I have heard many say that Islam is a religion of peace, and the Jews are all the evil ones….but evidences point to a different scenario.I have never seen Jews strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up buildings around the world killing innocent people.

I would just like to hear the justification of calling Islam a “religion of peace”

Thank you.

Answer

I can fully understand the question-marks about Islam, as a whole, that are now placed in the minds of people, whose primary (and more commonly, only) source of knowledge of Islam is the actions and practices of the Muslims rather than the original sources of Islam – the Qur’an and the establishedSunnah (practices)of the Prophet (pbuh). If I place myself in your shoes, I would probably have asked the same kind of questions in a much more degrading tone.

My dear frtiend, I would sincerely request you not to derive any conclusions about Islam from the acts of a particular people. Doing so, as you would also agree, may not only lead you to making uncalled for generalizations regarding the ‘whole’ from a non-representative sample, but may also lead you to develop a negative bent of mind and heart in recognizing something, which may actually be God’s truth.

Islam is strictly against taking even a single life, without justice. This, in fact, is an understatement, for Islam is not merely ‘against’ taking life without justice, but considers doing so as depriving all humankind of the right to live – the sacred right bestowed upon the humankind by their Creator, Who alone can take that right away from them, when He so decides, according to His absolute knowledge, wisdom and mercy. Islam allows taking an individual’s life, only under two conditions: When the person is guilty of murder and when the person is guilty of creating unrest and anarchy in the state. Even in these cases, the individual could only be deprived of his right to live, after he is given the right to defend himself in an open court of law and after it is proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the individual is, in fact, guilty of the crime that he is accused of.

Even in the case of a declared war, Islam strictly forbids taking the life of those people, who are not taking an active part in the war (women, children, senior citizens and all those other citizens, who are not taking an active part in the war.Sadly,it is people from other faiths who are not showing any respect to humans lives when it comes to invading other countries.Women,elderly and innocent children are being massacred senselessly.

Islam does not allow declaring an aggressive war on a nation, except where the rulers of that nation are guilty of persecuting its citizens (and subsequently those citizens call that Islamic state for help) or where the state is creating unrest and anarchy in the Islamic state.

These are the strict laws of the Shari`ah, under which an Islamic state can take an individual’s life or declare a war on another state. Do you really consider these laws to be against your concept of a ‘peace loving’ religion?

My dear brother, terrorism has no religion. The terrorists have no concern with the religious ascriptions of their targets. Their sole interest is to spread terror. Their actions are not representative of their creed, but of their intolerance toward all that is against their personal liking (which they may have derived from an incorrect understanding of their religion). It is, thus, that you find the same terrorist groups operating not only in non-Muslim lands, but also against their own Muslim lands.

Terrorism, in my opinion, should be recognized as a separate creed. People, who ascribe to this detestable creed – whether they have Muslim, Jewish,Christian,Hindu and Buddhist names – should be grouped in one creed. No religion teaches inhumanity. The Terrorist creed survives on hate. While all Divine religions are based on the concept of a loving and merciful God. All nations of the world must unite against the creed of terrorists. For, otherwise, it is only a matter of time before more humans lose their lives, to the creed of terrorists. However, a permanent solution for “Terrorism” should not only aim at the complete annihilation of the existing terrorists, but should also uproot the causes which have yielded the detestable tree. For without the complete removal of the cause, we would only make the next generation of the ‘Terrorists’ even more committed to their cause, posing a bigger potential threat to the humankind.

Religious intolerance, illiteracy, poverty, injustice,sectarianism and developing a psychic of hate, rather than love, to get the loyalties and commitments of a people, just to name a few, are some of the major roots, which are fertilizers for the crop of terrorists. Any war against ‘Terrorism’, which does not remove these causes and concentrates only on removing the already prepared crop, shall only strengthen the seeds of “Terrorism” in the times to come.

Regards,

UIUK

September 16, 2001