Rev. Graham: “Islam, A Wicked Religion:” Is it true?
A
Scriptural And Historical Study.
By
T.O. Shanavas
Contents:
Dear friends:
Rev. Franklin Graham said during an October 2001 interview at the dedication of an N.C. chapel in the name of his parents, Billy and Ruth Graham:
“We are not attacking Islam, but Islam has attacked us…Islam is a very evil and
wicked religion.”
Rev. Graham wrote
in the Wall Street Journal (12/3/01): “The Koran provides ample evidence that
Islam encourages violence in order to win converts and to reach the ultimate of
an Islamic World…”
Attorney General
John Aschroft who is required to uphold American justice for all people said:
"Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for
him.”
Rabbi Marvin Hier,
Dean of Simon Weisenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles told
Larry King on December 1, 2001: “There is direct references in the Koran to
violence. I will read one from the Koran: ‘O you believe, take not the Jews and
Christians for friends.” When Larry King asked, “It does not say kill them.”
Rabbi Hier replied, “No, but it infers, of course, that there is a difference.”
Similarly, Mr. Cal
Thomas, a newspaper columnist, spread bigotry against Muslims in Detroit Free
Press (Nov. 26, 2001) as follows: “There are no commands to make friend with
‘infidels.” Another opinion columnist wrote that western values are different
than that of Islam.
Rev. Franklin’s, Rabbi Hier’s, Cal
Thomas’, and many American media descriptions are unfair and dishonest
characterization of the Koran and Islam. I am saddened to see such distorted
public outcry against Islam by well-respected people, especially a Christian
reverent and a Rabbi who heads a “tolerance center”. Ignorance is the root cause
of all forms of intolerance. It is much more clearly explained by Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr: “Men hate each other because they fear each other, and they
fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each
other because they are often separated from each other.” Rev. Franklin Graham
and Rabbi Hier must have been wrongly informed. However, I freely and honestly
admit that currently Muslims nations are going through a “Dark Age” as
Christianity experienced before the Enlightenment and Renaissance of the West.
Cal Thomas, Rabbi
Hier, and others quote the verses (2:191) from Koran outside textural and
historical context. They cunningly omit the verses 2:190 and 193 as well as
other verses in order to promote violence and hatred against Muslims. They use
these verses out of historical and textural context to make their point. We
shall discuss these verses later.
How would Franklin Graham
and Cal Thomas react if someone quotes the following verses from the Bible to
misrepresent Christianity as a religion of violence? The Holy Bible states: “As
for my enemies, who do not want me to reign over them, bring them here and kill
them in my presence.” (Holy Bible: St Luke 19:26) and “Do not think that I came
to send peace on Earth. I did not come to send peace, but a sword.” (Holy Bible:
Mathew 10:34). If someone quote the following verses out of context from the
Hebrew Bible to discredit Judaism, how would Rabbi Hier, the director of Jewish
Center for tolerance react?: “ If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who
will not obey the voice of his father…Then all the men of the city shall stone
him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all
Israel shall hear, and fear.” (Deuteronomy 21:12-21); “Kill every male among the
little ones, and kill every women who has known man intimately. But spare for
yourselves all virgin maidens” (Holy Bible: Number 31:18).
Deception is not the true character of Christianity and Judaism.
No! I will not quote the above verses from the Holy Bible out of the context as Cal Thomas, Rev. Graham, and Rabbi Hier do from the Koran. Similarly, Christians, Jews, and Muslims who value truth, compassion, and love would not engage in such misrepresentation of fact as Rabbi Hier and Cal Thomas do. False accusation and Deception are not true characters of Christianity and Judaism or Islam. Christianity of the Roman church of the Dark Ages was not a compassionate loving religion for centuries. Roman church did not allow the freedom of faith. Just like contemporary Muslim Mullahs of Kandahar, Afghanistan, Pope Bonifice VIII issued the bull Unam sanctam on October 1302 that there is only one true Church outside which there is no salvation; there is but one body of Christ, with one head, not two; that head is Christ and His representative, the Roman pope. The pontiff council proclaimed: “We declare and define and pronounce,” concluded the bull, “that it is necessary for salvation that all men should be subjected to Roman pontiff.” [Ref: The Story of Civilization by Will Durant. Vol. 4. Page. 814]. However, it was not the religion and the Church that guided Mother Theresa and Father Damien. It was not the Christianity that continues to guide President Jimmy Carter, a peacemaker, who builds homes for the homeless, and that guides millions of devout Christians. Therefore, none must blame true Christianity for the fanaticism, cruelty, and extremism of Roman Christianity of the Dark Ages that made our ancestors to flee over Atlantic Ocean and build our “one nation under God” for freedom, happiness, safety, and justice for all. We must not blame Christianity for Inquisition and burning of Bruno also. Similarly, we must not blame Islam for the crime, cruelty, and fanaticism of the contemporary terrorist or state-enforced distorted form of Islam.
Similarly, we
must not assume Roman Christianity of the Dark ages as true Christianity even
though it was the most popular form of religion, probably the only form of
religion, in western world before the Enlightenment and Reformation of west. We
must not blame Christianity for massacre of Protestants by Catholics and vise
versa all across Europe from the 5th to the17th century.
We must not blame Christianity for anti-Semitism that existed in the west until
very recently, and which made Jews to flee from Europe to Muslim dominated land.
(“In the year that Columbus discovered America, the last Muslim strong hold fell
to the Catholic rulers and, three months later, Ferinand expelled all Jews from
Spain except for those who accepted to become Christians... The Majority of Jews
turned eastward: from Mughirib to Iraq…” [REF: A History of Jews by Ilan
Halevi. Page 78]). Similarly, it is not within Christian or Jewish ethics to
equate intolerant, oppressive practices of the many contemporary misguided
Muslims with the compassionate and peaceful religion of Islam that the Koran and
Prophet preached. A review of the fundamental teachings of the Koran, the
ultimate source of Islam, and the world history written by western historians
would guide us to determine whether Islam fits with Graham’s description of it
as “wicked religion.”
ISLAM - A MODERATE RELIGION
West plunged into the Dark Ages
after Roman bishop Leo I the Great with the support of the Roman Emperor
Valentenian III (440-61) hijacked Christianity with an epoch-making edict
imperially confirming the authority of the Roman bishop over all Christian
churches [Ref: The Story of Civilization by Will Durant. Vol. 4. Page. 50-51].
Similarly, the ruling monarchies, dictators, fanatics, extremists, and
terrorists in the Muslim world have hijacked Islam for their self-interest.
Their political power and financial clout helped to suppress the moderate Islam
preached by Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and the Koran. Such extremism is
un-Islamic.
The Koran states that Islam is
a middle of the road—not extreme left or right—religion. Islam recommends
moderation and balance in every thing--- belief, warship, conduct, and
legislation. Moderation and balance are not only a general characteristic of
Islam but a fundamental doctrine of Islam. The Koran states: "We made you to be the
community of middle path..." (Verse 2:143). Mohammad Asad, a well-respected
exegete of the Koran, describes that Koranic community of Muslims "as middle
most community that keeps an equitable balance between extremes." Moreover,
Prophet said: "Beware of excessiveness in religion. People before you have
perished as a result of such excessiveness.” [Ref: Hadith collections of Ibn
Hambal (780-855), al-Nasai (830-915), and Ibn Maja (825-887). According to Imam
Al-Qardawi, “as such the ideal Muslim community is a nation of justice and
moderation, not of extremism.”
[Ref: “Extremism” by Imam Yusuf Al-Qardawi in “Liberal Islam: A Source Book.”
Edited by Charles Kurzman. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998.). Therefore, Talibanism and Wohabism of Saudi
Arabia, and other religious extremisms are cults that have become overpowering
forces due to their financial and political strength. These ideological cults
masquerading as Islam are dangerous to humanity as whole. These cults crushed
cruelly the innocent and helpless Muslims at large into submissive robots and
the mouthpieces of their masters. These cults transformed the practice of
Prophet’s (pbuh) Islam of contemplation and analysis into simple mimicry.
The Koran condemns Murder of innocents
The Koran emphasizes the importance of saving life and condemns the indiscriminate murder of innocent people of all faith:
"If anyone slew a person-unless it is the punishment for murder or for spreading mischief in the land- it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if anyone save a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people." (Koran 5:35). Another verse states: Chapter 6, verse 151: "Take not life, which God has made sacred, except by way of justice and law." (Koran 6:151). Moreover, in Islam, suicide is prohibited: “Kill not yourselves.” (Koran 4:29).
These verses expose Attorney General John Aschroft’s distasteful misrepresentation that “Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him.”
The Koran obligates Muslims to be compassionate and patient in daily living and human interactions. It states:
“and enjoin one another in patience, and enjoin one another in compassion such are the companion of the right hand.” (Koran 90:17-18).
Justice over hatred in war or peace
The Koran commands Muslims not to be blinded by hatred to commit injustice:
"Oh! You believe! Maintain your pact with God as witness to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others make you swerve to wrong and depart from injustice. Be Just: that is near to duty; and beware of God. Surely God is well acquainted with all that you do." (Koran 5:8).
Muslims to repel evil with good deeds
The following verse teaches that good deeds against evil eliminate enmity and foster friendships between enemies. The Koran instructs,
"The good deed and evil deed are not equal. Hence repel the evil deed with that which is best, so that the one who, between you and him there is enmity, would be as though he were a staunch friend.” (Koran 41:34)
In the contemporary Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and many other Muslim majority countries, women have very little freedom. They cannot even drive a car. Observing these practices in Muslim majority nations, many in the west assume that the Koran and Islam is the root cause of such discrimination in Muslim world. However, the Koranic society is an egalitarian society where women and men share the duties and the privileges:
“Men and women who have surrendered, believing men and believing women, obedient men and obedient women, truthful men and truthful women, enduring men and enduring women, humble men and humble women, men and women who give in charity, men who fast women who fast, men and women who guard their private parts, men and women who remember God oft—for them God has prepared forgiveness and mighty wage.” (33:35) “Whoever does good whether male or female, and a believer—these shall enter Paradise.” (Koran 40:40).
According to the verses above men and women are equal in the eyes of God. Moreover, the Koran denounces those men, who take away women’s right and impose restrictions on them, and reminds them that God has placed abundant goodness in women and it is not “lawful to restrain them.” The verse states:
“O you who believe, it is neither lawful for you to inherit women against their will, nor it lawful to restrain them. Live with them in on a footing of kindness and equality. If you dislike them, then it may be that you dislike a thing while God placed abundant good in it.” (Koran 4:19).
