Morocco # English board

"Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you. Remember that you will indeed meet your Lord, and that He will indeed reckon your deeds."
From the last sermon of Prophet Mohammed

Despite the presence of violence in many religions of the world ranging, from Ireland to Lebanon to the Pacific Basin and involving many religions from Christianity to Hinduism, the Western World associates Islam, more than any other religion, with violence.

The Muslim conquest of Spain, the Crusades (which were not started by Muslims) and the ottoman domination of the east-Europe, gives us an idea of Islam that is Force and Power. More than this the events of the past decades that took place in the middle-east and particularly the movements using the name of Islam, reinforced the idea that in some way Islam is linked or related to Violence.

To understand the nature of Islam we have first to remind that, literally, Islam means surrender, implying surrender to God. And a Muslim, literally, is one who is surrendering, specifically, one who is surrendering to God.
The history of Islam has certainly not been witness of more Violence than any other religion, civilisation, particularly that of the West.

We'll try in this paper to really express the way Islam condemns Violence, and we'll try to clearly analyse the way Islam defines Force and Violence. As we can guess it is related to all kinds of Extremism and extremists groups, Are they legitimist (or do they respect Islam).

First, we have to define what is meant by Violence. There are different dictionary definitions that can be taken into account such as 'swift an intense force', 'rough or injurious physical force or action', 'unjust or unwarranted exertion of force especially against the rights of others', 'rough or immediate vehemence' and finally 'injury resulting from the distortion of meaning or fact'. If these definitions are accepted for Violence then the question is: How Islam is related to these definitions?
Islam is not completely opposed to the use of Force but in fact wants to control it "in the light of the divine Law"(al-Shari'a). In the nature as well as in the human society, Force can be found anywhere, 'Among men as well as within the human soul',

The goal of Islam is to establish an equilibrium in these 'force fields'. We can guess that the word 'Equilibrium 'and the word 'Justice' are relatively similar in Arabic (Equilibrium = Ta'adul ; Justice = Al'adl).The Force can be used only to re-establish an equilibrium, only if this equilibrium was already destroyed, so it is in the way of the Devine Law. According to me the use of Force can be swift and intense or gentle and mild, it depends on the circumstances, but for Islam Force can be used with the objective of establishing equilibrium and harmony, not for a personal reason or for a particular group.

"...by embracing the 'world' and not shunning the 'kingdom of Caesar', Islam took upon itself responsibility for the world in which force is present. But by virtue of the same fact it limited the use of force and despite all the wars, invasions, and attacks which it experienced. it was able to create an ambiance of peace and tranquillity which can still be felt whenever something of the traditional Islamic world survives [...] the peace that dominates the courtyard of a mosque or a garden whether it be in Marrakech or Lahore is not accidental but the result of the control of force with the aim of establishing that harmony which results from equilibrium of forces, whether those forces be natural, social or psychological..." (Seyyed Hossein Nasr Vol.XIII).

The rights of human beings are defined by Islamic Law and are protected by this Law which embraces not only Muslims but also followers of other religions who are considered as 'People of the Book(ahl al-kitab)'. If there is a violation in Islamic society, it is because of the teaching of Islam but the imperfection of the human recipients of the Devine Message. If one understands by Violence :
• 'rough or immoderate vehemence', then Islam is totally opposed to it. The perspective of Islam is based upon moderation and its morality is grounded upon the principle of avoiding extremes and ' keeping to the golden mean'.
• 'distortion of meaning or fact resulting in injury to others', Islam is completely opposed to it. Islam is based on the Truth which saves and which finds its supreme expression in the testimony of faith, la ilaha illa 'Llah(there is no divinity but the Devine).

Then the question that is more relevant and more 'up to date' is:
Should kamikaze implied in attentats be considered as martyrs?

"These are mass murders, pure and simple" said Hamza Yusuf, an Islamic scholar in East Bay and he added "they are enemies of Islam". According to him there is no Islamic justification for any of there acts, "they're not martyrs, it's as simple as that". In Islam, the only wars that are permitted are between armies and they should take place on battlefields and engage nobody .The Prophet Mohamed said, "Do not kill women or children or non-combatants and do not kill old people or religious people "and he mentioned priests, nuns and rabbis and he said, "Do not cut down fruit-bearing trees and do not poison the wells of your enemies" .

Suicide bombers have always cited a Koranic verse that says, "Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.", this is meant for people who are legitimately defending the lands of Islam or fighting under legitimate state authority against a tyrannical leader. There is no vigilantism in Islam. Muslim believe in authority of government.
Hamza Yusuf said "there's a verse of Koran that says do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from beeing just. Being just is closer to piety. The evil of warth is that justice and mercy are gone."

A martyr is in Arabic Shaheed, it means witness, he's the one who witness the truth and gives his life for it. There are people in the United States like Martin Luther King who would be considered as a martyr for his cause. Also, if your family, your home, your property, your land or your religion is threatened, then you may defend it by your life but so is anybody who dies of terminal illness, it's a martyr's death, because it's a purification.

