Some Are Recognizing That Islamics May Well Mean What They Say

[Annie]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?table=&section=&issue=2005-07-30&id=6421

Cover Story
The myth of moderate Islam
Patrick Sookhdeo

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...(5 pages worth!)

Related:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/28/AR2005072802241.html

WMAL Suspends Talk-Show Host for Comment on Islam

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 29, 2005; Page C01

Radio talk-show host Michael Graham was suspended by station WMAL-AM yesterday for repeatedly describing Islam as a "terrorist organization" on his program.

Graham said he has been ordered off the Washington station, without pay, for an indefinite period while the station investigates the comments that drew complaints from a Muslim group, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)...

Here's what he wrote:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/graham072805.php3

I take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth:


Islam is a terror organization.


For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.


Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."


But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody." ...

 

[Annie]

*bump* and addition:

...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? ...

 

[Mr. P]

Time the world wakes up..Will it take Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Sidney and Rome bombings first..I hope not.

 

[Annie]

Time the world wakes up..Will it take Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Sidney and Rome bombings first..I hope not.

I would hope not too, but think it may well take that and more. Some amongst us seem to think 'they don't mean to do what they ARE doing...' In effect, "We are missing their message..."

 

[Mr. P]

I would hope not too, but think it may well take that and more. Some amongst us seem to think 'they don't mean to do what they ARE doing...' In effect, "We are missing their message..."

Yeah, the give peace a chance, lets talk, there's a better way folks. Well, all that is hard to do when the other guy has vowed to kill yer ass at any cost because you're not Muslim...They'll get it, one way or the other, sooner or later.

 

[HorhayAtAMD]

Some amongst us seem to think 'they don't mean to do what they ARE doing...' In effect, "We are missing their message..."

And many seem to think that "if we hadn't printed a fictitious story about desecrating the koran" , "if we hadn't gone into Iraq in 2002", "if we hadn't gone into Afghanistan", "if we hadn't put economic sanctions against Iraq", "if we hadn't stopped Iraq in 1991", "if we hadn't supported Israel", "if we hadn't fought the Crusades", "if we hadn't..." then none of this would be happening today. Though some say "they don't mean to do what they are doing", even more unbelievable to me are the ones who say "this is all our fault". Actually, they are probably right when they say none of this would be happening today. Had none of the above happened, I likely would have been ending this post with "Allah Akhbar".

 

[Said1]

Had none of the above happened, I likely would have been ending this post with "Allah Akhbar".

Ya know, there are Muslim scholars from the Otto Empire who wrote about Muslim conquest of the "New World".