Modern Muslims themselves have to be blamed for the west attacking Islam for mistreating women. Many Muslims claim that two women are equal to one man in the matter of witness based upon the Koranic verse 2:282. However, on closer careful reading of the verse gives a different meaning. The verse states: “…But if the one who incurs the debt is prodigal, or weak, or unable himself to dictate, then let his guardian dictate in equity. And call two of your men to act as witnesses; and if two men are not available, then a man and two women from among such as are acceptable to you as witnesses. Lest one of them should make a mistake, the other may cause her to recollect…And venerate God, and God teaches you, and God is knower of all things.” [Koran 2:282]. It says that if the witnessing woman makes mistake the second woman reminds the witnessing woman about truthful reporting and to be fearful only of God to avoid falsely witnessing. So, the second woman is not a witness. Therefore, one man is equal to one woman in Islam.
The Koran recognizes the reality of male domination of human society. It is a fact of life even in contemporary western world. In our American free society, we see a pressing need for a second woman “to remind” the witnessing woman to be God-conscious when giving testimony in our court of law. The powerful liberated, educated, and respected women are compelled by husbands even in America to give false witness. We see abused women coming to Hospitals emergency rooms and physicians’ offices. But they are fearful to state the true cause and the perpetrator of their injury. And it happens even in White House. White house records proved that Nixon’s wife suffered a tear in her retina as a result of a severe blow she received from her husband. Take the case of Mrs. Hillary Clinton who was forced into false witness in front of television cameras in order to defend President Clinton and his immoral relationship with Monica even though it was most insulting to the womanhood of Mrs. Clinton and women at large. She testified that he was “innocent” concerning Monica. If male domination over women to distort the truth is evident in the case of Hillary Clinton, a lawyer trained in Yale university, in a free society like America, what could happen in the cases of the oppressed women in the world, especially in 5th century? When we read the above Koranic verses along with the real-life experiences, such as in the case of a presidents’ wives of the most free society in the world, we recognize the need for another person to remind about God-consciousness when someone discharges the duties as witness in the court of law. The Koran made this rule taking into consideration the true nature of human psychology.
Many people use the following verse to reduce Koran into a misogynistic religious text and assert that the religion, it preaches is, also misogynistic. One of the Qur’an translation authorized by Al Azhar university of Egypt reads: "And for those women of whom you fear their dissent (NUSHUZ), exhort them, abandon them in their beds, and beat them. But if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Surely God is Sublime, Great" [Surah an Nisa 4: 34].
So, they ask that if Islam allows wife beating by husband at his discretion and will, are not Muslim men wife beaters? Does anyone know a woman who sees “beauty and dignity” in receiving beating from her husband? Or any one sees “beauty and dignity” in the above verse if read in vacuum without other verses in the Koran? Probably, Women suffering from the abnormal mental condition called masochism may find “beauty and dignity” in the act of wife beating. I, being a man and husband, cannot see “beauty or dignity” in the chastisement of women at the sole discretion of the husbands. There is not one incident in the life of Prophet (pbuh) when he beat his wife. Islam cannot sanction such shameful act of wife beating at the sole discretion of the husband when Islam is the liberator of women. In order to understand the verse we must focus on the context and what is being addressed.
With respect to context, there is no unanimity among the exegetes of the Koran. Some commentators say this verse was revealed when Saudah (d. 54/674) Prophet's wife feared that the Prophet would divorce her and so she relinquished some of her rights so that he would not divorce her. But this report is incorrect, for how can these commentators know what was in her heart? Further, Allah gave the Prophet's wives the right to choose him. Other commentators say that this verse was revealed when a husband and wife constantly fought over the husband's second marriage. Therefore, due to lack of unanimity among exegetes, we cannot get the true meaning of the verse from the context of revelation. Only thing that the jurists agree upon is that this verse means that a form of reconciliation between husband and wife is better than a separation. [Ref: Conference of the Books by Khalid M.Abou El Fadl].
The jurists
have stated that NUSHUZ means arrogance and defiance, and a NASHIZ is an
arrogant and disobedient person. Some jurists such as Ibn Rush (d. 520/1126)
said that a NASHIZ is a deviant woman who refuses to pray, fast, or cleanse
herself from impurities. But the word NUSHUZ is also used to describe men,
Allah says:
"And if a woman fears abstention or aversion [NUSHUZ] on the part of her
husband, then it is no sin on both that they amend things between them, for
right settlement is better…” [Surah an Nisa 4: 128] Does this mean the
disobedience of a husband to his wife? Does it also mean that a husband owes a
duty of obedience to his wife? The jurists, may God bless them and forgive
them, troubled by this tension said that NUSHUZ, in the case of a wife means
disobedience, and in the case of a husband means a grave and known sin (fahisha
mubina). Why are they giving different meanings to the same word in similar
situations? Does this mean that NUSHUZ in the case of a wife means a grave sin
as well?
It is reported that the Prophet in his final pilgrimage said, "O people, I command you to treat women with kindness for they are your support. You have no other rights over them unless they are committing a grave and known sin (fahisha mubina). If they do abandon them in beds, and beat them lightly, but if they comply, do not transgress against them" Khalid M.Abou El Fadl states: “It seems to me that the Prophet uses the expression FAHISHA MUBINA as the equivalent of NUSHUZ, and that NUSHUZ means FAHISHA MUBINA (a grave and known sin).” [Ref: Conference of the Books by Khalid M.Abou El Fadl]. If that is so, NUSHUZ cannot mean disobedience or a case of simple disagreement.” It means lewd acts.
If husband or wife accuses the other of a lewd act [NUSHUZ], what should be the legal procedure to redress the grievance and at the same time to protect the innocent from punishment following false accusation? If husband or wife commits a NUSHUZ (lewd act), he/she is violating the marriage contract and are equally under Koranic law. Equal rights for husband and wife are established by the following verse: “…and O Believers! Live with them (i.e., wives) on footing of kindness and equality…” [Koran 4:19]. Furthermore, a husband or wife cannot be an accuser, a judge, and an executioner at the same time. The Qur’an states: “O you who believe! Be you maintainers of your pact with Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is nearer to Duty: and fear Allah. For Allah is well acquainted with what you do. [Koran 5:9]. Oh you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be against rich or poor; for God can best protect both. Follow not the lusts of your hearts, let you swerve, and if you distort justice or decline to do justice, verily God is well acquainted with all that that you do…” (4:135). The ideal God-conscious Muslim husband would always remember the Qur’anic description of the selfish nature of man. The Koran states: “…But men keeps self-interest utmost. Yet if you do good fear God, God is cognizant of all that you do.” [4:128]. There is no way an upset husband/wife can be fair and just when he/she is angry with spouse for perceived NUSHUZ for by nature man is selfish.
Prophet’s description of an ideal husband is: “The best of you is he who is best to his wife” [Ibn Majah: Sunan Bab Husn Ma’ashrat al-Nisa, page 142]. An ideal husband and wife are those who protect each other as garment protects the body and not hurt each other as stated in the Qur’an: “they are your garments and you are their garments…” [Koran 2:197]. Therefore, an ideal husband who desires and looks after the best interest of his wife would “Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves,… ”and he would not want “the hatred of others to you (i.e., here hatred of wife to him) make you (him) swerve to wrong and depart from justice.” So, his state of mind with a perceived NUSHUZ of his wife may not bring “the best for his wife” if he opts to become accuser, jury, judge, and executioner. Therefore, a husband cannot beat his wife because Prophet states: “You will not find these men who beat their wives as good ones among you.” [Ref: Abu Daud: Sunan, Vol. I, Page 292]. The authority for judgment, conviction, and the nature of punishment rests with an independent judge to fulfill the true spirit of the verses 5:9, 4:135, and 2:197.
Husband cannot take the law in his own hand. The correct procedure to resolve the serious dispute between wife and husband is given in the verse following the verse (4:34) prescribing beating for refractory wife with sexual lewdness. It states: “And if you fear discord between the two, then send forth an arbiter from his folk and the arbiter from her folk. If they wish for peace, God will reconcile between them. Surely God is knowing, cognizant.” [4:35]. And finally, if the husband or anyone accuse the wife or other women with lewdness, the procedure is described in the following verse: “And those who accuse the women in wedlock and do not bring four witnesses, flog them, therefore, eighty stripes, and never accept any testimony from them, for those, they are miscreants; save those who afterward repent and make amends, then surely God is forgiving, merciful. And those who accuse their wives [of adultery], but have no witnesses except themselves, let each of these [accusers] call God four times to witness that he is indeed telling the truth, and the fifth time, that God’s curse be upon him if he is telling a lie. But [as for the wife, all] chastisement shall be averted from her by her calling God four times to witness that he is indeed telling lie and the fifth [time], that God’s curse be upon her if he is telling the truth.” [24:4-9]. According to these verses, accusing adultery is a grave matter and the accuser is bound by law to present four eyewitnesses to prove his/her case. A circumstantial evidence is not enough. If there are no eyewitnesses, four solemn affirmations calling the name of God by the husband is accepted if the wife refuses to take an oath to the contrary. And the husband’s testimony is not accepted if the wife denies the accusation of her husband after taking the oath calling the name of God. In other words, she disproves him if she solemnly set her word against his. In this legal procedure, which is called li’an (“oath of condemnation”), leave the question of guilt legally undecided; both parties are absolved of all the legal consequences.
Only the jury can convict a wife for lewdness and prescribe the graded punishment of “advising her” at first for self-correction, and then if that does not work “leave her in bed.” The Koranic wisdom aims at harmonious reconciliation: “It is no sin for two of them if they make peaceful settlement; and peace is an excellent thing…” [Koran 4:128]. If these methods do not work in the case of a refractory wife, the jury may prescribe corporeal punishment as a last resort. Even in that case, the beating of wife for lewdness is symbolic or nominal type. It should be “striking without injury or pain” [Ref: Ibn Majah: Sunan, page 133. Muslim: Sahih, Vol. I, page 291.]. The striking should be “with a tooth-brush or something like it.” [Ref : Tabari’s Tafsir, Vol. V, Page 41]. Even if jury order chastisement, it should be symbolic so that “it should not leave an impression.” [Tirmidhi.10:11]. If such symbolic striking does not correct and the husband cannot fulfill the Qur’anic teaching: “…And (O Believers) live with them (i.e., wives) on a footing of kindness and equality…,” the husband cannot maintain the marriage on technical and legal grounds with a purpose of abusing his wife. The Koran recommends: “Either take back on equitable terms or set them free on equitable terms, do not take back to injure them or take unfair advantage…” [Koran 2:231].
