Today's political environment coupled with recent terrorist events leads to polarization, people going as far as they can to the opposite ends of the football field; black and white calls. In fact it is thought by some that that is EXACTLY what ISIL wanted with the Paris incident: To cause an all out war. How is that, you ask, don't we already have a war? Well, I do see the Paris incident causing people in our country - even people of my faith who are supposed to be more thoughtful than all the - to hate ALL muslims. (Note: They say they hate Islam. They don't know the difference.) I saw, today, an image that a Jewish person of my faith created, the raised middle finger against a mosque background.
We need some facts here.
What I am not prepared to give is an intelligent discussions of the many, many factions and differences between Muslims who practice Islam. I will say that we have become closely acquainted with members of a sect who absolutely and unconditionally preach and practice peace and would not hurt a fly, so to speak. And we have had other friends who aren't of that sect but who eschew violence completely.
That said, I offer the following, from my own knowledge and gleaned from various thoughtful writings where my words are not forthcoming or sufficient.
Let's get going.
Islam refers only to the religion or acts done in the name of that religion, never a person who practices that religion. Islamic community and Islamic art are correct, Islamic man is not.
The word Islam is also used when talking about the religion as a noun unto itself. For instance: ‘Islam is based on the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed that have been written down in the Quran.’
Muslim identifies persons of the Islamic faith but not the faith itself.
For instance, ‘Remember the Muslim man who works at the bank?
The word Muslim means “one who submits to Allah” which is their word for God, as they perceive Him based on what parts of the Koran they choose to emphasize - much as many of us do with the Bible.
Read more: http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-islam-and-muslim
intellectual dialogue and discourse comes in to play. Islamic teaching specifically forbids honor killing, forbids any worldly punishment for apostasy or blasphemy, and forbids terrorism. Therefore, should a Muslim engage in those acts and claim to follow Islam–shouldn’t the logical question be to see if the Muslim committing those acts can back it up with Islamic teaching?
If he can, let him try. If he cannot, and indeed such extremists cannot, then why give that Muslim any credence in his representation of Islam? How can Islam suddenly be called violent–despite specifically condemning those violent acts–if some violent imbecile disregards clear Islamic injunction and commits those violent acts? Meanwhile, the same anti-Islam critics pretend to ignore 1000+ Muslims who protect a synagogue from attack in exact accordance to the Quran’s specific command to protect synagogues from attack.
Ironically, the anti-Islam critics who say ISIS is scholarly themselves have little to no training on Islamic scholarship, so how they’re able to recognize whether ISIS is consulting authentic Islamic sources is incredulous.
More significantly, however, we know that ISIS gains the bulk of their ideology not from the Quran or Sunnah, but from ignorant terrorist organizations like Jamaat-e-Islaami–founded by Mullah Abul a’la Maududi, the father of modern terrorism. Maududi likewise had zero training on Islam or Islamic jurisprudence, no post high school education, and no education on Islamic history and Arabic, yet his work dominates ISIS ideology. ISIS is literally the blind leading the blind, and blinded by their own egos, anti-Islam critics refuse to see these facts.
This is one of the difficulties with critics of Islam. When a terrorist commits an act of terror, virtually zero academic research or insight goes into how such a terrorist justified his claim from Islamic jurisprudence. A random verse excerpt is cited and suddenly every critic is a scholar.
So in short, the No True Scotsman Fallacy doesn’t apply when condemning ISIS, first because we are discussing what Islam teaches, not what Muslims do or believe. Many Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, or Methodists do not do as their faith, or the Bible, teaches, and historically many have gone off half-cocked into violence and compulsion.
Fear can lead to irrational acts. We must beware of imagining that all Muslims are our enemies, of seeing Islam itself as the threat. It is all too easy to see evidence of calls for violence in the Quran. And even here on Patheos, an atheist has outlined the arguments that Islam itself is a violent faith. But this path is one fraught with danger. We must recognize that the vast majority of Muslims reject this terrorist ideology. Attacking their faith itself is not the answer. In fact it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we proclaim that Islam is inherently violent, and that all Muslims are potential terrorists, we risk radicalizing many more angry young Muslims who could yet be saved from the manipulative terrorist recruiters.
There are those who would wish to turn this into a war against Islam. We must not allow that, any more than we should give any credence to those who blame every religion. Secular atheists would like nothing better than to use events like this as an excuse to clamp down on every faith, and claim that religion has no place in a modern world. We must demonstrate that people of faith are in general part of the solution not part of the problem.
At the same time we must recognize that at the moment it is almost uniquely in the seedbeds of Islam that terrorism is arising. We do not read often of Christian terrorists. [Maybe not "often", but we have specific history of terrorism from "Christians" in the 20th century, and Christians do suffer violence and abuse from athiests week in, week out.] We must remember this is a war of ideas, not just of guns and bombs.
Moderate Islamic voices must be welcomed, and given voice. The propaganda of groups like ISIS should be taken down from the Internet and eradicated, not played on national TV. Those Imans who openly promote terrorism must be silenced. Surely freedom of speech does not include freedom to inspire murder.
We must also show that we are friends with any Muslim or Muslim group that disavows terrorism. Muslims today across the West today wake up fearing hate crimes, fear rejection, fear being watched suspiciously as they go about their daily business.
