Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #096 – Liberal vs. Conservative Muslims

			Muslims really don't benefit from the liberal conservative binary, we don't benefit from those
categories very much at all. In my opinion, Islam is neither liberal or conservative, or it's both
liberal and conservative, you know, we have to realize that we're stepping into loaded territory,
right? These words are already loaded with preconceived ideas. And that Islam is, first of all, just
before these terms, and second exceeds and encompasses these terms, it takes the best of what each
of them is supposed to get at. And it isn't mixed up with the worst of what each of those is
associated with or responsible for. So you know, what are you gonna say, if we talk about like
		

			reparations, or we talk about like Native American land rights, we talk about the city and how, like
here in central New York, we have the United Nation, federally recognized nation or allied with the
United States in the Revolutionary War swindled out of all their land by New York State, took the
state to court had a ridiculous opinion issued against it in 2005. And earlier than that, you know,
as far as I understand from the city, they need to get some sort of compensation, and maybe even the
land back or something like that. Okay. Now, if we ram it through this liberal conservative divide,
that's a liberal opinion, okay. Is Islam all the sudden liberal now? No, Islam is what it is. And we
		

			judge liberalism and conservatism by Islam, and we don't judge a slam by liberalism or conservatism.
There's other issues where if you go to it, yeah, I mean, gay marriage, right? LGBTQ issues, you
know, the whole trans phenomenon, all these sorts of things. It's, I would seem conservative, okay,
does that make that there is a conservative and a liberal Islam or there's a snap, there is a snap,
and then there are these other manmade sort of platforms that with their own sort of even if you go,
and this is why Americans need to travel because if you go to other places in the world, the sorts
of associations that people have and opposition's that people have don't necessarily hold. So for
		

			example, environmentalism is a left issue in the United States. Okay, if you're an environmentalist,
again, that's another position where Islam would be seen as extremely liberal. All right, the
prophesy Saddam talked to mountains and rocks, okay. They're not just dead root matter that can be
manipulated in any way that we see fit, they have rights, we have to treat them well. Okay, we're
responsible, actually, for their proper management and stewardship. Does this make us land liberal?
No, but even if you go to some places in Europe, environmentalism is a right issue certain places in
Europe. So people need to really, really be cautious when they're wading into these territories
		

			using these terms, talk about politics and political platforms. First of all, they're not universal,
okay? They're very, very limited in geographical scope to the United States. And the history of the
United States. And the history of these two parties are these two political movements and they're
sort of antagonism towards each other and trying to score points against the other right and then
you can't let Islam be drug into it to the point where you're trying to pigeonholed into this party,
or that party or this movement or this ideology or that ideology. Islam is way more than all of
those ideologies and parties and Islam should be taken on its own terms on its own terms and not
		

			forced into these other sorts of loaded terms that are really very poorly descriptive of it.