In summary, the husband cannot be the accuser, jury, judge, and executioner in the matter of NUSHUZ of the wife. A Jury determines the matter of the truth. If admonition, leaving in bed alone, symbolic striking, or reconciliation in equitable term does not work, the righteous action of the husband is to divorce the wife on equitable terms. In this understanding of the Koranic verse 4:34, the righteous husband and wife as well as Muslims in general can find “beauty and dignity” in Islam. Moreover it is internally consistent without contradicting meaning of any verses of the Koran.
Koran admonishes Muslims against racism and discrimination based on the national and tribal origins. It states:
“Mankind was one nation…” (10:19). O Mankind! We created you from single pair of a male and female, and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other, not that you may despise each other.” (Koran 49:13). “Surely the believers are brethren; so reconcile between your brethren, and venerate God, that perhaps you may have mercy.” (Koran 49:10).
Within this tenet, racial deference disappeared in the early Islam. Omar ibn Khatab, the son of African mother, became the second head of state after Prophet. Bilal, an African slave, became revered companion of Prophet. The extinction of racial prejudices is well documented by western historians.
British Historian Arnold J, Toynbee states:
“What value are
we to place on Islam? … Islam’s creative gift to mankind is monotheism and we
surely dare not throw this gift away…two conspicuous sources of danger—one
psychological and the other material—in the present relations of this
cosmopolitan proletariat [--i.e., westernized humanity--] with dominant element
in our modern western society are race consciousness and alcohol; and in the
struggle with each of these evils the Islamic spirit has a service to render
which might prove, if it were accepted, be of high moral and social value. The
extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding
moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it
happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue [Arnold
Toynbee: “Civilization on Trial.” London. 1957 page 87-88, 205-209].
Similarly, American historian,
Will Durant:
“Muhammad’s
ethics transcended the limits of tribe…’The believers are naught else than
brothers.’(xlix, 10). Distinction of rank or race, so strong among the tribes
was diminished by similarity of belief. ‘If Negro slave is appointed to rule
you, hear and obey him.’ … It was a noble conception that made one people of
diverse nations scattered over continents; this is the glory of both
Christianity and Islam.” [Will Durant: “The Story of Civilization”. New
York.1950. Page 182]
S.H.Leeder, a British historian, describes a meeting
between Archbishop Cyrus and the head of deputation from Egypt:
“ ‘Take away that black man!’ Exclaimed the Christian Archbishop Cyrus, ‘I can have no discussion with him!’ when the Arab conquerors had sent a deputation of their ablest men to discuss terms of surrender of the capital of Egypt, headed by the Negro Ubadah, as the ablest of them.”
“To the sacred archbishop’s astonishment, he was told that this man was commissioned by the General Amr; that the Moslems held Negroes and white men in equal respect—judging a man by his character and not by his color.
“ ‘Well, if the Negro must lead, he must speak gently,’ ordered the prelate, so as not to frighten his white auditors.”
“ The reply of the Negro shows the spirit of those early conquerors. ‘There are a thousand blacks, as myself, among our companions.’ ”
[Veiled Mysteries Of Egypt And the Religion of Islam.” By S.H. Leeder. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1912. Page. 332]
Fourteen hundred years after the above incident, we, human beings, still have remnants of racism of Cyrus in our conscience. Harvard university Professor and chairman of department of Paleontology, Stephen Gould, states that one of founding fathers our great nation, Abraham Lincoln said: “There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” [Ref: “The Mismeasure of Man” by Stephen Jay Gould. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981. Page. 35.]. Similarly, Thomas Jefferson said: “I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in endowment both of body and mind.” [Ref: “The Mismeasure of Man” by Stephen Jay Gould. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981. Page. 35.]. I quote these statements of our founding fathers, who have reaped our genuinely deserving deep-seated admiration, not to discredit them by washing their old dirty linens in public. I cite these to remind self-righteous Cal Thomas, Rabbi Hier, Attorney General John Aschroft, and other chauvinistic cohorts that the western leaders did not question the correctness of racial ranking until civil right movement under the leadership of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. about fifty years ago. Only less than fifty years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King gave his precious life for a dream to watch the “white girls and black girls, white boys and black boys” playing in our backyards as children of one nation under God. Our discussion on race relations above exposes Cal Thomas’s dishonest depreciation of Islamic values below western values. Most Americans—Christian, Jewish or Islamic people—value dearly an egalitarian society without race consciousness. We also must not discredit great men and founding fathers of our nation, like Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, for a few isolated misguided statements. Muslims and Islam also request same justice from Christians, Jews, and all Americans.
West has been chastising Islam for slavery in Sudan. However, Prophet tolerated it. Prophet came at a time when slavery was sanctioned by Holy Scriptures. For example, "ye, shall take them (the slaves) as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them (the slaves) for a possession, they shall be your bondmen (slaves) for ever . . . “ [LEVITICUS 25:46]. "When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, then you shall besiege it . . . you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle and everything else in the city all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies." (Deuteronomy 20:10-17) “Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever" (Leviticus 25:44-46). “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the forward" (1 Peter 2:18). "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ" (Ephesians 6:5).
However, Islam does not encourage slavery, nor does it forbid it outright. Islam abolished slavery by (1) improving the treatment of slaves by their owners, (2) preventing taking free men into slavery, (3) preventing the turning of the prisoners of war into slaves, (4) giving inalienable right to slaves to buy back their freedom, (5) giving rights to slaves to own personal wealth and property, and (5) the concept of manumission of slaves to please God and to get amnesty from God for individual sins.
Slave in early Islam has different meaning. Unlike a slave in the west, a slave in Islam was treated as a member of the household, and must be fed with the same food and clothed with the similar clothes as the master or mistress does. The standard of living of the slaves should be on par with that of their owners. It is forbidden to overwork a slave and the slave has the right to buy his or her freedom and the owner does not have the right under law to refuse. In other words, the slave is a contract employee treated much better than modern day contract employee. The Prophet improved the standard of life of the existing slaves equal to that of their owners. He further constrained the power of owner over slave and gave rights to the slaves.
The Sayings of Prophet also defined the slave-owner relationship and it is not the same relationship as the Caucasian west had with slaves until very recently. The following tradition of Prophet shows the proper and kind treatment of slaves. Abu Zar, a companion of the Holy Prophet relates that the Prophet used to say, “Your slaves are your brethren. So, if any one you happen to have a slave, you give slave the same food that he himself eats, and the same clothing that he himself wears. And do not give them such work as is beyond their power to perform, and if you ever happen to give them such work, you should help them in doing it.” [Bukhari, kitab Al-Itq]. This tradition teaches that slave is not forced to do a work that is beyond his physical capability. This workplace disability act of Islam was promulgated centuries before American disability act came into existence
Abdul Yusr told Ubadah, a companion of the Prophet (pbuh), said: “Dear nephew, my eyes have seen, my ears have heard, my mind remembers that the Holy Prophet used to enjoin, ‘Give to your slaves the same food that you eat and give same garment that you yourselves wear.’ Therefore, I prefer to give of my worldly possessions an equal share to my slave rather than lose any reward on the Day of Judgment.” [Bukhari, Kitab Al-Zuhd]. This tradition exposes that Prophet’s devoted companions faithfully acted upon the teachings of Prophet regarding the treatment of slaves, so much so, that they did not tolerate the least differences even the outward appearance of their dresses, to say nothing of any difference in their real quality. This tradition also teaches that on the Day of Judgment God loves those who treat slaves humanely.
Abu Huraira reports, that the Holy Prophet used to say, “Let not one of you say, ‘O my slave’ or ‘O my bondsmaid’, but let him say, ‘My boy’ or ‘My girl’. Similarly the slaves should not address their masters as, ‘My Lord’ or ‘My Master,’ but simply say as ’Sir.’ [Bukhari. Kitab Al-Itq]. By this teaching, it has been sought to work a change in the mentality of both masters and slaves. On one hand, the masters are required to banish from their minds all ideas of self-magnification and self-aggrandizement and on the other, the slaves have been taught self-assurance. Thus not only was their social status raised, but they were also morally uplifted. Once this is achieved, there was no obstacle to the working of a complete change in their circumstances and status.
Another tradition states: “Whoever emancipates a slave, God will grant him deliverance from the hell-fire, limb for limb.” [Bukhri, Kitab Al-Iman Al Nudhur]. This tradition of the Prophet (pbuh) teaches that God does not like slavery and Muslims are in a better position on the Day of Judgment if they do not have slaves. This teaching of Islam is not merely a commendatory; it was religious ordinances for Muslims and early Muslims rigorously practiced it. An example is an event in the life of Abu Masood, one of the companions of Prophet (pbuh), who took part in the Battle of Badr. Abu Masood said: “ Once when I was chastising my slave for some offence of his, I heard voice from behind me saying, ‘Abu Masood, what are you doing?’ But being enraged, I did not recognize the voice and went on chastising him. Then the voice drew nearer and grew louder and when I looked back, I saw that the Prophet, himself was rapidly advancing towards me, saying, ‘Abu Massod, what are doing?’ When I saw him, my stick dropped from my hand. The Prophet cast an angry look at me, and said. ‘Abu Masood, do you not know there is God above you who has far greater power over you than you seem to have over your slave. I said, ‘O Messenger of God forgive me, I set this slave free for Allah’s sake.’ The Prophet said, ‘If you had not done so, the fire of Hell would have scorched your face.” [Ref: Muslim, Kitab Al-Iman]
Unlike the western slave-master, Muslims have no total control over the slaves as illustrated by the following tradition of the Prophet. Ibn Abbas, Prophet’s cousin, says: “Once a slave came to the Prophet and said, ‘O Messenger of God, my master had married me to his bondwoman, but he now desires to annul the marriage and separate us from each other.’ Thereupon, the Prophet ascended the pulpit in great rage, and addressing the people said, ‘O you Muslims, why is that you first marry your slaves to your bondwomen and desire to separate them from one another of your accord. Remember that you have no power to do that. The right of divorce rests in the husband and you cannot compel your slaves to divorce their wife’.” [Ref: Ibn Majah, Kitab Al-Talaq].
