Tag Archives: violence

We Don’t Need Your “Defense”

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In the Name of God, the Kind, the Beautiful

As the furor over the proposed mosque (that is not really a mosque) at Ground Zero (which is really not at Ground Zero) continues to rage, our enemies overseas are attempting to seize an opportunity to justify further attacks against our people. Reporting in the Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Weisman wrote:

Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan’s Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites.

One jihadist site vowed to conduct suicide bombings in Florida to avenge a threatened Koran burning, while others predicted an increase in terrorist recruits as a result of such actions.

“By Allah, the wars are heated and you Americans are the ones who…enflamed it,” says one such posting. “By Allah you will be the first to taste its flames.”

White House homeland security adviser John Brennan told reporters Friday that he had seen no evidence that the debate over the proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, other mosque protests or the planned Koran burning had affected U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

Now, I absolutely agree with Jon Stewart: “We don’t give a F*** about what they think…” I could care less about what the criminals who murder in the name of Islam think about this debate over the proposed Islamic community center in Manhattan.

Truly, we should worry more about damaging our principles that we hold so dear in America, principles for which scores of America’s bravest men and women have died defending. If Muslims are prevented from building a mosque in Manhattan today, then other religious groups will be prevented from building their houses of worship tomorrow; then other citizens will be prevented from protesting against their government the next day; and before you know it, America will not be America anymore.

Yet, when I read Weisman’s article, I could not help but say something to myself: “We don’t need your ‘defense.’”

The article continued:

Jarret Brachman, director of Cronus Global, a security consulting firm, and author of the book Global Jihadism, said al Qaeda and other groups have long used imagery from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to recruit new members. But the U.S. position has been that those wars are not against Islam and that the U.S. has Muslim allies in the fight.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S is different, since jihadists can use Americans’ words to make the case that the U.S. is indeed at war with Islam. The violent postings are not just on al Qaeda-linked websites but on prominent, mainstream Muslim chat forums, Mr. Brachman said. “We are handing al Qaeda a propaganda coup, an absolute propaganda coup,” with the Islamic-center controversy, said Evan Kohlmann, an independent terrorism consultant at Flashpoint Partners who monitors jihadist websites.

One Jihadi, identifying himself as “Abu Dujanah,” wrote:

“Now, I wish to bomb myself in this church as revenge for the sake of Allah’s talk. And here I register my name here that I want to be an intended-martyr.

I say: we don’t need you to “defend” our honor here in the United States.

Indeed, it is hurtful to see our neighbors come out against the building of a community center (that also happens to have a prayer room) near Ground Zero. It is hurtful to see people continuously attack our faith as violent and murderous, when the truth is completely different. It is horrifying to see innocent Muslims be attacked for no other reason than they are Muslim.

Yet, that does not mean that we welcome your death and destruction. It does not mean we want you to go and bomb yourself in a church and kill other innocent people. We don’t want you to carry out suicide attacks in Florida because of what this woefully misguided pastor wants to do with the Qur’an. You are no friend of Muslims. You are not defenders of our faith, but rather, you are defamers of our faith, and we want nothing to do with you.

Our response here in America will be patience and good will. We are the true followers of the Qur’an, which says:

[But whatever they may say or do,] repel the evil [which they commit] with something that is bet­ter: We are fully aware of what they attribute [to Us]. (23:96)

We are true followers of the Qur’an, which says:

You shall most certainly be tried in your possessions and in your persons; and indeed you shall hear many hurtful things from those to whom revelation was granted before your time, as well as from those who have come to ascribe divinity to other beings beside God. But if you remain patient in adversity and conscious of Him – this, behold, is something to set one’s heart upon. (3:186)

We are the true followers of the Qur’an, which says:

O You who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in your devotion to God, bearing witness to the truth in all equity; and never let hatred of any-one lead you into the sin of deviating from justice. Be just: this is closest to being God-conscious. And remain conscious of God: verily, God is aware of all that you do. (5:8)

We are the true followers of the Qur’an, which says:

And do not take any human being’s life -[the life] which God has willed to be, sacred-otherwise than in [the pursuit of] justice. (17:33)

We never think that killing innocent people ever constitutes “the pursuit of justice.” We never let the hatred of some people toward Islam move us to commit injustice. We never let the hatred of some people toward Islam move us to kill in cold blood and destroy innocent life. And anyone who does, betrays the spirit and letter of our faith.

We will continue to persevere and show our neighbors the truth about our faith. Much of this anti-Muslim hysteria is out of fear, and that fear is generated because of a lack of understanding about Islam. We will do things like what this Chicago-area non-profit plans to do: give out 50 free copies of the Qur’an for every one copy burned by the pastor in Florida.

That is the proper response: peace and goodness, not violence and murder. We don’t need your “defense.” No, we don’t need anything from you at all.

