The Problem is Islam, Not Islamic Extremists

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Enough is enough.  When the President of the United States refuses to name Islam as the motivating factor in the violence occurring in the Middle East and infers a moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam. he has crossed a bridge too far in political correctness.  Mr. President, with all due respect, I will see you the few thousand killed by “Christians” in the Crusades, which, by the way, were a response to the military conquest of Jerusalem by Muslims, and raise you the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, killed by Muslims in the last thousand years as they spread their religion by the sword.

Are all Muslims violent?  Certainly not, but to refer to ISIS or al Qaeda as “radical Islamists” or “violent extremists”, as the president, print journalists and the talking heads on TV are suggest, demonstrates either intentional deception or willful ignorance.

Two things guide Muslims:  the Quran and the sunna, which are the life and teachings of Muhammad.  A close examination of both would reveal that the problem is not “radical Islamists” at all.  The problem is Islam itself.

Regarding Muhammad, most Muslims don’t investigate his life for themselves, instead they are taught an airbrushed image presented to them by Imams; hence they revere Muhammad as peaceful, humble, and virtually flawless.  The reality is quite different.  In  1.24 of Sahih Bukhari’s commentary on the hadiths, Muhammad says, “I have been ordered by Allah to fight against people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity ….then they will save their lives and property from me.”  Muhammad lived this out in his military conquest of the Arabian peninsula when, to offer one example, after the Battle of the Trench, he captured and beheaded over five hundred men and teenage boys from the Jewish tribe of Qurayza and sold their women into slavery.  Fast forward to ISIS and al Qaeda in 2015.

Peaceful Muslims also have to ignore the Muslim doctrine of “abrogation” which is applied to the Quran.  This simply means that when a verse, which was handed down later, conflicts with an earlier verse, the later verse overrules the earlier one.  There are multiple Quranic verses that state this principle in one form or another.  One of the many peaceful verses considered to be abrogated was Sura 2:109 on which Ibn Kthir, a noted Muslim scholar who lived in the 1300’s had this to say: “ “But forgive and overlook, till Allah brings his command”[Q2:109] was abrogated by the Ayah, (verse) “Then kill the Mushrikin [idolaters] wherever you find them” [Q9:5], and , “Fight the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] ….[Q9:29].  Allah’s pardon for the disbelievers was repealed….it was abrogated by the Ayah of the sword [Q9:5]”  Again, fast forward to al Qaeda and ISIS in 2015, who are merely obeying the teachings of their Prophet.

Another problem for peaceful Muslims when engaging the West is the doctrine of taqiyya, a doctrine that encourages Muslims to lie to an “infidel” if it will advance the cause of Islam.  So when Arsalan Iftikhar of the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] claimed that Islam did not motivate the Fort Hood massacre, he was practicing taqiyya.  Iftikahar is quoted as saying, “Most of the world’s 1.57 billion Muslims know that the Holy Quran states quite clearly that, “Anyone who kills a human being … it shall be as though he has killed all of mankind. … If anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he has saved the lives of all of mankind.  Accordingly, it should come as little surprise to any reasonable observer that when Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan recently committed his shocking acts of mass murder at Fort Hood, Texas, America’s Muslim community of over 7 million felt an added sense of horror and sadness at this senseless attack against the brave men and women of the U.S. armed forces.”

But Iftikahar’s quotation was selective.  The full version of Sura 5:32 says, “Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors.   The admonition of Sura 5:32 is addressed to Jews, not Muslims and corruption in the land is viewed as practicing another faith.

Iftikhar also conveniently failed to mention Sura 5:33 which follows, “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption [practice another religion] is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.”  This presents and entirely different picture of the motivation of Maj. Hassan and, in view of taqiyya, presents a credibility problem for Islamic apologists who defend Islam as teaching peace.

The upshot is that ISIS and al Qaeda practice Islam as it was taught by the Prophet Muhammad and is taught by the Quran.  Many Muslims can say that beheadings and slavery are wrong at this historical juncture, but the cannot condemn them out right without contradicting the Quran and Muhammad.  To say that core texts of the Quran or certain teachings of Muhammad ae wrong would be and act of apostasy.

Muhammad’s goal was a worldwide caliphate under Islamic rule.  ISIS is here to make that a reality.   It is the peaceful Muslims, and there are plenty of them, who are radical in having to ignore the violent teachings of the Quran and the violence perpetrated by Muhammad during his lifetime in order to practice their religion in a peaceful manner.
 
President el-Assis of Egypt has called for a “religious revolution” within Islam to adapt it to the Western values of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc.  Let us pray that he was sincere and that Islamic leaders will take him up on it. 


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