We Muslims are all individuals and should not be considered either moderate or extremist, but simply as ordinary Muslims who live Islam as it suits us, differing from generation to generation, culture to culture. Some are more devout, others Muslim by name only. However, the prerequisite for Islam is that one should believe, and live accordingly and assume the responsibilities inherent in Islam - which makes it clear that we are not permitted to kill innocent people, become suicide bombers or declare war.
To understand Islam in every aspect means to understand that a Muslim cannot be involved in terrorism, because Islam does not approve of killing people in order to attain a goal. Peace, submission and unity are messages of Islam, so we must stop thinking of 9/11, 7/7 and the Madrid bombings as an attack on the West, or of the sectarian violence in Iraq as a means to an end. The same as non-Muslims must stop thinking of 9/11, 7/7 and the Madrid bombings, or of the sectarian violence in Iraq as the responsibility and problem of Muslims alone.
The countries of the East and West are all part of our “Islamic world” where Muslim/Islamic culture resides with other cultures and prospers therein, and it is the responsibility of us all to protect it. This is the way forward in correcting the distorted image of Islam created by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden and Bush, and this is the victory of Islam.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dr Dreadful
"If anyone slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people."
Unfortunately, bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and their supporters consider that the US and their allies are indeed "spreading mischief in the land" and therefore view their own actions as endorsed by God.
2 - jamal
Unfortunately, Bush, Blair and their supporters consider that the Iraq and their allies are indeed "spreading mischief in the land" and therefore view their own actions as endorsed by the people. Obviously not including those millions that protest against war.
3 - tarikur
Nice article.
Why is every kind of bigotry and hatred are not accepted in mainstream media except bigotry and hatred toward Muslims.
If you do a Google News search, you will find so many news article about degrading and villifing Islam and Muslims, you never ever will see any degrading and villifing any other group of people or religion.
4 - Dr Dreadful
Unfortunately, Bush, Blair and their supporters consider that the Iraq and their allies are indeed "spreading mischief in the land" and therefore view their own actions as endorsed by the people.
I don't think our wonderful leaders give a fig, in this case, for any endorsements by the people. Iraq was attacked because it was politically expedient to do so.
5 - STM
Tarikur ... it's probably because people from other religions aren't heavily engaged in attempting to achieve world's best practice at blowing the living shit out of everyone else.
People tend to get a bit angry about things like that.
6 - STM
And yes, I know all muslims aren't doing that stuff and that most probably wouldn't even think of it. But the ones who are doing it are spoiling it for the rest, and creating great trouble around the globe. Sad, really. Be nice if we could all live in peace.
7 - bliffle
Islam is diminished in western eyes because islamic moderates seem powerless in subduing islamic extremists, thus westerners often conclude that the only strength and voice in islam are the extremists.
8 - Clavos
bliffle writes:
Islam is diminished in western eyes because islamic moderates seem powerless in subduing islamic extremists, thus westerners often conclude that the only strength and voice in islam are the extremists.
True. There is also not much evidence that Islamic moderates are doing anything about the extremists in their midst, other than much hand-wringing.
9 - steve
I knew from the start that this article was going to be opinionated and subjective with an author going by the name "Jamal." The United States, nor George Bush are responsible for starting a war with "Islam." This began when your "friends" killed 3,000 of my "friends." Although Islamic extremism represents a small percentage of your people, that gives you no excuse to condemn the actions of our country against Muslims.
Secondly, the Flag of the United States represents freedom. It always has, and it always will. Id does not represent the spilling of blood as you suggest. The freedom represented in our Flag represents longing of freedom from oppression for Muslim women from Muslim men. The next time your cronies burn our flag, they should consider wrapping themselves in it first.
10 - jamal
Steve, my "friends" didnt kill anybody, terrorists did.
But your president is killing everybody!
11 - jamal
Biffle and Clavos, what does a "moderate" even mean. We dont have "moderate" christians, Jews, etc, so realise that we are Muslim.
The reason "westerners" come to thie conclusion you refer to is because the media makes them beleive the very same drivel you have written.
Read the article!
12 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Jamal,
When you view this website you see just why it is that Moslems come in for so much villification. Like the Americans say, what goes around comes around, and the hatred your preachers push on your people will come back on you.
You're innocent, you say? Explain that to all the victims of Arab terror in this country. Sorry, Jamal. Your own blogsite removes any "innocence" you may claim...
13 - Clavos
jamal, since we have extreme christians who are terrorists (those who bomb abortion clinics and assassinate abortion doctors, for example), of course we have moderate ones; they're the ones who aren't extreme.
There have been extreme christians for centuries (the crusades, the inquisition).
Practically any group of humans that espouses an idea or set of beliefs has both extremists and moderates among its members.
