No Militant Islam

Submitted by Ned Lora (Canada), Dec 2, 2002 at 20:31

I totally disagree with Mr. Pipe's attempts to make the distinction between Islam and Militant Islam. There is no such thing as militant Islam; only Islam, though it does have many denominations. However, there are militant Muslims, which is what Mr. Pipes refers to when he mentions the 'terrorist's reading of Islam'. Are the crimes committed by Christians throughout the last 1800 years referred to as "Militant Christianity"?

People who try to 'prove' that Islam condones offensive violence by pulling out passages from the Quran to prove their point are dead wrong; those passages are not policies for muslims but tactical verses belonging in the 7th century only and pertain to exhortations by "God' to Muhammad's initial reluctance to take up arms after having preached peacefully for 14 years. They were 'revealed' when the forces of Mecca had first attacked Muhammad and his followers. All muslims know that. There are no exhortations to kill jews, christians at all and the refrences to pagans in the Quran are in that context only; the pagans of Mecca. I would therefore suggest that those verses be read in their entirety and within context; the Quran is a highly contextual document. (Many other verses are allegorical as well).

Al-Qaeda and others like them are mafia like criminal gangs with political ambitions who do use the Islamic concept of Jihad but use it in an offensive capacity that is not allowed in the scriptures. Worse, they deliberately target civilians which is explicitly banned both in the Quran as well as in the Hadith (real or alleged). (There they say that since our enemies are not playing by any rules so we won't either !).

Targeting all of Islam is dangerous and will be counter productive in the long run.

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