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Is Islam Misunderstood?


By IoshkaFutz

2005/06/13  

It's rather amazing how in Islam so much boils down to the actual definition of single words. Understanding entire passages is one thing, and it's legitimate... just as people will forever squeeze new definitions out of Constitutions, but being stumped by the actual meaning of words is just pure intellectual hide-and-seek.

So is it friend or is it guardian? ( 9.23, 5.57, 4.139 ) Do the hands of thieves need to be chopped, or as some now suggest merely marked? ( 5.038)

Oddly enough, the cities where Muslims go to celebrate their brotherhood are locked out to both "friends / guardians"... No etymological finesse there!

As far as I'm concerned, this slipperiness of definition is the final touch of EVIL.

Conflicting injunctions, jumbled order, no leadership but self-appointed Imams empowered to issue murderous fatwas... and now a language, as holy and vague as to be unable to distinguish between friend and guardian, mark and "chop off."

In other words, arguing with Muslims is like being in a room with walls made of distorted mirrors, with a smoke machine in the middle.

Funny isn't it that we're not really sure whether Jihad is an internal struggle for personal betterment or the most wanton kind of mass murder. So what is it? Do I impose discipline on myself and shoot for an engineering degree, or do I join the long beards and shoot people?

Well...

However one thing is clear: Muslims, despite the 1001 interpretations that may drop from the "tasfir - understand-the-context" bubble gum machine, are enjoined to take over the world... and they are at war in dozens of different places. Not bad for the religion of peace!

Now criticism is construed as a human rights abuse. I don't know why I'm incensed. Perhaps people mistake a forum for a court of law, where only facts are allowed and adjectives are held to a minimum.

Misdeeds like Beslan, a carefully planned kidnapping, rape and slaughter of school children by men and even women shouting the slogan of Islam mustn't elicit an emotional response. I wonder why we bother to call it terrorism. These and other heinous acts are promulgated from places of worship. My online dictionary defines terror as "intense, sharp, overmastering fear."

I would imagine that that alone entitles Muslims, both the perpetrators and silent, obliquely consenting witnesses, to be the object of poetic descriptions.

Terroism... as in "strike fear into the hearts" ( 8.12, 3.151 ) - "kill them wherever you find them" (4.89, 2.191  4.91 9.5 ) (pure 100% certified Koranic injunctions, written into the Charters of the organizations that emanate from Mosques, Islamic study centers and charities: Hamas, Hizbullah, Horkut-ul- Jihad, Horkut-ul-mujahedin, Jaise Muhamad, Jihad-e-Muhammad, Tahrik-e-Nifaj-shariaat-e-Muhammad, Al-Hikhma, Al-badr-Mujaheddin, Jamah-e-Islamia, Hijb-e-Islamia... terrorism does tend to elicit emotional response.

To my way of thinking these responses are very healthy... and all the more so when they ultimately lead to extremely firm and unemotional reactions, when the grey areas we normally concede to those who think and behave differently finally become clearly delineated Black and White.

I'm a religionist, but I assure you that if I ever heard a priest talk in one of his homilies the way Imams everywhere talk every Friday, I'd walk out in jaw-dropping horror. I'd denounce him to both civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

I simply refuse to give the benefit of doubt, to play the "what does it really mean" game with people clinging to vague etymologies and "contexts," of mixed good-bad injunctions, with no leadership, listening to self-appointed Imams empowered to send out death warrants, who are bent on conquering the world. Morality was never meant to be so precise in its ultimate aim and so slippery in its means.

So are Muslims human? Absolutely, but is Islam to be crushed? Yes sir. Just like slavery, child marriage, misogyny, terror, anti-Semitism, suicidal martyrdom, political tyranny.

A religion has turned my airport into a war zone; my old mother gets her nail clips confiscated. I get frisked when I want to hear my Pope say the sweet things he says from the window in Saint Peter's Square. Dutch Parliamentarians are in hiding. All this is linked to that room with the distorted mirrors and smoke machines.

The benefit of doubt is the one thing Muslims don't deserve, for doubt is what they have systematically forbidden. In fact it's their biggest crime.

 

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