The True, Peaceful Face Of Islam (Time magazine)

The True, Peaceful Face Of Islam By Karen Armstrong Sunday, Sept. 23, 2001

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,175987,00.html

There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion. If the evil carnage we witnessed on Sept. 11 were typical of the faith, and Islam truly inspired and justified such violence, its growth and the increasing presence of Muslims in both Europe and the U.S. would be a terrifying prospect. Fortunately, this is not the case.

The very word Islam, which means "surrender," is related to the Arabic salam, or peace. When the Prophet Muhammad brought the inspired scripture known as the Koran to the Arabs in the early 7th century A.D., a major part of his mission was devoted precisely to bringing an end to the kind of mass slaughter we witnessed in New York City and Washington. Pre-Islamic Arabia was caught up in a vicious cycle of warfare, in which tribe fought tribe in a pattern of vendetta and countervendetta. Muhammad himself survived several assassination attempts, and the early Muslim community narrowly escaped extermination by the powerful city of Mecca. The Prophet had to fight a deadly war in order to survive, but as soon as he felt his people were probably safe, he devoted his attention to building up a peaceful coalition of tribes and achieved victory by an ingenious and inspiring campaign of nonviolence. When he died in 632, he had almost single-handedly brought peace to war-torn Arabia.

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.

So why the suicide bombing, the hijacking and the massacre of innocent civilians? Far from being endorsed by the Koran, this killing violates some of its most sacred precepts. But during the 20th century, the militant form of piety often known as fundamentalism erupted in every major religion as a rebellion against modernity. Every fundamentalist movement I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced that liberal, secular society is determined to wipe out religion. Fighting, as they imagine, a battle for survival, fundamentalists often feel justified in ignoring the more compassionate principles of their faith. But in amplifying the more aggressive passages that exist in all our scriptures, they distort the tradition.

 

Religion teaches people to habitually believe things without evidence. That is violence in my book. And children are usually victimized.

 

Every year billions of people are afflicted with the common cold virus and it only kills a few so it's really a good thing. It's wonderful that we have germs and parasites that only kill a small percentage of us. The discomfort, and torturous misery, and financial tolls, and social turmoil, and disruption of progress, that these diseases cause... I like to just call it peaceful. It's a peaceful kind of suffering. Like a mental illness with a side of strong meds... peaceful suffering.

 

The fact that you have to try to disprove that Islam teaches violence means that Islam is associated with violence.

It only teaches peace for those who show absolutely no dissent. There is no freedom.

 

Show me the evidence that you're not one of the people in this video

No. WTF makes you think I'm in some random video?

 

When you set aside science, logic, and reason, in favor of "faith" ... absolutely any manipulation is possible. Anything, literally anything, can be claimed as both true and not true- at any time.

That's what they mean when they say things like "god is great" or "it's god's will."

 

Hey did you see this conersation about the American holocaust of Native American Indians? I guess it shows America's idea of peace for those who show absolutely no dissent.

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?p=7835298

Well we all have documented proof that American's love shopping, paying next to nothing and getting things in jumbo super large sized. Therefore why wouldn't you be in the video? Afterall Walmart is American culture.

But I suppose I'll take your word for it and I'll just have to have faith that you're not.

Unless you yourself are a scientist then all you're doing is following the Interent's newest trend. But I'll again have faith and ask you what makes you (or your idol Clinton Richard Dawkins) experts on God? Let's start with your academic credentials and what religious texts you've read.

I've read the Bible, Torah, Kabbalah, Qur'an (of course) and I'm half way through the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.

 

if your cuntree's weren't over there taking their oil and minerals ,, you wouldnt have heard a peep out of the Muslim countries.. What goes around comes around..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyrlcoKRjn0"]South Park - Eric Cartman 9/11 Song - YouTube

 

First off blaming our country for something that happened hundreds of years ago would be like us blaming Islam for what they did back in the middle ages or something. You can't compare modern America to western America, or even colonial. We are entirely different people now.

Wow...........................I can't believe that I'm actually defending this country man. I despise the way this country works, but true is true, and what you say is not true for the U.S.A of now.

You do of course realize that you have yet to state any real religious ideas in your posts thus far. Face it man, you are just another wannabe who thinks he knows something. It's all right to be wrong.

 

Nope I agree with you the United States is a very different country today.

I posted a Time magazine article and then responded to a couple of Internet fanboys spewing the latest youtube trend. Face man, there's a good chance you fried your brain freebasing.

 

You seem to think that I know who that is.....Sorry don't keep up with modern culture all that much. Also if this is supposed to be a mockery of modern American morality then keep trying. Immorality can be found all over the world and no one country is any more immoral than the last

 

Well then you more or less agree with the article I posted. I'm glad we cleared that up!