Posted on 07/28/2005 6:48:23 AM PDT by Pokey78
The funeral of British suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer was held in absentia in his family’s ancestral village, near Lahore, Pakistan. Thousands of people attended, as they did again the following day when a qul ceremony was held for Tanweer. During qul, the Koran is recited to speed the deceased’s journey to paradise, though in Tanweer’s case this was hardly necessary. Being a shahid (martyr), he is deemed to have gone straight to paradise. The 22-year-old from Leeds, whose bomb at Aldgate station killed seven people, was hailed by the crowd as ‘a hero of Islam’.
Some in Britain cannot conceive that a suicide bomber could be a hero of Islam. Since 7/7 many have made statements to attempt to explain what seems to them a contradiction in terms. Since the violence cannot be denied, their only course is to argue that the connection with Islam is invalid. The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, said that ‘Islam and terrorists are two words that do not go together.’ His boss, the Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, asserted that there is nothing wrong with being a fundamentalist Muslim.
But surely we should give enough respect to those who voluntarily lay down their lives to accept what they themselves say about their motives. If they say they do it in the name of Islam, we must believe them. Is it not the height of illiberalism and arrogance to deny them the right to define themselves?
On 8 July the London-based Muslim Weekly unblushingly published a lengthy opinion article by Abid Ullah Jan entitled ‘Islam, Faith and Power’. The gist of the article is that Muslims should strive to gain political and military power over non-Muslims, that warfare is obligatory for all Muslims, and that the Islamic state, Islam and Sharia (Islamic law) should be established throughout the world. All is supported with quotations from the Koran. It concludes with a veiled threat to Britain. The bombings the previous day were a perfect illustration of what Jan was advocating, and the editor evidently felt no need to withdraw the article or to apologise for it. His newspaper is widely read and distributed across the UK.
By far the majority of Muslims today live their lives without recourse to violence, for the Koran is like a pick-and-mix selection. If you want peace, you can find peaceable verses. If you want war, you can find bellicose verses. You can find verses which permit only defensive jihad, or you can find verses to justify offensive jihad.
You can even find texts which specifically command terrorism, the classic one being Q8:59-60, which urges Muslims to prepare themselves to fight non-Muslims, ‘Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies’ (A. Yusuf Ali’s translation). Pakistani Brigadier S.K. Malik’s book The Quranic Concept of War is widely used by the military of various Muslim countries. Malik explains Koranic teaching on strategy: ‘In war our main objective is the opponent’s heart or soul, our main weapon of offence against this objective is the strength of our own souls, and to launch such an attack, we have to keep terror away from our own hearts.... Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent’s heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision on the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose on him.’
If you permit yourself a little judicious cutting, the range of choice in Koranic teaching is even wider. A verse one often hears quoted as part of the ‘Islam is peace’ litany allegedly runs along the lines: ‘If you kill one soul it is as if you have killed all mankind.’ But the full and unexpurgated version of Q5:32 states: ‘If anyone slew a person — unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land — it would be as if he slew the whole people.’ The very next verse lists a selection of savage punishments for those who fight the Muslims and create ‘mischief’ (or in some English translations ‘corruption’) in the land, punishments which include execution, crucifixion or amputation. What kind of ‘mischief in the land’ could merit such a reaction? Could it be interpreted as secularism, democracy and other non-Islamic values in a land? Could the ‘murder’ be the killing of Muslims in Iraq? Just as importantly, do the Muslims who keep quoting this verse realise what a deception they are imposing on their listeners?
It is probably true that in every faith ordinary people will pick the parts they like best and practise those, while the scholars will work out an official version. In Islam the scholars had a particularly challenging task, given the mass of contradictory texts within the Koran. To meet this challenge they developed the rule of abrogation, which states that wherever contradictions are found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one. To elucidate further the original intention of Mohammed, they referred to traditions (hadith) recording what he himself had said and done. Sadly for the rest of the world, both these methods led Islam away from peace and towards war. For the peaceable verses of the Koran are almost all earlier, dating from Mohammed’s time in Mecca, while those which advocate war and violence are almost all later, dating from after his flight to Medina. Though jihad has a variety of meanings, including a spiritual struggle against sin, Mohammed’s own example shows clearly that he frequently interpreted jihad as literal warfare and himself ordered massacre, assassination and torture. From these sources the Islamic scholars developed a detailed theology dividing the world into two parts, Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam, with Muslims required to change Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam either through warfare or da’wa (mission).
