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Will the Real Islam Please Stand Up? David WoodEquip.orgSYNOPSIS: Jihadists fighting for the Islamic State (ISIS) have been committing a range of systematic abuses, including mass executions, the rape of female captives, forced conversions, seizing of property, and the destruction of churches and mosques (of opposing Islamic sects). While these jihadists claim that they are simply obeying the commands of Allah and Muhammad, many Western leaders, reporters, and Muslim groups maintain that the atrocities committed by ISIS (e.g., killing “innocents” and fellow Muslims) are strictly forbidden in Islam. Who is right? Since Islamic doctrine and practice are defined by Allah and Muhammad, this question can be answered only by examining Islam’s most trusted sources. The Qur’an and the Hadith are filled with clear commands to subjugate or kill unbelievers, hypocrites, and apostates. Muhammad said that he was ordered to “strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them” (Qur’an 9:73). Although modern reinterpretations of violent passages are common, the Qur’an claims to be perfectly clear in its commands, and Allah repeatedly warns Muslims that anything but complete obedience (both to Allah and to Muhammad) is a sign of unbelief. Reinterpretation of Allah’s commands is thus extremely difficult to reconcile with Islamic principles of exegesis, and “innovation” (abandoning an Islamic doctrine or practice for something one thinks is better) is regarded as a heinous sin. Hence, given an honest reading of the Qur’an and Hadith, a brutal theocracy is exactly what we would expect, as even some liberal Muslim leaders are beginning to acknowledge.On September 10, 2014, President Barack Obama declared that the Islamic State (also called “ISIL” or “ISIS”1) is neither Islamic nor a state. He said, “Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state….ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.”2A few days later, British Muslim politician Maajid Nawaz presented a different view: We Muslims must admit there are challenging Koranic passages that require reinterpretation today. Let us use existing tools of exegeses, such as specificity, restriction, abrogation and metaphor. Vacuous literalism as an interpretive method must be abandoned. It is bankrupt. Only by rejecting vacuous literalism are we able to condemn, in principle, ISIS-style slavery, beheading, lashing, amputation and other medieval practices forever (all of which are in the Quran). This is a struggle within Islam. Reformers either win, and get religion-neutral politics, or lose, and get ISIL-style theocracy.3These are strikingly conflicting assessments. Whereas President Obama maintains that the Islamic State is violating the teachings of Islam (the commands of Allah in the Qur’an and the teachings of Muhammad in the Hadith), Nawaz suggests that the Islamic State is taking the teachings of Islam too seriously. Nawaz acknowledges that “ISIS-style” beheadings and lashings are precisely what we find when we read the Qur’an, and that, in the absence of reinterpretation and reformation, an “ISIL-style theocracy” will prevail.Which appraisal is correct? Is the Islamic State un-Islamic, or is it too Islamic? ...... Muslims are commanded to fight, kill, or violently subjugate non-Muslims simply for being non-Muslims. ... When the Islamic State obeys these commands, however, Western politicians and the media assure us that Islam condemns such violence because Islam condemns the killing of innocents. The obvious problem with this response is that people who reject Islam, according to the Qur’an, are not innocent. Indeed, by claiming that Jesus is the divine Son of God, Christians are guilty of the worst possible sin: “Surely Allah does not forgive that anything should be associated with Him, and forgives what is besides that to whomsoever He pleases; and whoever associates anything with Allah, he devises indeed a great sin” (4:48).Thus, the claim that the Islamic State is disobeying the commands of Islam because it promotes the killing of innocents is based on an equivocation. One may rightly assert that Islam forbids the killing of people who are innocent according to the teachings of Islam, but the people being brutally murdered by the Islamic State are not in this category. ...
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Topic: Will the Real Islam Please Stand Up? (Read 644 times)
