualifying the argument to refer to the 'interpretation' of Islam or Salafism being purportedly 'implemented'.
Also, there are various other factors I have raised about Islam and Islamic societies in general that I believe have contributed to the lack of a 'self correcting mechanism' (as you put it) - namely the usurpation of power and authority by various autocratic entities and individuals who have through history taken away through fear and coercion those public platforms that would have allowed introspection, correction and evolution.
I would argue that the social and legal changes being wrought in Pakistan right now indicate how necessary and powerful platforms (such as democracy, though not limited to it) that allow for public discourse are for social evolution to take place.
So, again, implementation is subject to a variety of factors, and reducing the process of analysis of any ideology to a mere study of its implementation in various forms is not a very good approach, IMO.
I think implementation should be studied, but not before one has an idea of what exactly the goal of the ideology is. It goes back to the question in teh secularism thread everyone decided needed to be answered first before any discussion on secularism could take place - i.e - what is secularism?
So, similarly, what is Salafism? What is Islam? Given how broad a range of subjects Islam covers, it would in fact require addressing what Islam or Salfism requires in individual spheres, before looking at its implementation.
In that context, I thought that as a Muslim, Salafist, Zyxius's post #26 answered important questions about his interpretation of what Salafism means.
We ca go from there to see if Saudi Arabia or any other country is in fact implementing those principles and if not - are they really a 'salafist nation'?
Or are they an autocracy that has pandered to the fringe and extreme elements of Islam to maintain themselves in power?