Along with the ordinances to raise the standard of living of the existing slaves equal to the owner of the slave, the Koran legislated the means for the slaves to buy them selves out of servitude as modern day American contract employee buy out his servitude to his employer. Koran states: “And any of your slaves ask for a deed in writing to enable them to earn their freedom for a sum, give them such a deed…” [Koran 24:33]. It must also be born in mind that the question of buying out the servitude did not depend upon the sweet will of the master; it is obligatory. Whenever a slave demanded such a contract, the master has no right to refuse it. It is on the record that once Sirin, a slave of Prophet’ companion Anas, desired his master to give him a contract of freedom on payment of a certain sum, but Anas, thinking that he was a rich man and needed no money, refused to make the required contract. Sirin complained to Omar, the second Caliph, who summoned Anas and ordered him to give Sirin the desired contract. Anas refused; Omar thereupon hit him with a whip and recited above verse. [Ref: Bukhari, Kitab Al-Mukatabat] God of Islam dislikes slavery. So, the Qur’an encourages liberating slaves.
“Have We not created for men two eyes, and a tongue and two lips, and have We not shown him the two paths-- evil and virtue? Yet he did not hurl himself on to the different way. What makes you know what the difficult way is? It is the freeing the slave, or feeding on a day of famine, an orphan who is near of kin, or an indigent who is in apparent misery. Then he should be those who believe, and enjoin one another in patience, and enjoined one another in compassion. Such are the companions of the right hand. But those who disbelieve in Our signs are the companions of the left hand. Around them there will be an encompassing fire.” [The Qur’an 90: 9-20]
“It is not piety that you turn your faces towards the East or the West, but pious are those who believe in God, and the hereafter, the angels, the Books (Torah, Psalm, Gospels, Koran), and the prophets; and those who, for the love of God, give of their wealth, to kinsmen, the orphans, the indigent, wayfarers, beggars, and for the redemption of slaves;… .” (Koran 2:177).
The Prophet’s teachings also reflect such encouragement to free existing slaves. Bara’s son Azib relates that once an Arab of the desert came to the Prophet and said: “O Prophet of God, let me know by doing which I may go straight to heaven.” Prophet replied : “Your question is brief, but you have asked a big thing. Emancipate a slave; and if you cannot do it alone, do it jointly with others.” [Ref: Baihaqi, as quoted by Mishkat in Kital Al-Itq]. Another tradition states: “If any of you have a slave girl, whom you give good education and excellent training, and then he emancipate her and marry her, he shall get a two-fold reward.” [Ref:Bukhari, Kitab Al-Nikah].
Prophet and his companions set free from the very beginning of the Prophet’s mission. The following list, which no means complete and which gives the names of only a few of the companions by way of example, is enough to bear out the truth of liberation of slaves by Muslims:
Prophet 63.
Ayesha, wife of Prophet 67.
Abbas, uncle of the Prophet 70.
Hakim bin Hizam 100.
Abdullah Omar 1000.
Abdur Rahman bin Auf 30,000.
Othman, the third Calif on the day of death 20.
Dzul-Kifa al-Himiari 8000.
[Ref: Subul A-Salam, Kitab Al-Itq].
To prevent further
slavery by Muslim the Qur’an prohibits the taking free men as captives: “It
is not fit for a prophet to take captives unless he has fought and triumphed in
the land…” [Koran 8:67]. Even when captives are taken in war, Muslims are
ordered to release them: “So, when you meet in battle those who disbelieve,
smite the necks; then, when you have overcome them, make (them) prisoners,
afterwards set them free or for ransom till the war lay down its burdens…”
[Koran 47:4]. A tradition quoted by Ata bin Ribah also shows that prisoners of
war cannot be enslaved. Ata bin Ribah is reported: “The prisoners of war cannot
be put to death; the commandment concerning them that they should be set free
either an act of grace or in return for reasonable ransom.” [Ref: Fath Al-Baree,
Vol. VI. Page 106]. The significance of these is fully understood when we
ponder over the western slavery of Africans and the sad story of Kunda Kindae of
Alex Hailey’s movie “Roots”
Prophet gives the
most positive and clear and direct injunctions to the effect that it is a great
sin and act of most heinous nature to reduce a free men to slavery—an act for
which the offender shall be severely called to account. For instance, we may
quote the following saying of holy Prophet in Bukhari: “Abu Huraira relates that
the Prophet used to say that God has spoken to him saying: ‘There are three
classes of men with whom I will make war on the Day of Judgment. Firstly, the
man who makes a covenant with some one in My name and then break it. Secondly,
the man who enslaves a free man, sells him and eats his price. Thirdly, the man
who employs a man to do a work and extracts full work from him but does not pay
his wage.” [Ref: 1. Bukhari, Kitab Al-Bai and 2. Abu Daud as quoted by Fath Al-Baree].
Bernad Lewis, Professor at Princeton University, states:
“But Qur’anic legislation, subsequently confirmed and elaborated in the Holy law, brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far reaching effects. One of these was the presumption of freedom; the other, the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances. The Qur’an was promulgated in Mecca and Medina in the seventh century, and the background against which Qur’anic legislation must be seen ancient Arabia. Arabs practiced a form of slavery, similar to that which existed in other parts of the ancient world. The Qur’an accepted the institution, though it may be noted that the word ‘abd’ (slave) is rarely used, being more commonly replaced by some periphrasis such as ma malakat aumanukum, ‘that which your right hands own.’ …It urges, without actually commanding, kindness to the slave… and recommends, without requiring, his liberation by purchase or manumission. The freeing of slaves is recommended both for the expiration of sin (IV:92; V:92; LVIII:3) and as an act of simple benevolence (I:177; XXIV:33; XC13). It exhorts masters to allow slaves to earn or purchase their freedom. An important change from Pagan…the believing slave is now the brother of the freeman in Islam and before God, and superior of the free pagan and idolaters (II:221). This point is emphasized in innumerable hadiths (traditions)…The recruitment of slave population by natural increase seems to have been small and, right through to modern times [in Muslim world], insufficient to maintain numbers. This is striking contrast with conditions in the New World, where the slave population increased very rapidly. Several factors contributed to this difference, perhaps the most important being that slave population in the Islamic Middle East was constantly drained by liberation of slaves—sometimes as an act of piety, most commonly though the recognition and liberation, by a freeman, of his own offspring by slave mother.” [Ref: Race And Slavery in the Middle East by Bernad Lewis. Page 5-8].
Finally, we have come to the question of “why Prophet and Islam did not free all slaves in one-stroke-declaration as president Lincoln did?” Prophet (pbuh) knew that change of heart against slavery was most important to abolish abolition of slavery permanently. The result is least human suffering and disruption for his nation and its people while more than a million died, millions suffered, and national life disrupted in the US civil war as result of seeking abrupt change in the slavery practices in US by Abraham Lincoln.
The Koran is very gracious to describe the Torah and the New Testament as book of guidance and light. It even states that it is Allah’s Will to allow for the people to practice different religions freely and compete each other in doing good deeds. The democracy draws inspiration from the axiom that human beings are free as stated in this verse.
“We sent down the Torah which contains guidance and light…Later, in
the train of Prophets We send Jesus, son of Mary, confirming the Torah which has
been send down before him, and gave him the Gospel containing guidance and
light. …Unto to you [O Muhammad] this writ (Koran) and a way and a pattern
of life, confirming what were revealed before…Unto everyone of you have We
appointed a different law and way of life. And if God had so willed He could
surely have you all made one single community professing one faith. But He
wished to try you and test you. So try to excel in good deeds” (Koran:
5:44-48). The Koran further states: “We believe in God, and in what has been
revealed to us (in Koran) and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac,
Jacob and the tribes, and in the Scriptures given to Moses, Jesus, and the
Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between one and another
among them.” (Koran: 3:84).
The Holy Bible motivated President
Carter the builder of homes for homeless and a peacemaker, Father Damien the
servant of lepers, Mother Theresa the comforter of outcastes of Calcutta.
Similarly, the Bible motivated millions more Christian people to become
God-loving and to allocate their lives for the service of humanity in general
and for the social outcasts in particular. These Christians are the finest
examples to validate the Koranic dictum that there is “guidance and light” in
Torah and the Gospel.
Allah’s Reward for all good people—Not exclusively for Muslims
According to the Koran, facing to any direction or praying in any particular manner does not carry you to Heaven. In other words, rituals without good deeds are useless. According the Koran, what matters is:
“It is not piety that you turn your faces towards the East or the West, but pious are those who believe in God, and the hereafter, the angels, the Books (Torah, Psalm, Gospels, Koran), and the prophets; and those, for the love of God, give of their wealth to kinsmen, the orphans, the indigent, wayfarers, beggars, and for the redemption of slaves; and observe prayers, and pays purification dues, And who honor their pledge when they are committed to a pledge and who have patience in tribulation and adversity, and in time of distress; such are they who are faithful, and such are the venerators.” (Koran 2:177).
According the following verses justice of the Day of Judgment is not based upon “Muslim whims or Christians or Jewish whims,” but is based upon good deeds.
“It is neither dependent on your (Muslim’s) whims nor the whims of the People of the Books (Jews and Christians), but whosever does misdeeds shall be punished for it, and will find no protector or friend apart from God; whoever, whether man or woman, does righteous deeds and is a believer of God will surely enter Paradise. None shall be deprived even an iota of his/her reward.” (Koran 4:123-124).
Moreover, the Koran explicitly condemns those Muslims who pray but do not feed the needy:
“Woe, then, unto those ones whose hearts from their prayer are remote [and] those who wants to be seen and praised, and, withal, deny all assistance to their fellowmen” (Koran 107:4-7]. Same viewpoint is stated in Verse 4:142.
After laying down
every mode of conduct for Muslims, the Koran states one of these phrases: “God
hears and knows al things,” “for God is well aware of all you do,”
and “for God knows well the secrets of your heart.” These phrases are
warnings to Muslims that Allah does not shield them from accountability to their
actions and they will have retribution for all their misbehavior. In Koranic
context, the faith, whether it is Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any faith
without good deeds, is of no use on the Day of Judgment. The Koran rhetorically
rejects the claim of exclusive salvation by Christians and Jews, and then says
that all those who do righteous are rewarded.
