Islam Essay, Research Paper

Mr. Elmasry said there are bad Muslims just as there are bad Christians and

Jews. "We treat them as such and so should you. But Islam is a religion of

peace. Muslims have a religious duty to be tolerant of other faiths and other

ideologies.” Mr. Elmasry said journalists need to differentiate between the

peaceful teachings of Islam and the claims of some Muslim extremists that their

actions are justified by their interpretations of Islam. He likened the

situation of Canadian Muslims today to that of Canadian Jews 50 years ago.

"Jewish children were being (wrongly) called Christ-killers just as Muslim

children are called terrorists today.” In their letter to the editor in the

April 27 issue of the College Hill Independent, Jumana Musa and Shadi Nahvi made

some excellent points. They rightly asserted that the Western press tends to

portray Arabs and Muslims according to stereotypes and these myths persist

partly due to Western popular ignorance about Arabs and Muslims. Since the

Muslims students at Brown condemned the bombing of a Tel Aviv bus last year, I

am learning to separate the handful of Muslim and Arab extremists who commit

terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish civilians from the millions of

Muslim believers who do not participate in this violence and sometimes express

opposition to it. Since I began interacting with Muslims students through the

kosher/hallal meal plan this year, I am changing my perceptions of Muslims and

seeing them as people instead of abstractions. I think that many, many people in

the United States and in western countries, in Europe, are afraid of a monster

called Islam. And as the honorable Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said, it is an

insult to consider the whole of Muslims, to take them into one side, and make

them extremists. Really it is not correct. It is a little bit insulting. What is

the definition of extremism? We can see in all of history: even when the first

settlers came to the United States they were from different countries; Spain,

England, France, European Countries. They were fighting on this land and

fighting with the Indians. Do we call this extremism? A fight for a better

living, which you understand you are doing not for a religious motive, is not

extremism. Extremism in Islam, or in religion, is when you use religion to label

intolerance, to turn from religion and take ideas that you can extract for

yourself, or deduce for yourself, and use to make a militant movement and

disturb the peace in your country or around the world. That is called

"extremism," and "Islamic Extremism." But a movement for

better living, that is not extremism. These people nowadays are developing two

ways of understanding the situation of Islam. From one side they think that they

have to reform it; it is a duty on them, they have been brainwashed to think

that they have to cleanse the world of devils and demons and of countries that

suppress them, oppress them, and try to shut them down. Logicians argue that one

cannot pass a judgment on something unless one has a clear conception of it,

because the unknown and the undefined cannot be judged. Therefore, we first have

to determine what "religious ,extremism" means before we can condemn

or applaud it. We can do so by considering its reality and its most

distinguishing characteristics. Literally, extremism means being situated at the

farthest possible point from the center. Figuratively, it indicates a similar

remoteness in religion and thought, as well as behavior. One of the main

consequences of extremism is exposure to danger and insecurity.! Islam,

therefore, recommends moderation and balance in everything: in belief, ibadah,

conduct, and legislation. Islam is frequently misunderstood and may even seem

exotic in some parts of today’s world. Perhaps this is because religion no

longer dominates everyday life in Western society; whereas, for Muslims, Islam

is life. Muslims make no artificial division between the secular and the sacred.

bin laden: "The treacherous attack has confirmed that Britain and America

are acting on behalf of Israel and the Jews, paving the way for the Jews to

divide the Muslim world once again, enslave it and loot the rest of its

wealth," the US magazine quotes bin Laden saying. What particularly

interested me in the report was the military demand that terrorism be eliminated

and extremism be abolished. Both terrorism and extremism, however, seem to

include, at least in their minds, most of the features of normal Muslim life.

Following this line of reasoning, extremism and Islam become two faces of the

same coin. And this, surprisingly, was being broadcast by a Muslim Gulf state.

Is familiarity with the Holy Qur’an a mark of extremism? Is calling upon young

people to pray in the mosques a mark of radicalism? Is traditional Muslim dress

an outward sign of terrorism? We are all familiar with the tendency in some

quarters to equate Islam with terrorism. As we know, this is not only blindness

but also total ignorance of Islam and what it stands for. Extremism of course

means taking an intolerant stand at one limit or the other of an issue; the

stand is never moderate, easy nor middle of the road. When we look at the good

Muslim people of Turkey, we are aware that they have been prevented from

practising their religion as freely as they might wish. Now, they have decided

to review their Muslim traditions and incorporate them into their lives. How can

we possibly consider these people outlaws or extremists? It seems that what

secularism asks of us Muslims is that we should become empty vessels — without

faith, without any standard of what is proper or improper behavior. The

secularists would have us copy what is worst in the West, to be neither Muslim

nor Christian, to believe in nothing and have no religion except hedonistic

materialism ?They violate our land and occupy it and steal the Muslims?

possessions, and when faced by resistance they call it terrorism,? bin Laden

said in an interview the Arab world?s most popular television channel —-*

The Associated Press ABC news. has consistently demanded the eviction of the

estimated 5,000 U.S. forces based in Saudi Arabia. BIN LADIN: We declared jihad

against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and

tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and

criminal whether directly or through its support of the Israeli .The mention of

the US reminds us before everything else of those innocent children who were

dismembered, their heads and arms cut off in the recent explosion that took

place in Qana (in Lebanon). A reaction might take place as a result of US

government’s hitting Muslim civilians and executing more than 600 thousand

Muslim children in Iraq by preventing food and medicine from reaching them. So,

the US is responsible for any reaction, because it extended its war against

troops to civilians. The cause of the reaction must be sought and the act that

has triggered this reaction must be eliminated. The reaction came as a result of

the US aggressive policy towards the entire Muslim world and not just towards

the Arabian peninsula. So if the cause that has called for this act comes to an

end, this act, in turn, will come to an end. So, the driving-away jihad against

the US does not stop with its withdrawal from the Arabian peninsula, but rather

it must desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.

The US today as a result of the arrogant atmosphere has set a double standard,

calling whoever goes against its injustice a terrorist. It wants to occupy our

countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us based not on what

God has revealed and wants us to agree on all these. If we refuse to do so, it

will say you are terrorists. The US does not consider it a terrorist act to

throw atomic bombs at nations thousands of miles away, when it would not be

possible for those bombs to hit military troops only. The US does not consider

it terrorism when hundreds of thousands of our sons and brothers in Iraq died

for lack of food or medicine. It is known that every action has its reaction. If

the American presence continues, and that is an action, then it is natural for

reactions to continue against this presence. In other words, explosions and

killings of the American soldiers would continue. A man with human feelings in

his heart does not distinguish between a child killed in Palestine or in

Lebanon, in Iraq or in Bosnia. So how can we believe your claims that you came

to save our children in Somalia while you kill our children in all of those

places?

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