IS ISLAM INTRINSICALLY EXTREMIST?

 

Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.

(Q. 2:190)

The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a dangerous fantasy — and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge.

(Sam Harris)

The Intellectual Dark Web has produced multiple bright minds in our society by protesting the rise of toxic feminism but I am quite appalled by how biased they collectively are regarding Islam and Muslims. I respect some of the outstanding members of this "community" such as Jordan Peterson and Debra Soh. But I don't find the beliefs of Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the issue of Islam and terrorism to be well-researched or free-of-bigotry. While Harris denounces the term Islamophobia which he considers to be "propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia", we know that, actually, Islamophobia is the irrational fear of the Muslim people and not the academic criticism of Islam. It's just like antisemitism is the hatred for the Jewish people but you don't become antisemitic if you criticize Judaism or the nation of Israel. Similarly, Muslims don't want you to stop criticizing Islam, its scripture, its Prophet or the shari'ah. Academic criticism of our faith is always welcome and will be responded to intellectually. But the hatred for our community is what we condemn. Christopher Hitchens - God rest his soul! - was probably the most outspoken atheist and the most influential critic of organized religion in this century. But I don't call him Islamophobic; he didn't hate or detest Muslims. He also criticized all religions in a similar manner and, unlike Dawkins, didn't consider Islam to be "the greatest force for evil in the world".

On the other hand, Harris is notorious for his explicitly anti-Muslim remarks. He often reminds me of the allegedly Muslim-turned-atheist-turned-Christian activist Ali Sina. He claims that he was born an Iranian Shiite Muslim, read Sahih al-Bukhari, exposed Islam's violent nature and then left his faith. Even if we ignore the obvious fault in this origin story that a Shiite Muslim is leaving Islam after reading the Sunni hadith collections, Ali Sina was often criticized by Muslim apologists for demanding to nuke Muslim cities in response to a Muslim state nuking the West. Similarly, Harris also abhors Muslims and doesn't even like the idea of having more Muslims in his neighborhood. Here is a bunch of Harris' bigoted remarks about Muslims taken from The Gray Zone. Read them and decide for yourself whether the term Islamophobic is appropriate for a person like Harris or not.

You can’t have too many Muslims in your culture if you want it to remain enlightened.

I think many people will feel, what is the f**king point of having more Muslims in your society? It seems perfectly rational to say, we don’t want any more.

We should profile Muslims or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.

And if we can figure out some way to keep the number of Muslims down in any society, whether we’re honest about this or whether we do this covertly. Clearly it’s rational to want to do this.

I disagree with this hypothesis that Islam is somehow responsible for terrorist activities done by Muslims and the teachings of Islam promote extremism among its adherents. This hypothesis is based on the premise that Muslims actually abide by the shari'ah. This idea is insanely wrong and completely baseless. People like Sam Harris haven't seen original religious Muslims. Religious Muslims don't go up blowing supermarkets or slaughtering non-Muslims. Religious Muslims keep themselves busy in ibadah and spend their time in non-violent activities. Terrorists aren't even religious. There are reports about terrorists engaging in haram sex, drinking alcohol and visiting nightclubs before their suicide missions. Do you really think you can blame Islam for the activities of these disgusting people? Can you take the piety claims of a person seriously if he openly violates the entire shari'ah and only acts upon the teachings about jihad? There have been news articles about terrorists who had adopted a completely hedonistic lifestyle after being radical jihadists, terrorists who were addicted to vodka and marijuana, and even terrorists who had no problem consuming pork after they decided to murder innocent people in the name of Islam. 

According to the FBI and witnesses, the 9/11 plane hijackers went to Las Vegas several times to partake in the carnal pleasures of a quite un-Islamic lap dance, un-Islamically gamble in Sin City’s (I cannot emphasis “sin” enough here) casinos, and even have a nice, cool, and quite clearly haram (forbidden in Islamic law), alcoholic beverage or two. Some extremist radicals.

(Telegraph)

I am literally shocked at how conveniently these so-called New Atheists blame Islam for the actions of these barbarians. I have read the Islamic shari'ah - the actual books written by different schools of thought - and they have only allowed governments to declare jihad against non-Muslims. I don't know where these terrorists got the idea that they could commit suicide to perform the sacred duty of jihad. There are numerous principles and regulations you have to observe if your government decides to go to war. Osama wasn't allowed to declare jihad against any country because he wasn't not the leader of an Islamic state. So, he fled to Afghanistan but the Islamic Emirate was also disqualified from declaring jihad because only three Muslim countries recognized it. Where do these terrorists get their shari'ah from, we don't know. You can go ahead and pick up any shari'ah book of the Salafi school of thought or of the Deobandi school of thought. You will find that the activities of these Muslim terrorists come into the category of bandits and Kharijites. Do you know what shari'ah has to say about the Kharijites? They are to be fought and killed by the Islamic government. Thus, we can say that Islam actually allowed Muslim governments to wage jihad against their terrorists. But, of course, these New Atheists who don't even know the basics of Islamic shari'ah won't know about these complexities in the Mohammedan Law. Muslims believe that Muhammad predicted the emergence of such violent groups among Muslims and severely rebuked them.

Let's say what some Salafi authors had to say on the issue of terrorism. The first statement is from Ibn Taymiyah, the founder of the Salafi ideology. The second statement is from Ibn al-Qayyim, another influential Salafi author.

الكفار إنما يقاتلون بشرط الحراب كما ذهب اليه جمهور العلماء وكما دل عليه الكتاب والسنة

The unbelievers are only fought on the condition that they declare war according to the majority of scholars, as evident in the book and prophetic tradition.

وَلَمْ يُكْرِهْ أَحَدًا قَطُّ عَلَى الدِّينِ وَإِنَّمَا كَانَ يُقَاتِلُ مَنْ يُحَارِبُهُ وَيُقَاتِلُهُ وَأَمَّا مَنْ سَالَمَهُ وَهَادَنَهُ فَلَمْ يُقَاتِلْهُ وَلَمْ يُكْرِهْهُ عَلَى الدُّخُولِ فِي دِينِهِ

The Prophet never forced the religion upon anyone, but rather he only fought those who waged war against him and fought him first. As for those who made peace with him or conducted a truce, then he never fought them and he never compelled them to enter his religion.

Again, I am a Pakistani Muslim who live among Pakistani Muslims. I know that my people being fanatical or extremist doesn't have anything to do with them being religious Muslims. Pakistani Muslims are hypocritical. They will never delay an obligatory prayer and never miss the chance to accept a bribe. They will encourage people to have four wives but also marry their daughters off to a manuscript of Qur'an. They will talk about how wives must be submissive towards their husbands but also refuse to let their sisters have their share in their parents' property. They will condemn immodesty among women but at the same ignore the rape the little children by mullahs in mosques. They will promote niqab but also stand by their cultural traditions of honor killings. A Pakistani politician was ridiculed when he publicly supported burying women alive in the name of honor, a centuries-old custom he considered to be unquestionable. In some tribal areas of Pakistan, they still have this Arab custom of avenging their murdered guests by murdering a guest of the opposite clan. Do these practices have anything to do with Islam? That's why, I get annoyed when people think terrorists are actual followers of Islam when all they do is stick with the teachings of Islam about jihad and they can't do that properly.