Contemporary Muslims also claim that the Paradise is only for those who claim
to be Muslims. The Koran rejects these claims emphatically in the following
verses:
"And they
say: 'none shall enter Paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian.' Those are
their vain desires. Say: 'Produce your proof if you are
truthful.'. No-whoever submits his whole self to God and is a doer of good will get
his reward with his Lord; on such shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. The
Jews say: ‘The Christians are not right,’ and the Christians say: The Jews are
in the wrong;’ yet both read the scriptures…" [Koran 2:111-113].
The above verse is complemented by
the following verses to reject the concept of the exclusive love and reward for
Muslims or any one particular faith.
"Every soul will receive its reward by measure of its endeavor." (Koran 20:15)
In this verse, the phrase “every soul” receiving reward negates the contemporary Muslim claim of exclusivity for God’s love and reward unless Muslims make parallel assertion that Christians, Jews, and others do not have souls and Muslims are the only ones with souls.
Another verse states:
"And to all are assigned degree according to the deeds which they have done, and in order that God may recompense the deeds, and no injustice be done to them." (Koran 46:19)
The Koran does not put all “people of the book (Jews and Christians)” in one basket. The Koran graciously states that there are righteous people among the people of the books. The phrase, “People of the Book”, in the Koran means Christians and Jews. Allah would not reject their good deeds for being Jew or Christians. The Koran states:
“They are not all alike. Of the people of the scriptures (Christians and Jews), there is a staunch community who recites the revelations of God in the night, falling prostrate (before Him). They believe in God and the Last Day, enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency, and vie one another in good works. They are righteous. Of the good they do, nothing will be rejected of them; For God knows well those that do right." (Koran 3: 113-115)
Finally, the Koran teaches that all good people of all faiths have nothing to fear from Allah. In the following verse, the good deeds over belief systems are again stressed.
"Those who believe in the Koran and those who follow the Jewish Scriptures, and the Christians and Sabians, and any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve." (Koran 2:62)
According the above verses, any who believe in God and live nobly and morally are nothing to fear from God and will be rewarded proportionate to their good and bad deeds.
Catholic Church adopted the above Koranic doctrine only recently in the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 16, November 21, 1964
"But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place among whom are the Muslims: these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."
All places of worship celebrate God’s name and God protects all of them
God is not worshipped in Mosques alone and it is a Muslim duty to allow and protect all places of worships. “For had it not been God’s repelling some men against others, the monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which God’s name is daily celebrated would have been destroyed. And God will surely help one who helps Him”. (Koran 22:40).
Unfortunately, no Christian Church or Synagogue is safe in contemporary Saudi Arabia, the land, where Prophet preached those words. No religion other than Wohabism of Saudi Arabia can be preached in that land where Prophet preached freedom. I have no reason to doubt that the defenders of freedom of faith, described in the above verse, are America and Americans except the extreme rights among them in our contemporary world even though the civil liberties have eroded recently. America, where people of all faiths as well as people without faith can safely believe and practice, protects and preserves the noble idea of the freedom of faith enshrined in the above verses. I admit such freedom does not exist in many of the contemporary Muslim nations.
Forcing someone to believe is clearly prohibited by the Koran. Acceptance or rejection of any faith is a personal matter between human and God. The following verses expose the un-Islamic enforcement of religious practices at the individual level by Wohabism of Saudi Arabia, or Taliban or other Middle Eastern states.
“There is no compulsion in religion, for rectitude is henceforth distinct from perversity”. (Koran 2:256).
"And has your Lord willed, whosoever is in the earth would have believed all together. Will you then coerce the people to become Muslims?" (Koran 10:99).
“Say (Muhammad it is) truth from the Lord of you all. Whosoever will, let him believe and whosoever will, let him disbelieve" (Koran 18: 29)
“And so, [O Prophet,] exhort them; thy task is only to exhort: thou cannot compel them to believe.” (Koran: 21-22).
“O Prophet.!…Thy duty is not more than to deliver the message; and the reckoning is Ours.” (Koran 13:40).
The contemporary Muslim nations do not practice the Koranic teaching of “non-compulsion in religion”. For example in Saudi Arabia, Christians on Sundays are praying in secret because it is a crime to pray any other way than Saudi form of distorted Islam. The Kingdom bans non-Muslim clergy from entering the country to conduct religious services. Unfortunately, neither President Bush nor any of his national security advisers have criticized the refusal of Saudi Arabia to allow Americans and other foreigners to worship freely. However, Muslims in their classical periods upheld the principle of the freedom of faith as mandated by the above verses.
According to Bernard Lewis, the Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University,:
“In the early centuries of Islamic rule, there was little or no attempt at forcible conversion.” [REF: “The Jews of Islam” by Bernard Lewis. Page.17].
The Columbia History of the World states:
“European Christians claimed that Muslims gave unbelievers, mainly Christians and Jews, the choice of conversion to Islam or death by sword, but this was not the case. [Ref: “The Columbia History of the World.” Edited by John A. Garraty and Peter Gay. Page 264.]
Muslims to respect other faiths
Muslims are prohibited to
disrespect other faiths wounding the feelings of its followers. The Koran
states: "Revile not those unto whom they pray beside Allah (God) lest they
wrongfully revile Allah (God) through ignorance." (Koran 6:108)
Friendship with people of other faiths
Cal Thomas states in Detroit Free
Press: “There are no commands to make friend with ‘infidels.’” No friendship
with non-Muslims!!! Mr. Thomas is dishonest again. The Koran states:
“It may be that God will create love between you and your enemies. God is all-powerful, and God is forging, ever merciful. God does not forbid you from being kind and acting justly towards those who have not fought you on account of religion nor expelled you from your homes. God indeed loves those who are just. He only forbids you from making friends with those who fought over your faith with you and banished you from your homes, and aided in your exile. Whoever makes friend with them is a transgressor.” (Koran 60:7).
In this verse the Koran forbids making friends with those people “who fought over your faith with you and banished you from your homes, and aided in your exile .” There is no blanket statement in the Koran against Muslims making friends with the people of another faith. The prohibition applies only to aggressors. Therefore, Mr. Cal Thomas is wrong.
Would Cal Thomas take the same vulgar liberty with what Saint Paul said, as Cal Thomas does with Koranic verses?. Paul said: "And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; as God has said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from them, and be you separate, said the Lord, and touch not the unclean things; I will receive you." (Corinthians II 6:16-17). Similarly, how would Cal Thomas interpret what Paul states: "But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils." (1 Corinthians 10:20). Unscrupulous people might misrepresent the Bible saying that the Gods of other religions are actually demons and one should not even befriend non-Christians. Therefore, particular verses can be found in the Bible or the Koran to attempt to draw false conclusions about the beliefs of another religious tradition. However, knowingly misrepresenting is un-Christian or un-Jewish and un-Islamic. So, I wonder whether Rev: Pat Robertson, Rev: Graham, Cal Thomas, Rabbi Heir etc remember: “Thou shall not bear false witness against any neighbor.”
The following quotes from renowned Historian, H.G.Wells, shows that the Caliph Omar, the brother-in-law of Prophet, moving around and engaging in friendly chat with Christian Patriarch in Jerusalem while keeping away from his own Muslim warriors.
“Jerusalem…passed once more out of the rule of Christians. But it was still in Christian hand; Christians were tolerated, paying only a poll tax; and all churches and all relics were left in their possession. Jerusalem made a peculiar condition for the surrender. The city would give itself only to the Caliph Omar in person…He came to Jerusalem (638 A.D), and the manner of his coming shows how swiftly the vigour and simplicity of the first Moslem onset was being sapped by success. He came the six-hundred-mile journey with only the attendant; he was mounted on a camel, and a bag of barley, another of dates, a water-skin and a wooden platter were his provision for journey. He was met outside the city by his chief captains, robed splendidly in silks and richly caparisoned horses. At this amazing sight the old man was overcome with rage. He slipped down from the saddle, scrabbled up dirt and stones with his hands, pelted these fine gentlemen, shouting abuse. What was this insult? What did this finery mean? Where were his worriers? Where are the desert men? He would not let these popinjays escort him. He went on with his attendant, and smart emir rode afar off-well out of his stones. He met the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who had apparently taken over the city from its Byzantine rulers alone. With Patriarch he got on well. They went around the Holy places together, and Omar, now a little appeased, made sly jokes at the expense of his too magnificent followers.” [Ref: The Outline of History. By H.G. Wells. Page 489-490].
The words of H.G.Wells expose the bigotry of Cal Thomas and Rabbi Heir, Rev: Graham, Pat Robertson, and others. It also rejects that Islam prevent Muslims to make friendship with Jews and Christians.
Rules for Muslim’s conduct with Christians and Jews
The Koran lay the guideline while talking with non-Muslims as in the following verse: “Do not dispute with the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) except in the kindest way, apart from whose who acts wrongly, and say to them: ‘We believe what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God are one; To whom we are surrenders.” (Koran 29:46).
An American female air force pilot, who flies to protect Saudi Arabian kingdom from another dictator, is forced to wear purdah (veil) against her will when she goes into cities of Saudi Arabia. Is this the kindest way of Islam treating people of other faith? Even our government in US forced her to wear the veil against our constitution.
History of Muslim co-existence with Christians
The Qur’an Praises Righteous Christians in the following verse:
“Nearest among all people in love to believers (i.e., Muslims) are the people who say: ‘We are the followers of Christ,’ because among them are men devoted to learning and men who renounced the world, and they are not arrogant.” (Qur’an 5:85).
The verse praises Christians as men of learning and adds that they are not arrogant. The life and practice of Prophet (s) reflect the above teaching of the Koran. The peaceful, friendly, mutually helpful relationship between Christians and Prophet Muhammad and his immediate followers is fully exposed by the manuscript preserved in the Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. The agreement between Mohammed and the Orthodox Syrian or Assyrian Christians (between Islam and Christendom) is a manuscript of great scientific value, and it is highly treasured by the Orthodox Syrian Christians. A translation of this document is posted in Orthodox Syrian Christian web site http://www.atour.com/. It reads:
"God has told me in a vision what to do, and I confirm His command by giving my solemn promise to keep this agreement."
