After Sept. 11, many called for dialogue on Islam. Many rightfully emphasize the Quran's beautiful verse, "to kill a life is akin to killing the world" and so ascribe terrorism to political grievance. Yet terrorists invoke religious inspiration.
As an amateur student of religions, I studied and discussed the Quran with Muslim friends, and must question certain verses, in good faith, without rancor, for exchange enables comprehending and moving beyond them, by illuminating the motivational framework of Islamic fundamentalism.
1) Disbelievers and Friends. 2:19: "Kill disbelievers wherever you find them." 8:12: "Strike off their heads and fingertips." (also 9:5 and 47:4) 3:118: "Have not close friends other than your co-religionists." 5:51: "Take not Jews and Christians for friends."
Who are disbelievers--any non-Muslim? They are treated to hell: boiling in water, pus for food and torture in verse after verse. Are Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Buddha and Confucius joined in that fate? These are invoked to enjoin Muslims to destroy others and justify anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.
2) Women. 2:282: "In transactions involving obligations... get two men witnesses; if there are not two men, a man and two women." 4:11: "[The] male shall inherit the share of 2 females." 4:34: "Men are in charge of women... those who might rebel... abandon them and beat them." (also 2:228)
Is there divine sanction for women's credibility and inheritances being of men (enforced in many Muslim countries), and worst of all, men to beat their wives?
3) Celestial Virgins. 37:48: "Those in Heaven shall have wide-eyed houris (maidens)." 55:70-73: "No man touched them before." (reiterated in 44:54, 52:22 and 56:22)
Is heaven a celestial brothel? The Palestinian Authority proclaims "martyrs are wedded to celestial virgins," while Hamas brainwashes young men with, "You can have four wives on earth, but 72 virgins in heaven." It is repulsive that terrorist leaders tempt young men to kill and die with lust for "heavenly maidens."
Admittedly, these passages are selective. But they, and others prescribing death for blasphemy, amputation, stoning, etc. are employed for terrorism and injustice. Some ask to view these in context of seventh-century Arabia; this is voided by fundamentalists' desire to impose "timeless" Islamic law to everyone everywhere.
Attributing suicide bombing of civilians to oppressive hopelessness is belied by millions of Africans who don't cultivate it and its absence for decades prior to recent incitement and enticement; conversely, rich terrorists like Osama bin Laden build nothing to ease misery. Israel's actions are dwarfed by the Taliban's murdering 1.5 million Afghans, Kuwait's expulsion of 250,000 Palestinians in 1991 and Jordan's killing of 5,000 Palestinians in September 1970. Sept. 11's root is the root of Daniel Pearl's beheading--wickedness, not grievance: Islamic fundamentalists divide the world into dar-al-Islam (Islamic world) and dar-al-Harb (non-Islamic world), and perceive divine mandate for conquest (48:28 and 61:9 "Islam is to triumph over every religion.")--anything in the way, whether countries or journalists, should be destroyed. Muslims must disabuse wolves in their fold of this.
Biblical verses (e.g., Exodus 21:7 and Leviticus 25:44) were long used to justify slavery. Yet Europe evolved to separate church from state, conceiving ethics separate from religion, realizing religious verses can be wrong. The West took down the Ku Klux Klan and religious despotry. Moderate Muslims must do likewise now. Islamic areas host all but one military junta, only two democracies and 28 of 33 active conflicts. The West took 1,700 years to recognize the evil within. Although Islam is less than 1,400 years old, the world cannot afford to wait centuries for its societies to realize theocracy is incompatible with democracy: Ethics and law mantled in divine right quash dissent, reason and uncertainty, which underpin democracy, progress and science. Absolutism becomes insistence upon ignorance.
Moderate Muslims telling Americans Islam teaches peace should preach that to their community's fanatics and suicide bombers. Please acknowledge Islamic fundamentalism's depravity, on par with Nazism and Stalinism and unconditionally repudiate the cult of death and heavenly brothels, and the social engineering of shari'a for all problems, religion commanding politics and law, and attempting to make the world mimic seventh-century Arabia. From these roots spring the canopy of horrors of the Taliban and Sept. 11, to which many "moderate" Muslims respond with denial and rationalization: 36 percent of Kuwaitis feel Sept. 11 was justified! This must cease. Islamic fundamentalism, unable to build, only destroys, whether the Twin Towers, Bamiyan Buddhas or thousands of people. Freedom's ideals are superior to fundamentalism's perversity.
Dr. Bala Ambati is a fellow in corneal and LASIK surgery in the Eye Center.
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