So the mantra ‘Islam is peace’ is almost 1,400 years out of date. It was only for about 13 years that Islam was peace and nothing but peace. From 622 onwards it became increasingly aggressive, albeit with periods of peaceful co-existence, particularly in the colonial period, when the theology of war was not dominant. For today’s radical Muslims — just as for the mediaeval jurists who developed classical Islam — it would be truer to say ‘Islam is war’. One of the most radical Islamic groups in Britain, al-Ghurabaa, stated in the wake of the two London bombings, ‘Any Muslim that denies that terror is a part of Islam is kafir.’ A kafir is an unbeliever (i.e., a non-Muslim), a term of gross insult.
In the words of Mundir Badr Haloum, a liberal Muslim who lectures at a Syrian university, ‘Ignominious terrorism exists, and one cannot but acknowledge its being Islamic.’ While many individual Muslims choose to live their personal lives only by the (now abrogated) peaceable verses of the Koran, it is vain to deny the pro-war and pro-terrorism doctrines within their religion.
Could it be that the young men who committed suicide were neither on the fringes of Muslim society in Britain, nor following an eccentric and extremist interpretation of their faith, but rather that they came from the very core of the Muslim community and were motivated by a mainstream interpretation of Islam?
Muslims who migrated to the UK came initially for economic reasons, seeking employment. But over the last 50 years their communities have evolved away from assimilation with the British majority towards the creation of separate and distinct entities, mimicking the communalism of the British Raj. As a Pakistani friend of mine who lives in London said recently, ‘The British gave us all we ever asked for; why should we complain?’ British Muslims now have Sharia in areas of finance and mortgages; halal food in schools, hospitals and prisons; faith schools funded by the state; prayer rooms in every police station in London; and much more. This process has been assisted by the British government through its philosophy of multiculturalism, which has allowed some Muslims to consolidate and create a parallel society in the UK.
The Muslim community now inhabits principally the urban centres of England as well as some parts of Scotland and Wales. It forms a spine running down the centre of England from Bradford to London, with ribs extending east and west. It is said that within 10 to 15 years most British cities in these areas will have Muslim-majority populations, and will be under local Islamic political control, with the Muslim community living under Sharia.
What happens after this stage depends on which of the two main religious traditions among Pakistani-background British Muslims gains the ascendancy. The Barelwi majority believe in a slow evolution, gradually consolidating their Muslim societies, and finally achieving an Islamic state. The Deobandi minority argue for a quicker process using politics and violence to achieve the same result. Ultimately, both believe in the goal of an Islamic state in Britain where Muslims will govern their own affairs and, as the finishing touch, everyone else’s affairs as well. Islamism is now the dominant voice in contemporary Islam, and has become the seedbed of the radical movements. It is this that Sir Ian Blair has not grasped. For some time now the British government has been quoting a figure of 1.6 million for the Muslim population. Muslims themselves claim around 3 million, and this is likely to be far nearer to the truth. The growth of the Muslim community comes from their high birth-rate, primary immigration, and asylum-seekers both official and unofficial. There are also conversions to Islam.
The violence which is endemic in Muslim societies such as Pakistan is increasingly present in Britain’s Muslim community. Already we have violence by Pakistani Muslims against Kurdish Muslims, by Muslims against non-Muslims living among them (Caribbean people in the West Midlands, for example), a rapid growth in honour killings, and now suicide bombings. It is worth noting that many conflicts around the world are not internal to the Muslim community but external, as Muslims seek to gain territorial control, for example, in south Thailand, the southern Philippines, Kashmir, Chechnya and Palestine. Is it possible that a conflict of this nature could occur in Britain?
Muslims must stop this self-deception. They must with honesty recognise the violence that has existed in their history in the same way that Christians have had to do, for Christianity has a very dark past. Some Muslims have, with great courage, begun to do this.
Secondly, they must look at the reinterpretation of their texts, the Koran, hadith and Sharia, and the reformation of their faith. Mundir Badr Haloum has described this as ‘exorcising’ the terrorism from Islam. Mahmud Muhammad Taha argued for a distinction to be drawn between the Meccan and the Medinan sections of the Koran. He advocated a return to peaceable Meccan Islam, which he argued is applicable to today, whereas the bellicose Medinan teachings should be consigned to history. For taking this position he was tried for apostasy, found guilty and executed by the Sudanese government in 1985. Another modernist reformer was the Pakistani Fazlur Rahman, who advocated the ‘double movement’; i.e., understanding Koranic verses in their context, their ratio legis, and then using the philosophy of the Koran to interpret that in a modern, social and moral sense. Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd, an Egyptian professor who argued similarly that the Koran and hadith should be interpreted according to the context in which they originated, was charged with apostasy, found guilty in June 1995 and ordered to separate from his wife.
