Quranic concept of Justice

Submitted by Rehan Ahmad (United Kingdom), Dec 10, 2002 at 21:43

Militant islam as defined by Daniel Pipes is a misconception. The recent troubles america is having with violent groups of islamic origins has nothing to with militancy as advised by islam. They are merely misusing a great and just concept of Islam i.e. reacting justly towards agression.

Islam allows and encourages use of force to deal with evil. However it does not and never included innocent non-believers as target of that force. The justifiable targets are those who oppose and challange a muslim state with force, or spread mischief on the face of earth. Note that Islam gives this right to initiate Jihad (military resistence) against evil only to an islamic state, not to a person or a group of people.

Quranic phrases that many of your readers refer to calling for killing jews and infedals are quoted out of context. These instructions in Quran were given for specific battles and only for those events (just re-read those phrases with full context). The specific instructions were needed for those events since muslims were not sure whether or not they are allowed to kill in the battle field.

As sharp contrast with christianity's idealistic faith of presenting second cheek when slapped, islam establishes the just right of slapping back with force equal to agressors. No more. Exceeding limits is considered a serious crime in Quran. This is the concept of use of force in islam that is based on justice and balance.

As for world supremacy, Islam's primary aim is to spread its message to all corners of earth. This is completely different from converting every soul to the religion with force. No where in the history of Islam people have been converted to islam with force. In fact use of force for conversion is forbidden by Quran itself. ...

Americans living in USA have not seen how much hatred their country's forign policy collects in other countries specially arab. They assume that since they get every pleasant delicacy for almost free, all people in the world must be happy too.

... "Militant islam" did not declare war on america out of the blue... It was non existent 80 years ago. Americans have created this menace themselves, and I agree that now they will have to deal with it.

Ironically the only real solution for terrorism lies in achieving the Quranic balance in reacting against agression with justice: over-react and you will only ensure a reaction back; while under-reacting will give evil doers an upper hand. If american policy makers think that they can win this war by misinforming their own public and spreading false accusations about islam, they are very stupid indeed.

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