The Peaceful Side of Islam

[Bob Campbell]

From Time Magazine. Just a few paragraphs on how "Cherry Picking" can make Islam seem like a religion that touts violence. For you guys who love to quote violent scripture.

Because the Koran was revealed in the context of an all-out war, several passages deal with the conduct of armed struggle. Warfare was a desperate business on the Arabian Peninsula. A chieftain was not expected to spare survivors after a battle, and some of the Koranic injunctions seem to share this spirit. Muslims are ordered by God to "slay [enemies] wherever you find them!" (4: 89). Extremists such as Osama bin Laden like to quote such verses but do so selectively. They do not include the exhortations to peace, which in almost every case follow these more ferocious passages: "Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them" (4: 90).

In the Koran, therefore, the only permissible war is one of self-defense. Muslims may not begin hostilities (2: 190). Warfare is always evil, but sometimes you have to fight in order to avoid the kind of persecution that Mecca inflicted on the Muslims (2: 191; 2: 217) or to preserve decent values (4: 75; 22: 40). The Koran quotes the Torah, the Jewish scriptures, which permits people to retaliate eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but like the Gospels, the Koran suggests that it is meritorious to forgo revenge in a spirit of charity (5: 45). Hostilities must be brought to an end as quickly as possible and must cease the minute the enemy sues for peace (2: 192-3).

Islam is not addicted to war, and jihad is not one of its "pillars," or essential practices. The primary meaning of the word jihad is not "holy war" but "struggle." It refers to the difficult effort that is needed to put God's will into practice at every level--personal and social as well as political. A very important and much quoted tradition has Muhammad telling his companions as they go home after a battle, "We are returning from the lesser jihad [the battle] to the greater jihad," the far more urgent and momentous task of extirpating wrongdoing from one's own society and one's own heart.

Islam did not impose itself by the sword. In a statement in which the Arabic is extremely emphatic, the Koran insists, "There must be no coercion in matters of faith!" (2: 256). Constantly Muslims are enjoined to respect Jews and Christians, the "People of the Book," who worship the same God (29: 46). In words quoted by Muhammad in one of his last public sermons, God tells all human beings, "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another" (49: 13)--not to conquer, convert, subjugate, revile or slaughter but to reach out toward others with intelligence and understanding.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z0XVwgpeR6

[genlock]

Karen Armstrong said in the article:

"The vast majority of Muslims, who are horrified by the atrocity of Sept. 11, must reclaim their faith from those who have so violently hijacked it."


That "vast majority" is making no effort to do anything like that.
They are waiting to choose the side of the winner.
They are waiting on you at the 7-11.

[Bob Campbell]

Check out the current Newsweek, in the Religion column, "innumerable moderate Muslim clerics and organizations instantly spoke out, calling Hasan's act un-Islamic. Among them: the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the African Council of Imams in America."

The Time article was written in 2001.

Sorry to break up your bigotry with facts.
7-11. That's a funny one.
Do you do watermelon and fried chicken jokes too?

[genlock]

Instantly spoke out?
Like they had advance word?

[Bob Campbell]

No, like they have cable and internet.

[Hoosier Daddy]

Careful, Bob. If you start winning the argument, your post will disappear or the thread will get locked.
All "liberals" are supposed to be like Alan Colmes.
A whipping post for all those razor-sharp conservative minds to beat up on ...

[fearpeddler]

cair isn't a reputable group, they've only been caught up in a mountain of mess in the last 6 months.....

[Bob Campbell]

Well, that's one out of a hundred. You must be completely right. Funding questions certainly do take them out of the equation.
Of course you then lose every Fundamentalist sect in America.