The US-based Free Muslims Coalition, which was set up after 9/11 to promote a modern and secular version of Islam, has proposed the following:
1. A re-interpretation of Islam for the 21st century, where terrorism is not justified under any circumstances.
2. Separation of religion and state.
3. Democracy as the best form of government.
4. Secularism in all forms of political activity.
5. Equality for women.
6. Religion to be a personal relationship between the individual and his or her God, not to be forced on anyone.
This tempting vision of an Islam reformed along such lines is unlikely to be achieved except by a long and painful process of small steps. What might these be and how can we make a start? One step would be, as urged by the Prince of Wales, that every Muslim should ‘condemn these atrocities [the London bombings] and root out those among them who preach and practise such hatred and bitterness’. Universal condemnation of suicide bombers instead of acclamation as heroes would indeed be an excellent start.
Mansoor Ijaz has suggested a practical three-point action plan:
1. Forbid radical hate-filled preaching in British mosques. Deport imams who fail to comply.
2. Scrutinise British Islamic charities to identify those that fund terrorism. Prevent them receiving more than 10 per cent of their income from overseas.
3. Form community-watch groups comprising Muslim citizens to contribute useful information on fanatical Muslims to the authorities.
To this could be added Muslim acceptance of a secular society as the basis for their religious existence, an oath of allegiance to the Crown which would override their allegiance to their co-religionists overseas, and deliberate steps to move out of their ghetto-style existence both physically and psychologically.
For the government, the time has come to accept Trevor Phillips’s statement that multiculturalism is dead. We need to rediscover and affirm a common British identity. This would impinge heavily on the future development of faith schools, which should now be stopped.
Given the fate of some earlier would-be reformers, perhaps King Abdullah of Jordan or a leader of his stature might have the best chance of initiating a process of modernist reform. The day before the bombings he was presiding over a conference of senior scholars from eight schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and, amazingly, they issued a statement endorsing fatwas forbidding any Muslim from those eight schools to be declared an apostate. So reform is possible. The only problem with this particular action is that it may have protected Muslim leaders from being killed by dissident Muslims, but it negated a very helpful fatwa which had been issued in March by the Spanish Islamic scholars declaring Osama bin Laden an apostate. Could not the King re-convene his conference and ask them to issue a fatwa banning violence against non-Muslims also? This would extend the self-preservation of the Muslim community to the whole non-Muslim world.
Such reform — the changing of certain fairly central theological principles — will not be easy to achieve. It will be a long, hard road for Islam to get its house in order so that it can co-exist peacefully with the rest of society in the 21st century.
Dr Patrick Sookhdeo is Director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity.
As Christianity is practiced now, intolerance as evil. When Pope Paul IV was ordering the burning the Talmud, that was good, as defined at the time.
At about the same time as Paul IV, the Ottoman Emperor, Sulieman the Magnificent -- known as "The Lawgiver" in the Muslim world -- was welcoming Jewish refugees and rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and opening it to all religions.
Such were the religions, as interpreted by their leaders, at that time. Is it no wonder Islam was ascendant at the time?
Now it's generally reversed, granted. I'm not going to call Islam a religion of peace -- I don't think any religion deserves that title. But, better than condemning Islam out of hand, hold up Sulieman as a model (at least for rulership, if not for family life) -- Look how great the Islamic world was, when its leaders tolerated all religions. Look how weak it is, now that it hews to narrow intolerance.
On 8 July the London-based Muslim Weekly unblushingly published a lengthy opinion article by Abid Ullah Jan entitled ‘Islam, Faith and Power’. The gist of the article is that Muslims should strive to gain political and military power over non-Muslims, that warfare is obligatory for all Muslims, and that the Islamic state, Islam and Sharia (Islamic law) should be established throughout the world. All is supported with quotations from the Koran.
It is not a secret that their purpose and driving force is WORLD DOMINATION! The arrogance of the West to think that Islam is not a threat to our Freedom (because we think we are smarter and more powerful), is exactly what will enable them to achieve their goal. The enemy from within is helping them by removing God from all aspects of our society and before you know it,Sharia Law will be our fate...and we will be living as Dhimmis.
