some thoughts

Submitted by Abdul Rahman Reijerink (Australia), Jun 4, 2006 at 08:42

Dear brother Nowshad and others,

A muslim is anyone who testifies to the oneness of God and that his final messenger is Muhammad. thats it. You cannot say that the criminals who walk and kill in our midst are not Muslims (as in followers of the faith, since they are NOT in a state of submission to Allah, but their slaves of their own desires...), that is clearly forbidden. We must judge people by what they say and do. They do not act as Muslims should but this does not mean that they are not Muslims... this is the type of practise common amongst extremists... the denial of a Muslims Islam, then they justify killing them this way, how i don't know since this is just twisted and from Satan. All we can say is that they look like they are defying every law of God and man. We leave the judgement on their imaan to Allah.

So yes, Muslims do sin. They kill, rape, murder, drink alcohol, consume/make pornography, just like most other catagories of people. All humans sin, what makes believers (including Christians/Jews etc) special is that we recognise that we sin, and need to ask Allah for forgiveness and help in not sinning. that all the evil we do comes from us and all the good is from God.

Muslims should not attack churches or synagogues, whether they do or not I don't know, but some have in the past. Yet since these places should be protected as therin God is remebered let us not forget that to kill a human being is worse as it is the human who does the remembering.

Plenty of Muslim kids do drugs, Islam helps them give them up. Many don't pray, less have given up Ramadan, but still why do they fast if they don't pray.... habit. not faith. Yes our religion is great and I have benefited so much from it, but it is foolish to deny reality.

Muslims should strive not to sin, but sin we do. It is human nature, only God is perfect. We defend our religion (not that it ruly needs it) on its merits, not by closing our eyes to reality and denying what is obvious.

Us and them mentality leads to division and is not faithful to reality. "Denmark" did not do anything to the Prophet Muhammad SAWS, some Danish people did. Do you think that the Prophet is less noble because of the cartoons, will Allah think less of him for these cartoons? Then let them prattle on. I am more concerned about the evil way some Muslims responded to it by breaking the laws of God and man.

Sept 11 attacks (I take it you mean the co-ordinated assault on US soil not the coup in Chile in 1973) were committed by Muslims. Bad ones. Anything else is lunacy. I am sure they had read the Qur'an or a bad translation of it, and had it torn out of all recognition to justify the evil acts. Remember Allah allows the evil to be misguided by it as well as those who desire to do good to be guided by it. It will testify against them on the Day of Standing.

Muslims have to stop acting like victims and start acting like Muslims, it is not enough to say that Islam is good, we have to prove it by testifying with our deeds.

Abdul Rahman Reijerink

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".