The Tehran Times carries an essay (via Ummah News Links) pleading for the creation of what the author calls a "New Folk Islam." It decires the tendency of urban intellectuals to look down on their simpler rural bretheren in the Ummah, because it hurts the "unity" of Islam.

However, in general, the rural peasants have [a] stronger and more sincere faith than the urban Islamists.

The urban Islamists have a certain academic education but must learn piety, sincerity, simplicity, and modesty from the rural peasants and nomads who practice Folk Islam.

Many of the urban Islamists look down upon the rural masses, which actually defeats the purpose of the Islamist movement and undermines efforts to attain Islamic unity. Their rhetoric speaks of connecting with the masses but they take very little concrete action toward that end.

If we could create some kind of New Folk Islam to unite the urban intellectuals and the rural peasants, this might help to advance the cause of Islamic unity.

It is yet another demonstration of the naive and simplistic utopianism that is at the heart of the islamist movement, a utopianism not different from that of Nazism, Communism, and other such destructive ideologies that assume that some group or other factor prevents the "unity" or "harmony" of mankind.

Perhaps the author should have spelled it "Volk Islamism" to honor its Germanic predecessor.

Hat tip: Erich Schwappach

Thomas Lifson   10 28 06