The Prophet said that a martyr who dies doesn't have a reckoning on the Day of Judgement, it's an act through which he is forgiven. But the Prophet also said that there are people who kill in the name of Islam and go to hell, and when he was asked why he said, "Because they weren't fighting truly for the sake of God".

The concept of Jihad has been widely used to justify Violence, but Jihad means struggle. The Prophet said the greatest Jihad is the struggle of a man against his own evil influences, it refers to what Christian people call "just war", which is fought against tyranny or oppression (but under a legitimate state authority).

The religion has produced world empires, a civilization of stunning beauty and a theology of peace and submission to God. But it is also plagued with images of ruthless jihadi warriors, chopped-off hands, forced conversions - and now, hijacked airplanes blasting into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon.
Since the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, diverse Islamic practices have flourished in the absence of a central religious authority. Extremist ideology has flourished as well.

"The crumbling of the Islamic civilization has removed the established institutions to seriously challenge the extremists," said Khaled Abou El Fadl, UCLA acting professor of Islamic law. "Extremists have always been there in the Islamic tradition, but they tend to be very powerful when the institutions of society weaken and crumble."

Most Muslims - and non-Muslim experts on Islam - are quick to say that extremists are distorting the faith and violating its fundamental principles of peace for political gain.

"Nothing in the Koran, Islamic theology or Islamic law in any way, shape or form justifies ramming two airliners into civilian buildings," said Hamid Dabashi, chairman of the Middle Eastern languages and culture department at Columbia University. "In every great religious tradition, you can launch the most humanistic, loving ideas, or the most violent terrorist actions."

He and others say Islam is no more inherently violent than Christianity, which produced followers who carried out brutal campaigns of extermination during the Crusades and the Inquisition. Violence in Northern Ireland between Roman Catholics and Protestants is not a product of the religion, experts note. Judaism did not produce the strife in Israel, any more than Hinduism is at fault for fundamentalist violence against Christians in India.

But Dabashi and other experts said the Islamic religious texts lend themselves to manipulation by extremists because they are filled with fiery references to war, exhortations to fight oppression and mandates to mobilize against the enemy.
In the Koran's ninth chapter and fifth verse, for instance, Muslims are exhorted to "fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them. And seize them and beleaguer them and lie in wait for them," according to an English translation. (The passage also instructs that Muslims must embrace those who repent, "for Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful." And, in other verses, Christians and Jews are explicitly exempted from attack, embraced as kindred "people of the book" qualified for paradise.)



The Islamic sacred texts not only include exhortations to fight, they also lay out detailed rules of engagement. Experts say the terrorists broke every rule in the Islamic sacred books. The tradition expressly prohibits the killing of non-combatants: women, children, the aged, hermits, even trees. It forbids suicide. It even requires notice before attack.

Extremists are found among people of all ideologies. They do not represent the faiths, nor are they the model sample for judging people of faith. The question implies that extremism and fundamentalism are synonymous and that this extremism is a component of Islamic ideology. Both these assumptions are incorrect.
If by "fundamentalists" it is meant those who align themselves with the fundamentals of their faith, then every true believer is duty-bound to be a fundamentalist. If "fundamentalism" is equated with fanaticism or extremism, then Islam explicitly distances itself from those things.

The holy Koran clearly states that Muslims are "those who are balanced, followers of the middle path" (Chapter 2, Verse 143); while the Prophet Muhammad stated, "destroyed are the extremists." The first definition in Webster’s dictionary for "fundamentalism" is "a movement in twentieth-century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching.

How and why this term has been suffixed to Islam and Muslims, with distinct negative connotations, is as mysterious as it is diabolical. It is unfortunate that the Western media often reinforces the negative stereotyping of Islam with images of radicalism, terrorism, and militancy.


In conclusion it must be emphasized that since Islam embraces the whole of life and does not distinguish between the sacred and the secular, it concerns itself with force and power which characterize this world as such. But Islam, in controlling the use of force in the direction of creating equilibrium and harmony, limits it and opposes violence as aggression to the rights of both God and His creatures as defined by the divine Law.

"The goal of Islam is the attainment of peace but this peace can only be experienced through that exertion (jihad) and the use of force which begins with the disciplining of ourselves and leads to living in the world in accordance with the dicta of the shar'ia. Islam seeks to enable man to live according to his theomorphic nature and not to violate that nature.

Islam condones the use of force only to the extent of opposing that centripetal tendency which turns man against what he is in his inner reality. The use of force can only be condoned in the sense of undoing the violation of our own nature and the chaos which has resulted from the loss of equilibrium. But such a use of force is not in reality violence as usually understood. It is the exertion of human will and effort in the direction of conforming to the Will of God and in surrendering the human will to the divine Will.

“From this surrender (taslim) comes peace (salam), hence Islam, and only through this Islam can the violence inbred within the nature of fallen man be controlled and the beast within subdued so that man lives at peace with himself and the world because he lives at peace with God."(Seyyed Hossein Nasr,Vol. XIII)

All people of faith are expected to live by the fundamental principles of their faith, but none has the right to be extremists.

By Mehdi Alexandre Gragueb-Chatty

a little long for a post-discussion but a considerable paper.
Thanks