Islam Forbids Terrorism

[ummtaalib]

It is sad to see average Americans in the media these days calling for putting Muslims in this country in detention camps with minimum means of survival.

 

I don’t really blame the average American for having that kind of feeling when I look at the way Islam is covered in the media, especially concerning the issue of terrorism. Many words like “terrorist,” “hijacker,” and “kidnapper,” have been alternatively used synonymously with Muslim. “Whenever someone from any country commits a crime, he is referred to by his name and sometimes his nationality. However, when he turns out to be a Muslim even by name, the word “Muslim” always precedes his name in the media, even if he was from the Druze, who are not Muslims and do not like to be referred to as such.

 

The man who was accused in London of putting a bomb in his girlfriend’s purse was talked about as if he were the sole representative of Islam. That particular case is interesting because of the strong violations of Islam made by the perpetrator. First, a Muslim man cannot have a girlfriend in the colloquial sense, let alone be guilty of the crime of impregnating her. Sex outside marriage is considered adultery and is prohibited in Islam. Worse than this was the attempt to kill the innocents on the plane.

 

Not only in peace but also in war Islam prohibits terrorism, kidnapping and hijacking, when carried against civilians, and whoever commits this is a murderer in Islam and is to be punished by the Islamic state. During wars, Islam prohibits the Muslims soldiers from harming civilians, women, children, the elderly, and the religious man like priests and rabbis. It also prohibits cutting down trees and destroying civilian constructions.

 

Many Islamic terms like “Jihad” and “Islam” have been abused by violent groups. Nobody has power over such groups to force them to stop abusing such names. That could happen to Christianity as well by any Mafia group that could call itself “The Christian Crusade Group” for example. In that case, we won’t consider them as representatives of Christianity just as we don’t consider Adolf Hitler the ideal of Christians. When we want to learn about the Christian belief we read the Bible, and hope the Christians will go and read the Qur’an and the Hadith  (Muhammad’s traditions) since only these represent Islam.

 

Christian are five to seven per cent of the population of countries like Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, and have been living there peacefully for over 1400 years. Nobody put them in detention camps during the massacre of 70,000 Muslims in Jerusalem during the Crusade wars, which took place in those particular areas, nor were they harmed during the massacre of the Muslims and the Jews in Spain in 1492. It is against Islam to punish those for crimes committed by others, who were violating their Christian faith, which has love as its main teaching.

The most misinterpreted term is “Jihad” which is referred to as the Holy War. Jihad is not only a defensive war, as some Muslims try ignorantly to defend it. It is also an offensive war against any unjust regime that does not let its citizens choose their faith. If such a regime exists, then the war is carried against that regime and not against the people of that country. It should never be interpret as a way of compulsion of the belief on others since there is an explicit verse in the Qur’an that says: “There is no compulsion in religion.” Had that been the case there would have never been any Christian, Jews, or non-Muslim in the Islamic world during the past 1400 years.

Concerning the case of Lebanon, that country became like a pot with too many fingers dipped in. Nothing is stable over there and not many people are following the teachings of their faiths. There are crimes in Lebanon that are committed under the names of all religions and not only Islam. Sabra and Shattila are not that far away. Everybody is fighting everybody else and there is a lot of overlapping between the groups’ interests. So, I don’t think it is far to judge Islam from what has been done in Lebanon nor is it fair to judge Christianity or Judaism from what we have seen there either.

By: Hussain  Al-Hussein

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