As for this author, please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20120111)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20120205)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20131103)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20140218)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20140906). (Lily)
（http://blog.markdurie.com）
By Rev. Dr. Mark Durie
Islam: solution or problem, that is the question , 22 November 2014
An earlier version of this article appeared in the November 2014 edition of The Melbourne Anglican.
A slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is “Islam is the solution”. Dean Philip Jensen recently stated in regard to the Islamic State (ISIS) that “It is time to face the truth that Islam itself is part of the problem.” Solution or problem: what is the truth about Islam?
The world has been shocked by ISIS, which has committed beheadings, crucifixions, stonings, enslaving and selling captives, and imposing the notorious ‘three choices’ upon Syrian and Iraqi Christians. More than this, it has showed itself proud to do such things. The fact that thousands of Muslims from around the world have been traveling to the Levant to join ISIS suggests that these people also consider the acts of ISIS to be in accordance with Islam.
The publicly stated position of ISIS is that it is motivated by religious devotion. The English language version of the ISIS magazine Dabiq recently praised the enslavement of the Yazidis, a non-Muslim group in northern Iraq. The article ‘The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour’, defended the practice from Islamic legal history, the example of the first Muslims, and Muhammad himself:
“The enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers as the mushrikīn [idolators] were sold by the Companions [of Muhammad] … before them. … enslaving the families of the kuffār [non-Muslims] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharī’ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’ān and the narratives of the Prophet [Muhammad] … and thereby apostatizing from Islam.”
ISIS is a product of Islamic revivalism. After enduring several centuries of Islamic decline, a view developed across the Muslim world that if only Muslims were more religiously observant, Allah would make them ascendant again. This conviction has driven the Islamic revival, which seeks to renew Islam by going back to original sources, including the life of Muhammad.
What is significant is that a groundswell of protest against such revivalism is now rising up across the Muslim world. Magdi Abdelhadi, former Arab affairs analyst for the BBC, recently blogged that “a growing number of voices are laying the blame for the proliferation of groups such as ISIS squarely on Arab-Islamic shoulders … One writer after another concluded that ISIS, far from being an aberration, was in fact a textbook example of brutality in the name of Islam.
For example, one of the writers referred to by Abdelhadi criticised an Islamic tradition in which Muhammad said “he had come to slaughter” his enemies. This was featured in an ISIS propaganda video Clanging of the Swords Part 4 (view from 2:20) of Lavdrim Muhaxheri, a Kosovar ISIS commander. Muhaxheri was quoting the Qur’an to justify hatred: “to ... infidels wherever they may be we say the same thing that Abraham said to his father … ‘We have rejected you and between us and you there is enmity and hatred and hatred for ever until you believe in Allah alone.’” (The Qur’an, Sura 60:4) He then recited Muhammad’s words to the Meccans: “We say to you as the Prophet Muhammad said: ‘We have brought slaughter upon you’.” He was saying that ISIS is hating and killing because it desires to be faithful to Islam.
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