Dr. Hassaballa Condemns Beheading of Monk in Istanbul

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In the Name of God, the Kind, the Beautiful
 
In keeping with my consistent policy to condemn acts of violence against the innocent, let me be one of the first to condemn the beheading of a monk in Istanbul. The monk was from the countryside, and apparently the populace was enraged at a church hymn which the monk was accused of modifying. Assailants cut off his head, placed it on a pole, and paraded with the head in the streets. This, after many parts of the city were set on fire by angry mobs.
 
Such horrific violence is abhorrent to me, and I stand and speak out against such barbarity. This is not what God has called for His servants on earth to do. There is nothing godly about beheading a fellow human being. No Prophet of God would ever condone such brutality. I condemn it unequivocally.
 
If you are confused…do not feel bad.
 
No such incident has occurred in Istanbul…in current times. But, such an incident did occur in Constantinople around the year 511. Now, in your mind (be honest) were you thinking that it was Muslims who beheaded a Christian? The truth, you may be shocked to know, is that this incident was Christian on Christian violence:
 
The church of the day had a beloved hymn, the Trisagion or Thrice Holy, which praised, “Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal” (Orthodox churches sing it to this day). But the emperor, Anastasius, wanted to revise it in the Monophysite fashion, by lauding this God “Who was crucified for our sakes.” The new formula proclaimed that it was God alone who walked the soil of Palestine in the first century and suffered on the cross, a view that ignores the human reality of Jesus. So angry were the capital’s residents that they launched a bloody riot:
 
Persons of rank and station were brought into extreme danger, and many principal parts of the city were set on fire. In the house of Marinus the Syrian, the populace found a monk from the country. They cut off his head, saying that the clause had been added at his instigation; and having fixed it upon a pole, jeeringly exclaimed: “See the plotter against the Trinity!”
 

This is taken from Philip Jenkins’ book, Jesus Wars, on page 31. The point of the exercise of this blog post is perfectly summarized by Jenkins’ himself:

 

We can imagine the response if, in the twenty-first century, a Muslim mob beheaded a dissident theologian and paraded the grisly trophy around the streets. Not only would the crime be (properly) denounced, but Westerners would assume that such behavior was part of the fundamental character of that religion – a bloodthirsty, warlike intolerance that could be traced back to the sternest passages of the Quran. The beheading would be seen as a trademark of Islamic fanaticism. Surely, we would say, Christians would never act like that. But they assuredly did. (p. 31)

 
I could not have said it better myself.

An Outsider’s Perspective

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In the Name of God, the Kind, the Beautiful

I am very interested in early Church history…it is sort of an “intellectual hobby” of mine. In keeping with this interest, I am currently reading the book, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years. It is a very interesting read.

And as I was reading, I came across this section – “Christianity and Islam” - and I was blown away. I wanted to reproduce part of it for you:

Out-of-control clergy, religious demagogues with their consecrated militias, religious parties usurping the functions of the states…It all sounds like the worst stereotypes of contemporary radical Islam, in Iran and Somalia, Iraq and Lebanon. And then, as now, the problem lay not in any characteristics of the religion itself, of its doctrines or Scriptures, but in the state’s inability to control private violence. Just a century after the conversion of the Roman empire, Christian churches were acting precisely on the lines of the most extreme Islamic mullahs today. This in itself suggests that none of the violence or intolerance commonly seen in modern-day Islam is, so to speak, in the DNA of that religion but just reflects particular social and political circumstances. (p. 30)

This is precisely what Muslims have been saying ad nauseum, but it is frequently dismissed as “Muslim taqiyya.” The Islamophobes are constantly saying that the violence seen in some Muslim areas and communities is indicative of Islam’s DNA, to use Philip Jenkins’, the author of Jesus Wars, term. But an outsider, a scholar of Christian history, says the same thing.

Bill Maher, in his film “Religilous,” had a number of Muslims in his film, and when he asked them about the violence done in the name of Islam, they all said, “Politics.” He made it seem like they were all conspiring to say the same thing, that there are political and other motivations behind the violence done in Islam’s name, in order to “hoodwink” non-Muslims. Well, Jenkins seems to vindicate the notion that in many cases, the violence done by Muslims is not because of Islam, per se, but of “particular social and political circumstances.”

This is not to excuse the acts of violence done in the name of Islam…far from it. Islam demands that I stand up against any evil and speak out against any wrong, even if it be against Muslims. And I have tried to do so consistently. But, it is just interesting to read this perspective in a context that is wholly divorced from the issues of Islam and violence: namely the book Jesus Wars. And it further confirms in my mind that those who are constantly attacking Islam as “violent” and “evil” are either completely ignorant of Islam and its history, both ancient and modern, or intellectually dishonest.

Definitely check out his book and buy it. I am loving it already, and it is not because of this paragraph about Islam. It is a genuinely excellent read…and I’m not even done yet!