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     Question Forum :  Does Islam Promote Violence? Date Posted:  29 - October -  2002

 

 

 

Your statement of policy with regard to religious affairs states: 

'According to the Qur'an, there shall be no compulsion in religion, and Islam advocates the freedom of religious practice so long as it does not cause any damage to individuals or society' 

Yet there are more than 100 verses in the Qur'an advocating the use of violence to spread Islam. In the Qur'an, Allah commands Muslims: 

"Take not the Jews and Christians as friends....Slay the idolaters [non-Muslims] wherever ye find them.... Fight against such...as believe not in Allah..." (Surah 5:51; 9:5,29,41, etc..).

Though most Muslims would shrink from obeying such commands, this is official Islam and it cannot change without admitting that Muhammad was a false prophet. You also state: 

'Emphasising on the common ground between various religions it should be possible to maintain good relations between people of different religions without forcing them to give up on their differences' 

as well as: 

'Nobody can be forced to believe anything, but we can expect everybody to respect what other people hold sacred.' 

Yet Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini a great spiritual Islamic leader declared: 

"The purest joy in Islam is to kill and be killed for Allah." [1] 

and Muhammad, who with his followers slaughtered thousands in establishing and spreading Islam, said of Muslims: 

"Who relinquishes his faith, kill him.... " [2]

"I have been ordered by Allah to fight with people till they testify there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger." [3] 

It seems that some of your statements when compared to the statements of Islamic religious figures and indeed the Koran are contradictory. So tell me who is telling the lies? You or them? And Abraham said: 

My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. [Genesis 22:8] 

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. [Isaiah 53:7] 

And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! [John 1:36] 

Yours Sincerely,

1.) David Lamb, The Arabs: Journey Beyond the Mirage (Vintage Books, 1988), 287; 

2.) David Reed, "The Unholy War Between Iran and Iraq" (Readers Digest, August 1984), 389. 

3.) Quoted on authority of Ibn ’Abbas in Sahih of al-Bukhari (Part 9), 19. Attested by numerous Islamic scholars. Op. cit. (Part 1), 13. 

The case you make is both dishonest and disingenuous, trying to extract a particular preformed and prejudiced view from scripture irrespective of textual and historic context. Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple - does that make him a violent revolutionary or terrorist? And did he not say: "I have not come to bring peace, but the sword"? We could go on and compare the most peaceful conquest in human history, the conquest of Makkah by the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), with the violent wars and revolutions that plagued Europe, or the magnanimous conquest of Jerusalem by Salahudin with the Crusader's entry wading knee-deep in the blood of their Muslim and Jewish victims, or indeed the blood-stained recent history of Zionist occupation. If "By their fruits you shall know them" has any meaning, then the Christianity of the Churches is a far cry from the "lamb to the slaughter" imagery you employ. There are Christian calls for peace - but they are not unique amongst mankind -, just as there are "Christian" calls for war. Christian America which has hardly ever had a year's peace in its short history since the native American genocide, is as we speak beating the war drums again to rush us all into Armageddon.

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