ISIS Beheading for Blasphemy
As all of you know, there were horrific terrorist attacks in Paris this past Friday. Having recently lost my mom I feel even worse about these attacks, having some idea how the families of victims will be suffering. Some of you may not realize that more than 40 people were also killed by a terrorist attack in Beirut the day before.
What should we do about these attacks? Before we can answer that question we need to be able to see and speak the truth regarding one of the most fundamental aspects of the attacks. These attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists. There is no doubt that these terrorists are absolute nut-cases. But crazy and barbaric as they are, what they are doing comes straight from Islamic doctrine. Many so-called liberals, including politicians like President Obama, refuse to call these terrorists what they are. They refuse to acknowledge that a direct line can be drawn between Islamic doctrine and these attacks, that what the Islamic State is doing can be traced directly to the Quran and Hadith.
I am not by any means suggesting that all Muslims are bad people or terrorists. Two of my best friends are a Muslim couple from Iraq, I have a good friend from Afghanistan who is a Muslim, and I spend an hour or two every day playing the oud, a Middle Eastern instrument. But when President Obama says “ISIL speaks for no religion” and “ISIL is not Islamic”, he is delusional. What the Islamic State and other Islamic terrorists are doing around the world comes directly from Islamic doctrine, from barbaric ideas in the Quran and Hadith about infidels, jihad, and martyrdom. There is a reason the terrorists are screaming Allahu Akbar as they carry out their attacks.
Most Muslims fortunately ignore the violence in their doctrine, and Muslims are suffering far more from Islamic terrorism than non-Muslims are. But in order to deal with the root of this problem, this Islamic extremism, we have to call it what it is and address it at its source. There must be an Islamic reformation, a rethinking of the ideas of Islamic doctrine, in order to decrease or stop the conversion of nominal or moderate Muslims into Islamic extremists. There needs to be a conversation on the subject that what was written in the 7th century must be taken in that context, and amended to fit secular and modern values. Without that conversation, without honestly talking about the root of the problem, there can be no hope that it will be solved. Without that conversation, young people hearing hateful rhetoric from crazy preachers will not have the intellectual tools to question it.
I continuously hear so-called liberals shutting down any conversation about the validity of Islamic doctrine, calling it bigotry or racism. This is not only wrong, but counterproductive. It is not bigoted or racist to question the validity and usefulness of ideas. It is a necessary pursuit. Questioning inhumane practices, sharia law, sub-human treatment of women, and so on, is essential.
I am not suggesting that US and European foreign policy hasn’t played a role in these attacks. We may be better off staying out of Islamic countries entirely, not supporting military dictators, and not supporting Saudi Arabia, a country little better than the Islamic State. We’d certainly be better off denouncing Israel’s illegal occupation and continued theft of Palestinian land. And I’m also not suggesting that poverty and disenfranchisement aren’t contributing to these attacks. But the core problem is fundamentalist Islamic ideology. That is what motivates terrorist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
We’re not going to be able to completely stop terrorist attacks in the near future. But if we want to have a chance at stopping them for our children and grandchildren, we need to find a way to change the ideas that lead to the attacks. The only way to do that is to be honest about the ideas in the first place. Here is an excellent podcast on this subject from Sam Harris, who says it much better than I do. Please take the time to listen:
I realize that this conversation must take place in Muslim communities. Coming from the west, it’s probably not going to go over well. But the more the truth is told, the more likely it is to take hold with reasonable people everywhere in the world. Every good person needs to denounce brutality, especially if that brutality is a fundamental part of one of the world’s major religions. Hiding behind political correctness or trying not to offend those who hold offensive beliefs, by any humane standards, is unlikely to produce positive results.
EDIT: Only 8 hours and I’ve gotten a load of emails about this, along with a number of people unsubscribing. I guess that is to be expected. But I want to clarify one thing and reiterate another:
- I’m independent of any grouping, but in general I tend to be very liberal on most issues. I used the term “so-called liberals”, because the people who are not standing up for everyone suffering under the weight of fundamentalist Islamic doctrine are not real liberals.
- Again, I am not implying that all Muslims are bad. I have nothing whatsoever against Muslims. My problem is with fundamentalist Islamists. I fully realize that most Muslims are not fundamentalists, not terrorists, and are good people. What I am saying is that a conversation needs to be had about what is actually in the doctrine regarding infidels, jihad, martyrdom, etc.
The post What to Do About Paris appeared first on Functional Self Defense.
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