New definition of war

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Dec 29, 2021 at 18:31

Dear Dr Pipes, I have long believed that polite but firm disapproval of bad Islamic practices is the only way to defeat Islamism. As more and more people are presenting their opposition to Islamic malpractices, Muslims are coming up newer and newer and tenuouser and tenuouser defenses of their faith. That is a good trend. We want to non-violently make the ice on which Islamist stand thinner and thinner.

Consider the case of various Quranic verses and hadiths that recommend murders of the apostates. The Internet and social media are full of people criticizing these verses and hadiths.

The easy and honorable way will be for Muslims to admit that murdering apostates is unacceptable. But that will invalidate the Quran and Islam. So, what do the Muslims do? They change the definition of war so apostasy can be considered an act of war.

Your reader Hamza did exactly this. According to him, Muhammad lived in a tiny region of Arabia. There were Jews there. Jews opposed Islam. Jews also fought with Muhammad. So, apostasy was an act of war and, hence, subject to killing by murder. Wow! Suddenly murders became halal. Go figure!

What Muslims must realize is that this is all a pathetically flawed logic. Muhammad should have opened a monastery and should have become a monk. In that monastery he should have preached his version of monotheism and argued why it was better than the Jewish or Christian monotheism. Better still, he should have traveled to India or Greece and tried to figure out the Vedantic version of monotheism (which, arguably, is the mother of all monotheisms). But, Muhammad did not have so much patience and he had no thought to spare. He chose the path of sword.

The ice on which Islam stands just got a bit thinner!

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