14 - Arch Conservative
Why is every kind of bigotry and hatred are not accepted in mainstream media except bigotry and hatred toward Muslims.
You're kidding me right?
If the only bigotry and hatred that are accepted in the MSM is that directed toward muslims than maybe you can explain why American newspapers like the New York times refused to print cartoons making light of mohammed but did indeed print pictures of art like piss christ and elephant dung mary? Or why did PBS refuse to air a documentary on Islam because it portrayed some muslims in a negative light?
Another thing that Jamal and all of the subsequent posters have failed ot mention is that this is not a America vs. radical islam problem. It's a radical islam versus everyone else on the planet problem. The subway bombings in London, the train bombing in spain, the bali nightclub bombing, the riots in france, the murdering of theo van gogh in Denmark, the demands of radical islamists in britian for the british government to enforce sharia law,.......I could go on and on.
So you see Jamal...blaming America and Bush for the problems of radical islam in the world today just doesn't cut it. Your faith has been hijacked by extremists who have absolutely no respect for the life, culture, and law of others in any nation on earth.It is encumbent upon you, not America or the west, to stand up and reclaim your faith...to say "I too am a muslim and I abhor all of the acts that have been committed by monsters in the name of Islam and I will co-operate with the rest of the world to ensure that these thinsg do not continue to happen. Until then all of your blame America talk is going to fall on deaf ears int he west and you will continue to be viewed as nothing but the next potential Bin Laden.
The ball is in your court.
15 - Dave Nalle
Why is every kind of bigotry and hatred are not accepted in mainstream media except bigotry and hatred toward Muslims.
Here in the US it's pretty much the other way around. Even true criticism of Muslim misdeeds goes unreported, as with the recent planned terror attack on Ft. Dix where the news media went days deliberately avoiding reporting that the people involved were muslims.
Dave
16 - Steve
Seconding Dave and Arch Conservative: the problem in the US is the weakness of intellectual elites to moral equivalence arguments and multiculturalism. The Danish Cartoons should have been on the front page of the NYT - THAT was a major capitulation.
Go to any muslim school in the middle east and tell me what they teach about Jews and infidels and the place of women in society (do we need to quote the Koran on those who choose not to believe in Islam? Is it even possible to do inside of 5 full pages single-spaced?). This is sad in itself, but now it is THE major threat to enlightenment ideas in the world.
What will end democracy and kill the constitution is what we will do to ourselves (the reaction) if Manhattan is nuked one day. The people who are actively thinking through how to do this get their motivation from religion. Without that book and without those schools and that religion we simply wouldn't have to worry much about nukes in Manhattan.
17 - Dave Nalle
Sometime in the 1960s most of our intellectual class got hijacked by a package of very dangerous, destructive ideas, and only a very small number of them have come to their senses in recent years. The rest have become petrified in adherence to a belief-set which is inherently anti-liberty and completely out of touch with the reality of the contemporary world, the threats we face, and the conditions in which people live.
Dave
18 - Arch Conservative
"The rest have become petrified in adherence to a belief-set which is inherently anti-liberty and completely out of touch with the reality of the contemporary world, the threats we face, and the conditions in which people live."
The worst part about it Dave is that so many of them are professors at American colleges and universities spewing thier inane ideology to young and impressionable Americans who for the most part don't question it.
19 - Dave Nalle
I've got plenty of personal experience of that, AC. There is no group of people more ossified in their beliefs and more closed minded than American academics.
Ironically, the overwhelming majority of the open-minded academic intellectuals I've encountered come from the extremely conservative education background of the Jesuits - either graduates of Jesuit schools or ex-jesuits themselves.
Dave
20 - Clavos
Dave says:
There is no group of people more ossified in their beliefs and more closed minded than American academics.
Amen to that, and woe unto the student who doesn't toe the PC line. They have made a mockery of the educational tradition of open inquiry.
Actually, I would call the educational background of the Jesuits liberal, in the traditional educational sense of a wide ranging focus on rounding out the complete scholar, with particular emphasis on the classics. At least, that's how they were when I was in school.
They run a very good school, Belén Prep, here in Miami. Originally a Cuban school, it moved here when the exodus started. Today, many of Miami's movers and shakers are Belén alumni.
21 - Lee Richards
I'm surprised to learn how open-minded the Jesuits are in their educational system, given their historic ultra-conservative religionist traditions. How do they manage to be so open-minded in the classroom and so doctrinaire elsewhere? (I'm wondering because I have no first-hand experience with such a system.)
I sincerely wish it were enough for some to say, as Jamal does, "I'm an OK guy-just like everybody else;I'm a good Muslim, not a terrorist." Unfortunately, the very identification "Muslim" itself is rapidly becoming associated with a lot of negative images and ideas in the minds of many.