"To the followers of the Islam I say: Carry out my command, protect and help the Nazarene nation in this country of ours in their own land. Leave their places of worship in peace; help and assist their chief and their priests when in need of help, be it in the mountains, in the desert, on the sea, or at home. Leave all their possessions alone, be it houses or other property, do not destroy anything of their belongings, the followers of Islam shall not harm or molest any of this nation, because the Nazarenes are my subjects, pay tribute to me and will help the Mohammedans [Muslims]. No tribute, but what is agreed upon, shall be collected from them, their church buildings shall be left as they are, they shall not be altered, their priests shall be permitted to teach and worship in their own way-the Nazarenes have full liberty of worship in their churches and homes. None of their churches shall be torn down, or altered into a mosque, except by the consent and free will of the Nazarenes. If any one disobeys this command, the anger of God and his prophet shall be upon him."
"The tribute paid the Nazarenes shall be used to promote the teachings of Islam and shall be deposited at the treasury of Beth Almal. A common man shall pay one denar (piece of money), but the merchants and people who own mines of gold and silver and are rich shall pay twelve denars. Strangers and people who have no houses or other settled property shall not have taxes levied upon them. If a man inherits property he shall pay a settled sum to the Beth-Almal treasury. The Christians are not obliged to make war on the enemies of Islam, but if an enemy attacks the Christians, the Mohammedans [Muslims] shall not deny their help, but give them horses and weapons, if they need them, and protect them from evils from outside and keep the peace with them. The Christians are not obliged to turn Moslems, until God’s will makes them believers."
"The Mohammedans [Muslims] shall not force Christian women to accept Islam, but if they themselves wish to embrace it, the Mohammedans [Muslims] shall be kind to them."
"If a Christian woman is married to a Mohammedan [Muslim] and does not want to embrace Islam, she has liberty to worship at her own church according to her own religious belief, and her husband must not treat her unkindly on account of her religion. If any one disobeys this command, he disobeys God and his prophet and will be guilty of a great offense."
"If the Nazarenes wish to build a church, their Mohammedan [Muslim] neighbors shall help them. This shall be done, because the Christians have obeyed us and have come to us and pleaded for peace and mercy."
"If there be among the Christians a great and learned man the Mohammedans [Muslims] shall honor him and not be envious of his greatness."
"If any one is unjust and unkind to the Christians he will be guilty of disobeying the prophet of God."
"The Christians should not shelter an enemy of Islam or give him horse, weapon or any other help. If a Mohammedan [Muslim] is in need the Christian shall for three days and nights be his host and shelter him from his enemies. The Christians shall, furthermore, protect the Mohammedan [Muslim] women and children and not deliver them up to the enemy or expose them to view. If the Nazarenes fail to fulfill these conditions, they have forfeited their right to protection, and the agreement is null and void."
"This document shall be entrusted to the Christian chief and head of their church for safe keeping."
Here follows the signatures of Mohammed and his foremost men and followers:
"Signatures.
Abubakr Zadik • Omar Ben Chetab • Moavijah Ibn Abi Sofijan • Abu Darda • Abuzar • Abubra • Abdula Ibn Masud • Abdulah Ibn Abas • Hamza Ibn Almulabb • Fazl Ibn Abas • Zaibar Ibn Aqam • Tilha Ibn Abdullah • Saad Ben Maaz • Saad Ibn • Ebadah • Sabeh Ibn Kebis • Jazid Ibn Sabid • Abdullah Ben Jazid • Suhail Ibn Mifah • Othman Ibn Mazum • David Ibn Gijah • Abu Alalijah • Abdullah Ibn Omar Alqazi • Abu Harifah • Ibn Azir • Ibn Rabiah • Ebar Ibn Jaamir • Hashim Ibn Azijah • Hasan Ibn Zabid • Kab Ibn Kab • Kab Ibn Malech • Jafar Ibn Abu Falib."
"The peace of God be over them all! This agreement is written by Moavijah Ben Sofian, according to the dictates of Mohammed, the messenger of God, in the 4th year of the Hegira in the city of Medina."
John W. Draper, an American historian, states:
“The Crusades were instituted by a French Pope, Urban II…Their track was marked by robbery, bloodshed, and fire…The capture of Jerusalem [by Crusaders]…was attended by the perpetration of atrocities almost beyond belief. What a contrast to Arabs! When the Khalif Omar took Jerusalem, A.D.637, he rode into the city by the side of the Patriarch Sophronius, conversing with him on its antiquities. At the hour of prayer, he declined to perform his devotions in the Church of Resurrection, in which he chanced to be, but prayed on the steps of Church of Constantine; ‘for,’ said he to the patriarch, ‘had I done so, the Muselmen [Muslims] in a future age would have infringed the treaty, under color of imitating my example.’ ”[Ref: John W. Draper: “History of Intellectual Development of Europe.”1876. Vol.II. Page 22-23.]
Karen Armstrong tells same story in her book, Holy war in page.30 and also by the world-renowned historian, H.G.Wells in his The Outline of History in Pages 489-490.
The Following is Caliph Omar’s, the brother-in-law of Prophet Muhammad, edict written in 638 A.D and recently translated by Yohanan Friedmann of Hebrew University in Israel:
“In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. This is the assurance of safety which the servant of God, Umar, the commander of the faithful, has granted to the people of Jerusalem. He has given them an assurance of safety for themselves, for their property, churches, their crosses, the sick and the healthy of the city, and for all the rituals that belong to their religion. Their churches will not be inhabited by Muslims and will not be destroyed. Neither they, nor the land on which they stand, nor their cross, nor their property will be damaged. They will not be forcefully converted. No Jew will live with them in Jerusalem.” [Ref: “The History of al-Tabari” translated by Yohanan Friedmann of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Vol. XII. Page. 191].
Famous American historian and philosopher, Will Durant, states in his “The Story of Civilization:
“To…Christian, Zoroastrians, Sabaeans, Jews-the Umayyad caliphate offered a degree of tolerance hardly equaled in contemporary Christian lands. They were allowed free practice of their faiths, and the retention of their churches, on condition that they wear honey-colored dress, and pay poll tax of from one to four dinars ($4.75 to 19.00) per year according to their income. This tax fell only upon non-Moslems capable of military service; it was not levied upon monks, women, adolescents, slaves, the old, crippled, blind, or very poor…Omar himself continued in Egypt the allowances formally made to the Christian churches by the Byzantine government. The Jews of the Near East had welcomed the Arabs as liberators. They suffered now diverse disabilities and occasional persecutions; but they stood on equal terms with Christians, were free once more to live and worship in Jerusalem, and prospered under Islam in Asia, Egypt, and Spain as never under Christian rule [and] Christians of western Asia usually practiced their religion unhindered; Syria remained predominantly Christian until third Muslim century; in the rein of Mamun (813-33) we hear of 11,000 Christian churches in Islam-as well as hundreds of synagogues and fire temples. Christian festivals were freely and openly celebrated; Christian pilgrims came in safety to visit Christian shrines in Palestine…Christian heretics persecuted by the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, or Antioch were free and safe under a Moslem rule. [And] In the ninth century the Moslem governor of Antioch appointed a special guard to keep Christian sects from massacring one another in church. Monasteries and nunneries flourished [and] The Mohammedan administrative bureaucracy had hundreds of Christian employees…The Christians of the east in general regarded Islamic rule as lesser evil than of the Byzantine government and church. Despite or because of this policy of tolerance in early Islam, the new faith won over to itself in time most Christians, nearly all the Zoroastrians and pagans, and many of the Jews of Asia, Egypt, and North Africa. [and] Where Hellenism, after a thousand years of mastery, had failed to take root, and Roman arms had left the native gods unconquered, and Byzantine orthodoxy had raised rebellious heresies, Mohammedanism had secured, almost without proselytism, not only belief and worship, but a tenacious fidelity that quite forgot the superseded gods.”
[Ref: Will Durant: “The Story of Civilization”. New York.1950. Vol. 4. Page 218]
Karen Armstrong, Professor at Leo Baeck College for Study of Judaism and the Training of Rabbis and teachers states:
“Not surprisingly, therefore, Nestorian and Monophysite Christians welcomed the Muslims and found Islam preferable to Byzantium. ‘They did not inquire about profession of faith,” wrote the twelfth-century historian Michael the Syrian, ‘nor did they persecute anybody because of his profession, as did the Greeks, a heretical and wicked nation.’…Christians were allowed to build churches freely: indeed, during the seventh and eight centuries there was quite a spate of church-building in Syria and Palestine. Christians were still allowed to hold their processions and services.” [Ref: “Jerusalem” By Karen Armstrong. Page. 232].
In the contemporary Western media, it is common to read that Muslims are intolerant to Jews and other people of faith. Unfortunately, I have to agree that contemporary Muslim world is filled with hatred against Jews contradictory to the practice of Prophet and his followers in the early Muslim history. This hatred is not anything to do with Islam. Unfortunately, similar hatred exists in Jews community also. If this current hared were originated and instigated by religion of Islam, we would have experienced persecution and extermination of Jews and Christians from Muslim world. In fact, Jews flocked into the Middle East from the west to escape from European persecution and anti-Semitism.
Even the historians from Jewish faith record a different history than what is popularized today by media, Rev: Graham, Rabbi Heir, Cal Thomas. The current hatred between Jews and Arabs is the result of colonialism and the growth of state-sponsored form religious cults and extremism in that part of the contemporary world. Muslims and Jews lived together helping each other to build a great civilization for several centuries within Islamic morality of peaceful coexistence until the Western conquerors destroyed such peaceful coexistence.
Until Islam spread from Arabia to Spain in sixth century, the Jewish people were engaged in agriculture and manual labor. Soon after these lands came under house of Islam, Jewish people became merchants, artisans, physicians, and scientists. This transformation of Jewish life pattern in Muslim empire of Prophet and his early followers is the best evidence that pure form of early Islam was not a fanatic, chauvinistic, and ethnocentric cult as we see in the contemporary Muslim world in the east.
Jewish Historian, S.H.Goiten states:
“The Jews took their full share in this great Middle-eastern mercantile civilization [Islamic civilization], in particular from tenth to thirteenth centuries; and it was at that time and in that part of the world that Judaism itself received its final shape.” [Ref: “A Mediterranean Society.” By S.H. Goiten. London: Cambridge University Press, 1967, Pages. 6-7]. Other historians repeat the same story.
