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Wednesday, 25 May 2011

An Infidel Looks at Islam

...and would like to share what she learned and invite discussion.
Shortly after 9/11 I believed and repeated the "Islam is a religion of peace" tune and it really bothered me that there might be a backlash against peaceful Muslims particularly in the US.
 
After awhile -- maybe a few years -- reading the news and learning about the bad behavior of Muslims worldwide I tried to understand how so many of these people could be so clueless about their own religion.  If it really is a religion of peace, and if jihad really is a spiritual quest rather than a militant one, then how come these folks didn't get the memo? 
 
It slowly dawned on me that the source of the "Islam is peace" mantra was western politicians almost overwhelmingly.  The four main Islamic theological divisions seem to agree that the command to jihad is violent and militant.  (The  oft-quoted "lesser jihad/greater jihad" explanation comes from a source considered theologically weak.)
 
It was hard to find moderate Muslims -- two I can think of off the top of my head are Juhdi Jasser and Irshad Manji, and both are honest enough to point out the strain of violence inherent in the faith itself.  Dr. Jasser states his belief that the violence problem within Islam has to be reformed from within. 
 
On the other hand, there is reasonable argument that the reformation has taken place already and renewed violent expansionist Islam is its result.  The founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1929 and the writings of its founder Hasan al-Banna as well as those of Sayed Qutb theorized that the reason Islamic societies were backward globally was precisely because they had strayed from "pure" Islam and sharia and they had turned their back on the command to jihad. 
 
I kept a list of my reading and early on in the process I read the Koran, mainly because I doubted some of the verses that were cited.  I held on to the belief that violence in the Koran is equivalent to violence in the Bible but this belief faded as my knowledge increased.  I learned about the Trilogy of the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith. It was hard to comprehend sometimes and there were many instances of contradictory verses.  But there are some good guides to help with comprehension.
 
Now when I hear someone forestall discussion by declaring, "Islam is a religion of peace" it signals to me that the person has not taken the time to read a darn thing about it -- maybe hasn't even tried to understand the difference between Sunni and Shia -- and I imagine them putting their hands over their ears, "La la la -- I can't hear you..."
 
 

in Islam |

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