If a group of dissidents somewhere started calling themselves "Assassins for Christ" and mainstream Christians were largely silent and ineffective in addressing it, that would send an unwanted and, perhaps, unwarranted message about Christians as a group.
There are only two choices for Muslims;either get really involved in solving the problem by going after terrorists themselves, taking back their faith and following it in peace, or be prepared for others to name, watch and pre-emptively defend themselves against any who defile Islam by committing violent and terrorist political acts in the name of that religion.
22 - Baronius
Lee, religious orders can vary over time. For the last thirty years, the average parishioner is more orthodox than the average Jesuit.
Jamal, it may seem like Americans criticize Islam, but we criticize everything. We're much harsher on ourselves than on other countries. I don't know where you're from, but you might not be used to a free press.
Steve and Dave gave some examples of the US press going out of its way to avoid insulting Muslims. Another example was the Washington sniper case. The adult sniper was usually called John Allen, even though he'd changed his name to John Allen Muhammad after converting to the Nation of Islam.
You mentioned the "axis of evil" as proof of Bush's anti-Muslim bias, but it shows the opposite. At the time, Syria and Yemen were supporting international terrorism, but Bush wouldn't single out those Islamic countries for judgement. Instead he listed North Korea. NK is nuts, but they don't export terror (they keep it at home). North and South Koreas were even warming up in talks. Bush chose Iran, Iraq, and North Korea to avoid making the public connection between Muslim extremism and terrorism.
23 - jamal
Ruvvy, as I said at Desicritic with reference to the very same URL you posted, there is a difference between supporting palestinien people and supporting palestinien terrorist. I am not saying I do nothtink there are times when the actions of Hamas, HizbAllah and the like are warranted, but no more then I would say there have been times (very few) that the actions of the IDF have been warranted.
Nevertheless, we must separated Terorrism from Islam. I assume you agree this must occur in the minds of Muslims, therefore you must agree this must occur in the minds of non-Muslims too. Hence the message of the article.
Baronius, critiscism can be positive and prompt debate. However, the time has come for it also to be publically acknowldged that Islam is not the enemy.
Arch Conservative, I hear where you're coming from but I do not agree. With relation to Clavos's point, there may be "extremists" of other religions but it is Islam that is always in the news in this respect. People now lfear Muslims and looks for the "moderates" to speak up. However, they will be waiting a long time as anybody that does speak up is not longer considered a "moderate" unless the denounce Islamic practices to some extent and slander the followers. I do not know how it is in the USA but this is how it is in the UK. The problem is the fault of the Bush's and Blair's of this world, but also the fault of the radicals and extremists in the Muslim community. The way forward is in those on both sides identifying and condemning the deviants, but this is then hindered by the fact that USA/UK armies are killing Muslims all over the world and supporting Israel in doing so too. however, when a Muslim kills in Iraq of Palestine he is not a soldier but an insurgent or fighter. Perceptions must change and then the people will. normally this would be the other way round but now we have the media which is a very powerful muedium and changes perdeptions in the way that it reports.
24 - STM
Lee Richards wrote: "I'm surprised to learn how open-minded the Jesuits are in their educational system".
The Jesuits are nothing if not radical in their views. I have had some recent experience, as my son went to a Jesuit boarding school, having run away from a boarding school run by the Marist Brothers.
While you'd think the brothers might have been a tad more earthly, the opposite was true and my son found himself in constant trouble, and pretty much written off as a human being at the tender age of 17.
He was "taken in" by the Jesuits - the fact that he's a first-class rugby player might have had something to do with it, but not all - who introduced him to the notion of action-and-consequence through constant self-reflection on the nature of God and self. All this, mind you, in a self-centred teenager. How they did it: by the exercise of compassion, tolerance, understanding, and forgiveness - using the simple, unadulterated 2000-year-old message of Christ. I was stunned by their lack of judgement and continual willingness to practise exactly what they preach.
The headmaster, upon my son's graduation, described his finishing school as a "minor miracle". He was right, too. It was. Today, two years down the track, he is mindful of their kindness and how it's impacted very positively on his life.
However, his memories of the other school, one that supposedly prides itself on turning out "good men", are tinged with sadness and regret.
25 - Dave Nalle
I'm surprised to learn how open-minded the Jesuits are in their educational system, given their historic ultra-conservative religionist traditions. How do they manage to be so open-minded in the classroom and so doctrinaire elsewhere?
Every Jesuit is an ex-jesuit waiting to happen. I'm not sure what the rationale for it is, but they seem to train them almost with the intention that they'll eventually leave the order and spread liberalness and intellectual honesty into the general population.
My favorite Jesuit peculiarity is that they have a mission among the prostitutes of Paris. They train them and then send them off still wet behind the ears to minister to young, sexually promiscuous French women. The net result is a lot of ex-jesuits in grad school with hot, young French wives. It's like they do everything they can to push them out of the order.
Dave