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Ethon Lowe | Islam is not a religion of peace

Published:Wednesday | November 11, 2020 | 12:09 AM
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Protesters hold placards with a depiction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (right) marked with a shoe stamp, a sign of disrespect, and one with a slogan written in Turkish: “May my mother and father be sacrificed in your name, Prophet!”, during a protest b
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Protesters hold placards with a depiction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (right) marked with a shoe stamp, a sign of disrespect, and one with a slogan written in Turkish: “May my mother and father be sacrificed in your name, Prophet!”, during a protest by members of Islamic groups against France in Istanbul recently. There had been tension between France and Turkey after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said France’s President Emmanuel Macron needed mental health treatment and made other comments that the French government described as unacceptably rude. Erdogan questioned his French counterpart’s mental condition while criticizing Macron’s attitude toward Islam and Muslims.
Ethon Lowe
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Ethon Lowe
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I feel the need to respond to Raushanah Muwwakkil’s Gleaner article on November 6, ‘Islam is a religion of peace’, in which he was responding to an article by my colleague, Dr Michael Abrahams, on November 2, titled ‘Is Islam a religion of peace?’.

Within the last two months there were two bloody incidents which belie the belief that Islam is a religion of peace. On October 17, a schoolteacher was stabbed and beheaded in Paris by an 18-year-old Chechen who shouted, “Allah Akhbar, I have executed one of the dogs from Hell who dared to put Muhammad down.” This gruesome murder was in retribution for the teacher’s showing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad and a grim reminder of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015 in Paris, in which 12 people were killed.

On November 4, four people were killed in Vienna by someone believed to be a supporter of the Islamic State.

Modern conflicts attest to the claim that Islam is not a religion of peace: Palestine (Jews vs Muslims), the Balkans (Serbians vs Croatians), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs Christians), Nigeria (Muslims vs Christians), Indonesia (Muslims vs Christians) and Sri Lanka (Buddhists vs Hindus), to name a few. Religion is explicit in these conflicts and a disproportionate amount of them involve Muslims.

What, no atheists? How come? Shouldn’t we expect death and destruction from these morally depraved members of humanity? Stalin was indeed an atheist, Hitler probably wasn’t. Apart from having moustaches (as did Saddam Hussein), what matters is whether atheism influenced people to do bad things. Certainly, Stalin did evil things in the name of Marxist ideology, not in the name of atheism. No war has ever been fought in the name of atheism. Why would anyone go to war for the sake of an absence of belief?

Is there a link between the Muslim faith and terrorism and violence? Moderate Muslims mandate that Islam is a religion of peace. But read Koran Sura 3:151: “He shall cast terror in the hearts of those who disbelieve (all non Muslims).”

Others will cite peaceful passages: Sura 5:32, “He who kills a soul will be as if he has killed all humanity, and he who saves a soul will be as if he had saved all humanity.”

That a religious text contains violent verses doesn’t make it a violent religion, or peaceful verses don’t make it peaceful, either. Certainly, religious content may be a catalyst for violent action, but its reading relies on human interpretation and if misinterpreted, the world will bleed.

Take the word ‘jihad’. Literally, the term can be translated as ‘struggle’, but also ‘holy war’. Muslims are quick to observe that there is an inner (or ‘greater’) jihad which involves waging war against one’s own sinfulness. But no amount of casuistry can disguise the fact that the outer (or ‘lesser’) jihad – war against infidels and apostates – is an actual feature of the faith: an unambiguous call to world conquest. The problem is that most Muslims believe that the Koran is the literal word of God. It is right to kill another human being because the Holy Book (therefore God) says so.

A minority of Muslims are jihadists. They welcome a martyr’s death by blowing up innocent lives, and kill apostates (whoever changes his religion, kill him).

VAST MAJORITY PEACEFUL

The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, conservative and want to work with the system. They are horrified of suicide bombings (sacred explosions). Their views on homosexuality and woman’s rights are, however, deeply troubling. A Pew survey reveals that more than 90 per cent of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims believe that wives must always obey their husbands.

Islam is the only religion in modern times (more humane than the barbarism of early Christianity) that will kill you if you say the wrong thing (blasphemy), draw the wrong picture (Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Muhammad), or write the wrong book ( The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie).

It cannot evolve unless Muslim authorities, both religious and secular, allow the freedom we in the West take for granted – freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience, and abolishment of human atrocities (stoning for adultery, honour killings, unequal testimony between a man and a woman, child marriage, and amputation of limbs, etc). A separation of mosque and the state.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the acclaimed Somali-born woman’s rights activist (a former Muslim who rejected the faith and became an atheist), says “we must acknowledge that they (radical Islamists) are driven by political ideology, an ideology embedded in Islam itself, in the holy book of the Koran, as well as the life and teachings of the prophet Muhammad.”

For emphasis she added, “Islam is not a religion of peace”.

The late leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr-Baghdadi, provided his own blunt commentary: “O Muslims, Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war.”

Dr Ethon Lowe is a medical doctor. Email feedback to ethonlowe@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com.