A friend of mine sent me this clip which had been sent to them by someone else, and I was asked to assist with a response…here it is…
Any time someone begins their discussion of Islam with something like “Islam is (or is not) a religion of peace”, or, frankly, any other type of massively reductive characterization of Islam as being entirely “this” or entirely “that”; then you know you are dealing with a liar and propagandist.
Islam is a religion for human beings, and it deals with the complex realities of human existence. That includes peace, and it includes war. It provides guidance for times of tranquility and times of conflict. So, from the beginning, the premise is simplistic to the point of being silly.
The person in this clip says that she studied at Islamic madrassas, and to an outsider that may imply that she is knowledgeable about Islam. But Muslims know that it means very little other than that she possibly memorized the recitation of the Qur’an, without learning the meaning, the interpretation, the methodology for deriving rulings, and so on. Her initial complaint against the religion appears to be her forced marriage to someone she did not desire; which, if she did indeed have knowledge of the religion, she would know that the religion explicitly forbids forced marriage. Her complaint was actually with the un-Islamic cultural practices of her family; the solution to which would be adherence to the religion.
Regarding the threat of Jihadists, well, they represent possibly 0.01% of the global Muslim population, maybe less. Any religion has fringe extremist elements, and, in fact, the per capita number of extremists within Islam is undoubtedly lower than that of other religions. Their interpretation of the texts is deficient, and that is a shame, but it does not reflect negatively on the texts themselves; not at all.
In the 1970s and 80s, terrorism was disproportionately carried out by Leftists, Marxists, and so on. So is Marxism a philosophy of terror? Or were the perpetrators extremists who misinterpreted the texts?
The United States is a secular democratic country, and I am sure I do not need to list the atrocities committed, from the genocide of Native Americans to dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from the Dirty Wars in Latin America to the Shock and Awe campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan; all in the name of democracy. Are secularism and democracy philosophies of war and violence?
Are there verses of the Qur’an that mandate violence? Of course there are. There are verses in the scriptures of every religion that mandate violence. There are rulings in International Law that mandate violence. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains articles that mandate violence; because these texts all deal with human realities. I don’t see why that should be controversial in any way.
Regarding the notion that it is somehow “censorship” for Muslims to protest against so-called intellectual attacks against Islamic doctrines; as far as I know, the West is supposed to regard the right to protest as a form of freedom of expression, and a sacred human right. When people protest against White Supremacists because they do not accept for Black people and other minorities to be characterized as subhuman and inferior, it is not different from when Muslims protest against someone characterizing Islam as a primitive, brutal, backwards belief system, and calling the Prophet a liar or a psychopath or a pedophile. It is deeply offensive to us, and we have every right to object. There is a tremendous range of debate within the Muslim community about variant interpretations, about theology, about reform, and so on. We have no problem with that. But we do not accept being insulted and slandered by ignorant, agenda-driven demagogues; why should we?
If you want to criticize Islam, Shari’ah, or what have you; and if you want anyone to take you seriously and treat you respectfully, then you should begin with the acknowledgement that these are tremendously complex matters, and you will need considerably more than your own anecdotal experience to be qualified to discuss any of this intelligently. Otherwise, you are just a propagandist driven by fear and loathing, and interested only in stirring those sentiments up in others.
External Context سياق خارجي