"He has done mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, And has exalted those who were humble."Luke 1:51-52
As a Country we need to turn back to God, as it will be through His power that this evil cult will be defeated! There will be NO peace until Islam is no more...
I think we're in agreement about the basic problem, Islam is in need of a dominant, moderating interpretation of the Koran. If, as the article suggests, the more recent, violent passages from the Koran are the tool of Islamists, then the rest of Islam needs to push for a different reading of the book. It's their book, and that's not going to change in the near term. It would be better if they read it back-to-front, rather than how we read the Bible front-to-back. Abrogation is a problem that might be addressed, converting them in the next 20 years is not.
Much of the anti-semitic pogroms and discrimination over the centuries by Christians exploited only a verses from the New Testament. The actors claimed Biblical support for their actions. Islam's current state of affairs is easily reached in troubled lands where relegion is used as a tool to manipulate the masses. It doesn't take much to awaken the evil within men.
Christ only created and established one true Church.
It's name consists of two words only, " my Church".
Membership is totally exclusive.
To be a Christian you have to accept him as Lord and Savior and strive to follow His teachings and His precepts and His examples that is found in His word.
It is made up of individuals,not buildings,organizations or denominations.
His Church, His Doctrine and His Word is not, has not and never will be in need of Reform.
The only need is for man to conform to it.
Any teaching, doctrine or deed that does not conform with His, cannot be rightly called Christian, but is of man and/or Satan. It does not matter what individual, person, nation,man-conceived organization, or denomination whether Catholic,Protestant,or whatever.
This is exactly what you have in Islam and the teachings of Mohamed.
It has not been hijacked it is and has been in writing since the seventh century for all to see.
No matter how much we may not like some of Christ's teachings we cannot change what He says and claim to be followers of Him.
Those who truly follow Mohamed are also bound.
But, from what I read in Muslim law and scripture, Jews and Christians are charged a tax to exist in Muslim lands. I guess if the Jews submitted to and paid the tax, they would be relatively free from persecution, that is, if you're will to not consider the tax a persecution.
True, but the tax, in theory at least, was considered in return for military protection. IIRC, Charles Adams, in For Good or Evil mentions an incident during the Crusades, where a Muslim commander, realizing that he could not protect the non-Muslim village he was in, returned the tax money to the people of the village, before retreating.
That may not have been the regular practice, but it was, at least, the theory behind the taxation. And, frankly, how often do we get tax refunds, based on government failing to use the money as they said they would? In any case, the Jews generally had political and commerical access in Muslim lands. One Jew, Joseph Nasi, rose to become Duke of Naxos.
May as well co-opt the name, as well.
Islam is where Christianity was 500-700 years ago. Which makes sense, considering it was founded about 600 years after Jesus's time. I don't see any reason why it could not reform in the long-run.
The problem is, in the short run, we live in a world with weapons of mass destruction. Which makes waiting for reform a lot more dangerous than it was with Christianity.
http://www.dhimmi.org/
[Article published in the Middle East Quarterly, September 1999]
Islamism Grows Stronger at the United Nations (snip)
“Human Rights in Islam”
The Cairo Declaration. On August 5, 1990, the 19th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI). The CDHRI is very precise: according to the official English version, “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’a,” (article 24) and “The Islamic Shari’a is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration” (article 25). In other words, by establishing Shari'a law as “the only source of reference” for the protection of human rights in Islamic countries, the Cairo Declaration gives it supremacy over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In spite of this self-evident contradiction between the CDHRI and the UDHR, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights published the former document in December 1997, 5 thereby seeming to give it a certain authority within the United Nations. And, sure enough, the CDHRI then became a quotable source at the United Nations. For example, the twenty-six members of the Sub-Commission on Human Rights referred to it in the preamble to a resolution adopted on August 21, 1998, on the situation of women in Afghanistan:
Deeply concerned at the situation of the female population of Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban; dismayed by the Taliban’s claim that Islam supports their policies concerning women; fully aware that the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, adopted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1990, guarantees the rights of women in all fields. … 6
An “Islamic Perspectives" seminar. On the initiative of Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, who called for a "revision of the Declaration [UDHR]" in his address to the UNCHR on March 17, 1998, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights hosted a seminar in Geneva entitled "Enriching the Universality of Human Rights : Islamic Perspectives on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," on November 9-10, 1998. At the event, which was financed by the OIC countries at a cost of nearly $500,000, twenty Muslim experts on Islam presented papers with the aim of
expounding the Islamic perspectives as to human rights and recall the contribution of Islam to the laying of the foundations of these rights through which Islam aimed at leading people out of the obscurities and into enlightenment, at ensuring dignity in their life and non-submission to anyone but God, and at asserting their freedom and their right to justice and equality on the basis of the two sources of Islamic Shari’a: Qur’an and Sunna and on Fiqh jurisprudence. 7
blah blah blah...read more...
