http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/o...mostemailedlink

Is Islam to blame?

Despite claims of moderate Muslims, a literal reading of the Koran offers cover for acts of terrorism.

By Irshad Manji, Irshad Manji is the author of "The Trouble with Islam Today" (St. Martin's Press, 2005).


I believe thursday's bombings in London, combined with the first wave of explosions two weeks ago, are changing something for the better. Never before have I heard Muslims so sincerely denounce terrorism committed in our name as I did on my visit to Britain a few days ago. We're finally waking up.

Except on one front: the possible role of religion itself in these crimes.

Even now, the Muslim Council of Britain adamantly insists that Islam has nothing to do with the London attacks. It cites other motives — "segregation" and "alienation," for instance. Although I don't deny that living on the margins can make a vulnerable lad gravitate to radical messages of instant belonging, it takes more than that to make him detonate himself and innocent others. To blow yourself up, you need conviction. Secular society doesn't compete well on this score. Who gets deathly passionate over tuition subsidies and a summer job?

Which is why I don't understand how moderate Muslim leaders can reject, flat-out, the notion that religion may also play a part in these bombings. What makes them so sure that Islam is an innocent bystander?

What makes them sound so sure is literalism. That's the trouble with Islam today. We Muslims, including moderates living here in the West, are routinely raised to believe that the Koran is the final and therefore perfect manifesto of God's will, untouched and immutable.

This is a supremacy complex. It's dangerous because it inhibits moderates from asking hard questions about what happens when faith becomes dogma. To avoid the discomfort, we sanitize.

And so it was, one week after the first wave of bombings. A high-profile gathering of 22 clerics and scholars at the London Cultural Center produced a statement, later echoed by a meeting of 500 Muslim leaders. It contained this line: "The Koran clearly declares that killing an innocent person [is] tantamount to killing all mankind." I wish. In fact, the full verse reads, "Whoever kills a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all humankind." Militant Muslims easily deploy the clause beginning with "except" to justify their rampages.

It's what Osama bin Laden had in mind when he announced a jihad against the U.S. in the late 1990s. Did economic sanctions on Iraq, imposed by the United Nations but demanded by Washington, cause the "murder" of half a million children? Bin Laden believes so (never mind the oil-for-food scandal). Did the boot prints of U.S. troops on the Arabian Peninsula, birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, qualify as "villainy in the land"? To Bin Laden, you bet. As for American civilians, can they be innocent of either "murder" or "villainy" when their tax money helps Israel buy tanks to raze Palestinian homes? A no-brainer for Bin Laden.

And, quite possibly, for the July 7 terrorists. Right out of the gate, the European jihadist group claiming responsibility cited — what else? — a defense of Iraq and a disgust with the Zionist entity as its primary incentives. The invasion of the former and the existence of the latter amount to nothing less than murder and villainy in the land. Did this version of the Koran guide the British bombers?Because we don't yet know, we can't rule it out.

Yet that's exactly what British Muslim leaders are doing. To be sure, I stand with those who insist that certain Koranic passages are being politically exploited. Damn right, they are. The point is, however, that they couldn't be exploited if they didn't exist.

Why do we Muslims hang on to the mantra that the Koran — and Islam — are pristine? God may very well be perfect, but God transcends a book, a prophet and a belief system. That means we're free to question without fear that the Almighty will feel threatened by our reasoning, speculating or doubting.

How about joining with the moderates of Judaism and Christianity in confessing some "sins of Scripture," as Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has said of the Bible? Anything less leaves me with another question: Why is it that in diverse societies, those who oppose diversity of thought often feel more comfortable getting vocal than those who embrace it?

No its never a religions fault freedom of religion. The majority of people in prison in America are Christian. I won't knock you cause its a free country but I won't go there.

Things are not that simple. The Bible, mostly the Old Testament, has passages that, by some interpretations, condone killing of people who don't worship the Bible's God too.

There's a reason that "fundamentalism" and "literalism" in any religion are seen as dangerous things.

Yet most Muslims and most Christians are not terrorists. They are a tiny minority. So it's obviously not belief in the religion alone and no single religion has an exclusive claim on terrorism. Even atheistic movements, history shows, will move towards terrorism under certain circumstances.

There is certainly a conflict between "modernism," science, evolution, religious tolerance and the old fundamentalist religions.

Because anti-diversity of thought is just another diverse thought. Thus the paradox, to oppose anti-diversity one has to stand on the side of another anti-diversity. Just as to oppose intolerance, one must become intolerant of intolerance.

It's live and let live until they decide they don't want you to live.

But live and let live doesn't always mean live and let kill.

If most of the persons on Earth come to understand that Fundamentalist,
literalist religion is the problem, within the next ten years, then all this
conflict and pain associated with making explicit what is, will have been worth it.

anyone who wants to blame text in the Qu'ran for being incendiary and claim the religion of Islam is at fault for fundamentalist Islamacist terrorist, need to take a good look at Xtian scripture. The book of Isaiah. From Chapter 13



makes me wonder why they're so adamantly opposed to non-adherents preventing/terminating pregnancies - do they want to make sure they have lots more kids and infants to torture & kill?

I think it all comes down to a passage from the Christian Bible:

"Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death " (James 1:14-15).

Each person makes a choice based on many factors, external and internal. But in the end it is his or her ability to regulate their love, hate, compassion, jealousy, and other strong emotions that create action over time.

While those who are currently carrying out terror are using the Koran, we have to keep in mind that almost every religion has had their shameful period. Everytime we see those in power (or those grasping for power) twisting the meaning of our faiths, we see injustice that creates evil actions. The Holocaust, the Crusades, the enslavement of Africans, the list goes on and on and on for atrocities committed in the name of Jesus and Christians of each time period, for example.

So while every holy text has passages that extremists can use to justify their actions, I think that leaders of those faiths MUST denounce them and bring the greater truths that God has given us to the front, lest we totally loss the good in the midst of evil. This is what Muslim leaders are trying to do.

And this is all people of faith must do: create societies of justice and peace. At the core of the major religions of the world is this truth: God desires peace and harmony among his peoples . Its time we actually worked TOGETHER to accomplish it.

So long as it is us vs. them, crimes will continue to be committed in the name of God, no matter what name you call Him or Her by.