Please bear with me if I seem to be belaboring my opinons about the Muslim faith. I do not want to offend those liberal Muslims in the United States who are loyal American citizens and who do not support Islamic militancy. However, I am compelled to respond to an op ed piece by Javeed Akhter which originally appeared in the Baltimore Sun.
Dr. Akhter, a physician, is a founding member of the International Strategy and Policy Institute, a Muslim-American think tank. In his article, Dr. Akhter pictures true Islam as a peaceful and human-life defending faith. He claims that only a "tiny but loud fraction of clerics" preach a "minority ideology" which is a "lethal misinterpretation of the verses" in the Quran. He charges that those clerics pick and chose a few verses out of the holy book to justify violence.
According to Dr. Akhter, Islam protects human life because the Quran states "If you save one life, it is as if you have saved all mankind." He claims suicide bombers break the faith because suicide "is explicitly prohibited in Islam. Injunctions of the Quran and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad prohibit it in unequivocal terms."
Dr. Akhter also claims "killing of the innocents is expressly prohibed" by a verse in the Quran which reads "If you have taken an innocent life, it is as if you have killed all humanity." I'm afraid that Dr. Akhter is himself misinterpreting his holy book. The Quran verses on saving lives and not taking innocent lives do not apply to infidels, but only to the believers in Islam.
The Quran clearly proclaims "Death to the infidels." And, the Prophet Muhammad commanded the faithful to spread Islam "by the sword." The term "suicide bombers" is one coined by us Westerners. By Islamic standards, they are not committing suicide. Islam considers those we call "suicide bombers" to be brave warriors engaged in jihad (holy war) who will be rewarded with martyrdom when they blow themselves up.
Byran Daly, co-director of the new film ISLAM, WHAT THE WEST NEEDS TO KNOW, gave a picture much different from that of Dr. Akhter when he appeared on MSNBC's "Tucker" July 16, 2007. Daly emphasized that the Prophet Mohammed was an aggressive and cruel warrior, and that Islam was far from a peaceful religion hijacked by a small mninority. Following are some exerpts from the program transcript.
Daly stated "Allah orders Muslims to conquer the world and institute the laws of Allah over the whole earth through warfare, following the example of Mohammed's conquest of the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century. His order is set down in the Koran, which is the immutable eternal word of Allah. It stands for all time and cannot be changed or questioned from an Islamic standpoint." By the 17th century, Islam had conquered much of the world before being stopped by the superior power of Western civilization.
Daly also stated that the Prophet Mohammed "was not a pacifist preacher, but was a very successful warlord." Daly described Islam as not just a religion, but also as a political force "that it was always meant to be." Islam is a governing "theocracy that does not divide church and state, the religious and the secular." The Quran directs the faithful to go forth and establish Caliphates by force throughout the world.
Dr. Akhter is guilty of using the same tactics he accuses his alleged tiny fraction of Islamic clerics as using - picking and chosing select verses from the Quran to prove a point. And, he is being intentionally disingenuous as he knows very well his asserted fraction of clerics applies only to the Western world. In Muslim countries, clerics in many mosques and madrassahs (religious schools) preach jihad, referring to numerous passages in the Quran which call for the slaughter of infidels.
Contrary to Dr. Akhter's assertion that Islam is a peaceful and kindly religion, history has shown and continues to show that the Muslim faith has always been and remains a militant religious movement which resorts to killing innocent men, women and children in carrying out the Quran's conversionist and expansionist commands.
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