There are two prisms through which to view Islam.
The question begged is...is there a spiritual domain in which there is there a force of Good and an opposing force of evil...or is this world all their is. Complicated proposition but go with it for the sake of discussion.
If there is no spirit world, Islam is just a political problem or a socio-political problem (religion being mere superstition). If that is the case, no problem. The threat of Islam can be managed.
But if there is a spiritual domain...and if Islam is, (to coin a Forrest Gump kind of term, "evil is as evil does")...evil. If there is a spiritual force (of evil) behind Islam...it isn't going to step aside when moderates try to bring Islam to an acceptable center.
I think we are all beginning to see that Islam isn't a secular faith. There is a driving force behind Islam. And it isn't friendly.
Scripture, no. I'm basing it on my memory of Adams's book on the history of taxation I mention above.
Maybe the Jews were in Muslim countries before the later Koranic scriptures were written.
Radical Muslims of today are fairly scripture-driven. However, not all Muslim -- or even Muslim nations are. Modern Turkey was founded on Ataturk's rejection of Islamic law in favor of Western-style law and separation of Mosque and state. Ataturk is seen in Turkey as we see George Washington. It's worth noting that one of the doctors I work for is a native of Turkey who has a picture of Ataturk.
Iran, before the 1979 revolution, was quite westernized. Much of the unrest against the Mullahs today is a desire to go back to that.
We are caught in a moment of history, where the most public expression of Islam is radical, ultra-violent version that is a serious threat to ourselves and the rest of the world. However, they do not represent the entire history -- nor, indeed, the entire present -- of Islam.
Maybe the Jews were in Muslim countries before the later Koranic scriptures were written.
The Crusades would have been 11th century. It was for several centuries after the Spanish expulsion of 1492, which Jewish history considers a golden age.
We are caught in a moment of history, where the most public expression of Islam is radical, ultra-violent version that is a serious threat to ourselves and the rest of the world. However, they do not represent the entire history -- nor, indeed, the entire present -- of Islam.
Either Imam's don't have a vested interest in speaking out against the radicals and incentives encourage silence. Or the MSM is pushing what radical Muslims are saying at the expense of more rational Muslims for their own reasons. Or the radicals have the power and it doesn't matter what everyday powerless Muslims think. Or truthtellers are afraid. Or the lies or Islam and the truth of Islam are so intertwined and interputed by so many, that only the radicals speak with certainty. Or it's something else. Do you know?
Celtjew, you're right about Iran and the Mullahs. The average Iranian wants out of the madness. Oil money diverted to Mullah's bank accounts buys protection and the Iranian people are trapped.
It's a lot of things. Squeaky wheels get the grease, so all the statements of outrage are going to get more publicity than stories of people just trying to live their lives. It doesn't take any MSM conspiracy to do that -- it makes for good news.
For that matter, radicalism tends to kill off alternatives, when it can. For example, in the wake of the 6-day war there were Palestinian leaders calling for negotiation with Israel. They were almost all assassinated by Arafat's thugs or even more radical Palestinians. When the alternatives are shut up or die, moderation tends to shut up.
Point is, there is a history of moderate Islam. There is present day moderate Islam, not just in individuals, but in the nation of Turkey, the desires of most Iranians, and the determination of at least the Kurds of Iraq. There is a good possibility of a future of moderate Islam, if we can get through the present crisis and break the radical, Arab-centric form of Islam that has a stranglehold on the religion, the region, and the world headlines.
To condemn all of Islam as narrow, radical Islam is to deny Ataturk's secular legacy, the aspirations of the Iranian population, and (at the risk of coming off as a shill for the administration) the possibilities of democracy in Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt.
To condemn all of Islam as narrow, radical Islam is to deny Ataturk's secular legacy, the aspirations of the Iranian population, and (at the risk of coming off as a shill for the administration) the possibilities of democracy in Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt
I believe voices of reason are necessary ... just not now. This is the time for us to be outraged and them to be defensive. As the adults in Muslim cultures take control, we'll back off. Being reasonable too soon is not a good idea. If all goes well, I'll be standing with you in a year or so.
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