American historian philosopher, Will Durant, agrees with S.H.Goiten’s statement of, “Judaism itself received its final shape” in the early Muslim empire:”
“Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayyumi …grew up in Egypt…Saadia took a leaf or two from Moslem theologians, and followed their methods of exposition, even, now and then, the details of their argument. In turn his work permeated the Jewish world, and influenced Maimonides. ‘Were it not for Saadia,’ said ben Maimon, ‘the Torah would almost have disappeared.’” [Ref: “The Story of Civilization” by Will Durant. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950, Vol. 4. Pages.367-368).
Heinrich Graetz, the leading 19th century Jewish historian, states:
“Wearied with contemplating the miserable plight of the Jews in their ancient home and in the countries of Europe, and fatigued by the constant sight of fanatical oppression, the eyes of the observer rest with gladness upon their situation in the Arabian Peninsula. Here the sons of the Judah were free to raise their heads, and did not need to look about them with fear and humiliation, lest the ecclesiastical wrath be discharged upon them, or the secular power overwhelm them. Here they were not shut out from the paths of honor, nor excluded from the privileges of the state, but, untrammeled, were allowed to develop their powers in the midst of free, simple and talented people, to show their courage, to compete for the gifts of fame, and with practiced hand to measure swords with their antagonism.” [“A History of Jews” by Heinrich Graetz (New York 1894) page p. 3: 236.]
The Christian Patriarch insisted with Caliph Omar to include a clause in the edict [see the edict above] preventing Jews living in Jerusalem. However, later Caliph Omar realized the injustice of this provision and invited Jews to live in Jerusalem.
Karen Armstrong documents this:
`“Umar [the brother-in-law of Prophet Muhammad] invited seventy Jewish families from Tiberias to settle in Jerusalem…They were also allowed to build a synagogue—known as the ‘Cave’ near Herod’s western supporting wall…Muslims had not only liberated them [Jews] from the oppression of Byzantium but had also given Jews rights of permanent residence in their Holy City…Towards the end of the seventh century, a Hebrew poem hailed the Arabs as the precursors of the Messiah.” [Jerusalem page.233]
Jewish Historian, Max I. Dimont states:
“The improbable but true tale of a camel driver’s establishment of a world empire in the name Allah, wherein the Jews rose to their Golden Age of creativity, only to be plunged into a Dark Age with the eclipse of the Crescent and the ascent of the cross.” ( Ref: “Jews, God and History.” by Max I.Dimont. New York.1962. Page 183)
“Within a hundred years the Mohammedan Empire rose to challenge Western civilization. Yet, within this religion,… the Jews not only survived but rose to one of their greatest literary, scientific, and intellectual peaks…Seven hundred years passed and the pendulum swung. The Islamic world crumbled and the Jewish culture in the Islamic world crumbled with it.” [Ref: “Jews, God and History.” By Max I.Dimont:. New York.1962. Page 17].
These historical facts expose the Islam is a tolerant religion that encourages to the uplifting of all people, not the Muslims alone.
So great was the fame of Rabbi Moses ben Maimonides (1134-1204 A.D), the author of Mishneh Torah (The “Second Torah”) that:
“Richard the Lion Heart, King of England, offered him a post as his personal `physician, but Maimonides refused, feeling more at home in the culture of Arabic civilization than in the barbaric atmosphere of feudal Europe.” [Ref: “Jews, God and History.” By Max I.Dimont: New York.1962. Page. 179].
The rejection of the offer from the Christian King of England by Maimonides is shows that Jews felt more at home and free in Muslim empire than in the Christian empire.
Jewish Historian, Ilan Halevi States:
“It is true that the Arab world was much more tolerant than Christian West towards the Jews living within it, and that, in the land of Islam, especially in the Arab world, the concept of anti-Semitism such as it developed in Europe in the 19th century lacks the roots and encrustation that it has in Germany or Russia.”
[Ref: “A History of Jews, Ancient and Modern.” by Ilan Halevi. P. 199].
I would not claim that there were no intermittent persecution of Jews and Christians by some Muslims. However, according to Karen Armstrong, these persecutions occurred only during the time when House of Islam was invaded by Christians and Jews. [Holy War by Karen Armstrong. Page 30]. However, in the contemporary Muslim majority countries all people including Christians and Jews are oppressed. In Egypt the bureaucratic stonewalling prevents Christians to build a church. Recently, Muslims of Egypt attacked Coptic Church claiming that the church bell is too loud. But Muslims have no complaint with their call for prayer over loud speakers five or even more times a day. In Saudi Arabia, Christians are not allowed to carry a cross or a Bible in public. Even Muslims of different school of thought cannot practice their faith in that country. These practices of political Islam are contrary to the teaching of the Koran and Prophet.
Koran, Muslims, and War
Karen Armstrong, Professor at Leo Baeck College for Study of Judaism and the Training of Rabbis and teachers, states in her book, Holy War:
“Indeed the word ‘Islam’ comes from the same Arabic root as the word ‘peace’ and Koran condemns war as abnormal state of affairs opposed to God’s will: when the enemies of Muslims ‘kindle a fire for war, Allah extinguishes it. They strive to create disorder in the earth, and Allah loves not those who create disorder’ (Koran 5:64). Islam does not justify a total aggressive war of extermination, as Torah does in the first five books of the Bible… Islam recognizes that war is inevitable and sometimes a positive duty in order to end oppression and suffering. The Koran teaches that war must be limited and be conducted in as humane way as possible…[Mohammad instructed Muslim army that] they must not molest priests, monks, nuns nor the weak and helpless people who were unable to fight. They must not massacre of civilians nor should they cut down a single tree nor pull down any building. This was very different from the wars of Joshua.” [Ref: Karen Armstrong. Holy War. Page 25]
Henry Grady Weaver from The Foundation For Economic Education, Inc, Irvington-On-Hudson, New York, states in his book, “The Mainspring of Human Progress:”
“Prior to the Crusades, it had never occurred to the invaders that a strong man need not be brutal. The Saracens (i.e., Muslims) were fierce in battle, but they were not cruel. They did not kill the wounded; they did not torture their prisoners. When they struck down an opponent, it was not uncommon to help them. (Read Sir Walter Scott). They did not persecute Christians. They were honorable. They told the truth; they kept their word. The English knights were especially impressed; and due in small measure to the lessons learned from the Saracens, the British aristocracy developed into one of the finest ruling classes the world has ever known.” [Ref: Henry Grady Weaver: “The Main Spring of Human Progress.” New York 1984. Page 122]
Muslims are forbidden to be aggressors
The Koran forbids Muslims to be aggressors, but are allowed to defend themselves: "Fight for the sake of God against those who fight against you, but do not attack first; Allah does not love aggressors." (Koran 2:190).
If aggression is banned by the Koran, terrorism against the innocent people or nations is not an ethical or moral act.
Fighting oppression allowed in Islam
The following verse explains circumstances that allow a Muslim to fight a defensive war against oppression. It even defines clearly the people under oppression.
"Permission to fight is given to those who are attacked because they are oppressed and God is able to assist them. Oppressed are those who have been expelled from their homes without a just cause except they say 'Our Lord is God” (Koran: 22:39-40). “But indeed if anyone defend themselves after he was wronged, there is no way blaming him. Blame lies on those who oppress, and terrorize the land unjustly. For them there is painful punishment. But he who bears with patience and forgives surely complies with divine resolve.” (Koran 42:41-43).
The Koran prohibits war and hostility against any one who does not oppress people. It states: "Let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression." (Koran 2:193). It states unequivocally that permission to fight is given to only (1) those who are oppressed, (2) those who are forced into refugee status, and (3) those who lost their freedom of worship. Any war outside these three circumstances is un-Islamic. Contrary to this teaching of the Koran, unfortunately the oppressive governments and religious cults in the contemporary Muslim world instigate war on each other.
The verse on fighting idolaters and Cal Thomas
Mr. Cal Thomas quotes out of context to incite violence and hatred against Muslims. Cunningly, Mr. Thomas quotes in vacuum the verse after chopping off parts of the verse, omitting verses previous to it and after it as well as all other pertinent verses quoted above on the topic of war and peace.
“Except those idolaters with whom you have made a treaty, who have not failed you in any way, nor helped anyone against you; therefore, fulfill your obligations to them during the term of treaty. God loves those who keep their duty. But when those months, prohibited for fighting, are over, slay them [idolaters), seize them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent and establish prayer, and pay the Zakat, then leave them alone for their ways. And if any one of the idolaters seeks protection with you, protect him until he hears the words of God, then let him reach his place of safety. That is because they are a people who do not know.” (Koran 9:4-6). Later verses states: “If they break their pledges after giving their word and revile your faith, fight those specimens of faithlessness, for surely their oaths have no sanctity: They may haply desist. Will you not fight those who broke their pledge and plotted to banish the Prophet? And who were the first to attack you? Are you afraid of them? If you are believers you should fear God more.” (9:12-13).
At first the Koran commands the Muslims to maintain their treaty with idolaters. However, the context of the verses shows that the permission to fight is given only against those idolaters who attacked first and plotted to kill Prophet violating the treaty with Muslims. So, the Koranic sanction to fight the idolaters is conditional. Moreover, it is a Muslim duty to protect an idolater if he/she asks for protection. All the verses quoted earlier in this letter shows Muslims cannot be an aggressor, cannot compel people to believe, and must resort to peace if enemy incline for peace. Mr. Cal Thomas conveniently quotes selectively to advance his agenda to mislead American public and to violence against American Muslims. To make the issue look graver for the Christians and Jews, he replaced the word idolaters with the words Christians and Jews.
In our current war against terrorists and terrorism, President Bush declared in his own vernacular that we, as a nation, would slay terrorists, seize them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. He said that we have declared war on all nations that support terrorists. Without US constitutional and international legal mandate, similar to the one prescribed in the above Qur’nic verses, President Bush would not have legal foundation to fight terrorists and their supporters who violate treaties and international laws of coexistence. It is in the similar context and circumstances in which the Koran sanctions to fight those idolaters who violated treaties and tried to kill Prophet and his followers. Aggression and war against idolaters who do not attack house of Islam or violate treaties is against the literal reading of the Koran. Moreover, the verse suggests that if the idolaters repent—truly or hypocritically--at the face of a defeat and leave in peace with Muslims, they must be left alone even though their Zakat (purification tax) and prayer might be only a Judas kiss.
