Some great posts by rscanderlech over the last few pages. And what you've mentioned about the type of people living in Europe that tend to rush of and join the likes of ISIS (or AlQaeda in the past), is something I've found to be very true. And it's why I think we need do more (and
are striving to do more) on
this side of the issue to make sure that we're not just making things worse over there. I've mentioned this in some of my earlier posts, but there are a lot of alienated, troubled, confused youths right here in Europe, and we
need to do more to reach out to them, before the wrong element does.
Very interesting post - thanks. I think many of us are aware of the way vulnerable young men are radicalised but the bottom line is that they are radicalised to fight and commit atrocities on the basis of a book that contains all the necessary verses to justify that behaviour.
As I've mentioned before, Alan, others as well as yourself have kept repeating this type of statement quite frequently, even though anyone with knowledge about the religion has stated the opposite. There are no verses that promote the killing of innocent women and children, and there are non that promote waging war against people
simply because they "don't believe" in the same religion (or interpretation of the religion) as per the ISIS mantra. It's why you won't find scholars siding with the likes of ISIS, and it's also why they're condemned all over the Muslim world.
Included within the Quran (and hadeeths) are historical narratives (such as verse 8:12 which has already been quoted a few times on this thread, and which I've already explain here:
It's a far stretch to try to connect a narrative of a past battle as the motivation (or justification) for what ISIS are doing. It's not about a different interpretation, ISIS are not going out there and commiting actions whilst flipping through the Quran to get their confirmation. They're committing actions as
they see fit whilst declaring themselves as Muslims. There is no Islamic handbook for what they're doing.
If a person commits atrocities and subsequently claims his actions are wholly inspired by Islam, or by the "Will of Allah", it doesn't mean we should accept his statements at face value. Just because he claims his actions to be justified, doesn't necessarily make it so. And if the Islamic community, and Islamic scholars, are
united in the dismissal of his statements as wholly untrue and without grounds, why does that become so difficult to accept.
If a person x living in the US decided to shoot groups of immigrants in his city because he felt that "they offered a clear danger to his life and those of his fellow Americans" and therefore he was simply upholding his "right to defend himself" (as how he surmised it to be), would we be so quick in accepting his justification?. When Anders Breivik shot and killed his
own people because he felt multiculturalism (and Islam, and Feminisim in the West) was a clear problem for his country (and Europe) and he felt the need to market and present his mantra to the world , were we so quick to accept his justification? And did we all start extrapolating his actions onto all the right wing leaning political factions within our own countries?. If a person commits a heinous act, the problem tends to be with them, regardless of how they've tried to justify their actions.
Whenever the average person commits a serious crime, regardless of what they've deemed as their justification, we're quite comfortable with the concept that the majority of the blame and fault lies in their hands. However, it seems whenever a Muslim commits a serious crime, that simply because they're Muslim and claiming Islam is their justification, that the rule doesn't apply the same way. That somehow, just as long as Muslim uses his religion as his "defense", that people will assume there
is merit in his statement. . It's almost as if
anything a Muslim says about their religion is somehow factual,
simply because they're Muslim, regardless of the stance of the Muslim community, of the Islamic scholars, and of anyone else that might be knowledgeable on the subject of Islam.