President Bush declared that America is not at war with Muslims and Islam, but against terrorists who attacked first, violated international treaties and laws, and slew innocent people. President Bush said also that those Talibans, who submit to US allies, might participate in a new future Afghan government. Similarly, the Koran declared 1,400 years ago that Islam is not at war with idolaters in general but exclusively against those idolaters who attacked Muslims in violation of treaties. If the treaty-violators among the idolaters repent truly or as a show, Muslims are told to leave them alone to in their way of life. Those idolaters who continue to violate treaties and fight Muslims unjustly must be hunted down wherever they are found. Is the permission to fight criminals, within well-defined circumstances and contingencies, unreasonable and unfair sanction by the Koran? If we blame the Koran for the above verse sanctioning to eliminate only the criminals among the idolaters or to force them to submit to the rule of law, the US determination to slay terrorists and their supporters wherever they are found become wrong and unjustifiable also.
The Koran advocates peace even in war
Even during war peace is recommended for Muslims:
"But if enemy inclines towards peace, you also incline for peace, and trust in Allah." (Koran 8:61).
The Ethics of War In The Early Muslim History
The ethics of war in Islam can be understood by the practices of Prophet and his immediate followers recorded by the western historians.
British Historian, Lane-Poole states:
“The day of Mohammad's greatest triumph over his enemies was also the day of his greatest victory over himself. He freely forgave the Koraysh all the years of sorrow and cruel scorn in which they had afflicted him and gave an amnesty to the whole population of Mekka...The army followed his example, and entered quietly and peacefully; no house was robbed, no women insulted. One thing alone suffered destruction. Going to the Kaaba, Muhammad stood before each of the three hundred and sixty idols… It was thus Muhammad entered again his native city. Through all annals of conquest there is no triumphant entry comparable to this one.” [Ref: The speeches and Table talk of Prophet Muhammad” by Stanley Lane-Poole. London 1882, page 46-47]
British Historian Gilman states:
"...In comparison, for example, with the cruelty of the Crusaders, who, in 1099, put seventy thousand Muslims, men, women and helpless children to death when Jerusalem fell into their hands; or with that of English army, also fighting under the cross, which in the year of grace 1874 burned an African capital, in its war on the Gold Coast, Muhammad's victory was in very truth one of religion and not of politics; he rejected every token of personal homage, and declined all regal authority; when the haughty chiefs of the Koreishites appeared before him he asked:
"What can you expect at my hands?
"Mercy, O generous brother!
"Be it so; you are free! He exclaimed."
[Ref: “Saracens” by Arthur Gilman. London 1920, page 325.]
Is Islam the cause of current Dark Age Of Muslims?
After the cruel attack on America, the western media invented a myth to explain the state of affairs in the Muslim world. That myth is that Muslims hate America because of our freedom and the technological progress. Media claim Islam is against science. The media is very successful to popularize these myths. The Koran and history reject this wild story of media.
The Koranic Chapter titled “The Disbelievers” rejects the stupidity of the media experts. The chapter mandates Muslims to extend freedom for all non-believers to believe and practice their faith:
“Say [Muhammad]: O disbelievers, I serve not that which you serve, Nor do you serve Him whom I serve, Nor shall I serve that You serve, Nor do you serve him whom I serve. To you your religion and to me my religion.” (Koran 109:1-6).
These verses do not command Muslims to kill the non-believer. What it says that “Let us live together peacefully with free choice of any religion, at the same time agree to disagree.”
Even when a non-believer blasphemes the Koran and Islam, the Koran does not urge Muslims to react violently against them contrary to what many contemporary Muslims do to its dissenters. But God orders Muslims to withdraw peacefully allowing the non-believers and dissenters to exercise their freedom to express their opinion. The verse states:
“Whenever you see those who indulge in blasphemous talk about Our Messages, withdraw from them until they begin to talk of other topics. And if devil cause you to forget [to withdraw], leave the company of these unjust people the moment you remember this. As for those who are God-conscious, they are not accountable for them, but should give advice: They might be conscious of God. Leave those alone who have made a sport and frolic of their faith…” (6:68-70).
We have seen earlier that the Koran defines religion as a personal matter and none can impose it on anyone. Even the Prophet cannot coerce people to believe. So, Islam established a free society where all men and women are equal and choose what they want to believe and practice with safety.
According to Rose Wider Lane, there were three great attempts to establish free society. Those human struggles against authority began first by Patriarch Abraham, then by Prophet Muhammad, and finally by United States of America. [Ref: “The Discovery of Freedom, Man’s Struggle Against Authority” by Rose Wilder Lane. Laissez Faire Books, Inc. 1984). She states that the discovery of freedom by Islamic civilization had influenced the discovery of America.
Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingall (of “Little House on the Prairie” fame), describes about Islamic Civilization and its contributions as follows:
“During the stagnation of Europe that is called the Dark Ages, the world was actually bright with an energetic, brilliant civilization [i.e., Islamic civilization], more akin to American civilization and more fruitful today for everyone alive, than any other past Millions upon millions of human beings, thirty generations believing that all men are created equal and free, created that civilization and kept on creating it for eight hundred years. To them the world owes modern science—mathematics, astronomy, navigation, modern medicine, and surgery, scientific agriculture. To them the world owes the discovery of America…Through Italy, the Saracens (i.e., Muslims) gave Europeans ‘the awakening of Europe.’ Through Spain, the last flare of energy gave the world the discovery of America…The Europeans’ whole world rested upon belief that Authority controls all things including men. When they heard that this earth spins in space, their whole minds and souls recoiled in horror. That is why they implacably hated Saracens whom they saw as anti-Christ, the Devil on the earth, rebelling against Authority of God. The Kings and the Popes could not look for east in the West… So no one could come out of Europe to discover America. It was Columbus, a sailor who knew Saracens in every port…He made the deal with Isabella and Ferdinand in the army camp outside out side Granada, where their troops were besieging the Saracens. That summer he sailed, and that summer Granada fell. Granada the beautiful, the great fountain of learning and science and art and commerce that the Saracens had been creating for hundreds of years, was their last stronghold in Spain…From Spain, energy leaped the Atlantic, in the hundreds and thousands of men and women who sailed with Cortes, Pizarro, Ponce de Leon, Balboa, Magellan, all explorers and conquistadors who put this hemisphere on the map and lead the way around the earth; and in the thousands who marched with De Soto and Coronado from the Gulf to the Ohio and from the Rio Grande to the peaks of Colorado, and came so near to meeting the Kansas in 1545, only half a century after Columbus saw an island that he thought was India. Youngsters like Hernado de Soto in his teens, riding away from home alone,… hundreds and thousands of young men like that—they discovered America. And they came from Spain. Other Europeans did not stir for a hundred years. Three generations of them did not move from where they sat [and] Columbus might have come and gone and made no more difference than Eric the Red or Alonso Sanchez if human energy had not leaped from Saracenic Spain, …Here are three facts, which no one dispute: Two thousand generations of Spaniards had been living in a civilization [i.e., Islamic civilization] where every man could act freely. For one century after fall of Granada, Spaniards were less submissive to Government than other Europeans. During that century, Spaniards explored and conquered the New World (i.e., America) and conquered Europe.” [Ref: Rose Wilder Lane: “The Discovery of Freedom” New York. 1943. pages 86-121].
It was during the period of the discovery of freedom by Prophet and his immediate followers that Jews found their freedom to re-discover their religion as we have seen earlier.
Max I Dimont, Jewish historian, states:
“The remarkable aspect of the 600-year Jewish experience in the Islamic world is that it can split into two equal, sharply defined periods. From 700-1000, the Jews in the eastern caliphate produced a plethora of great Talmudists, but few secular scholars. From 1,000 to 1300, the Jews in the western caliphate produced an abundance of great poets, philosophers, and scientists, but few Talmudists. Collectively, they sparked the Jewish Golden Age in Spain.” [Ref: “The Indestructible Jews” by Max I. Dimont. New York: The World Publishing Company.]
Christians and Jews could not have prospered under Islamic empire if they were persecuted and if they were not free to practice their religion and their chosen profession.
For example, British Historian Sir. T.W. Arnold states:
“Mu’awiyah (661-680) employed Christians very largely in his service, and other members of the reigning house followed his examples. Christians frequently held high posts at court, e.g., a Christian Arab, al-Akhatal, was court poet, and the father of St. John of Damascus, counselor of the Caliph Abd al-Malik (685-705). In the service of the caliph a-Mu’tasim (833-842), there were two brothers, Christians, who stood very high in confidence of the Commander of the Faithful: the one, named Salamuyah, seems to have occupied somewhat the position of the modern secretary of state, and no royal documents were valid until countersigned by him, while his brother, Ibrahim, was entrusted with the care of the privy seal, and was set over the Bayt al-Mal or Public Treasury, an office that, from the nature of the funds and their disposal, might have been expected to have been put into the hands of a Muslim; …on the day of the [Ibrahim’s] funeral, [Caliph] ordered the body to be brought to the palace and the Christian rites performed there with great solemnity” [Ref: (1) Arnold, Sir T.W.; Preaching of Islam. New York, 1913. Ref: (2) Lammens, Henri: Etudes sur le regne Calife Omaiyade Mo’awia Ier. Universite Saint-Joseph, Beyrouth. Syrie. Melanges de la Faculte Orientale, I, 1906.]
The presence of Jews and Christians along with the survival of the Western wall of Jews and the Church of Resurrection of Christians in Jerusalem after over 1,300 years of Muslim rule are more evidences of freedom allowed by the Koran to its competing religions. The preservation of the statue of Buddha in Muslim Afghanistan until its destruction by Taliban fanatics with the blessing of Saudi Arabia is another example of tolerance of early Islam. Moreover, we have read the edict of Caliph Omar Ibn Khathab, the brother-in-law of Prophet, giving freedom to practice Christianity, as they believed. It was under this free society of Islam that the Jews found freedom to write books on Judaism, not under Christendom or in the Western civilization. As we have seen earlier, it was in this Muslim Empire of tolerance and co-existence that Jewish society of agrarian manual laborers transformed themselves into merchants, artisans, physicians, and scientists, as we have seen earlier according to Jewish Historian, S.H.Goiten “Judaism itself received its final shape.”
The history of the Muslim discovery of freedom and the sharing of that freedom with Jews and Christians have profound significance. The history of Christians holding the post of the Secretary of State and the Secretary Treasury in Muslim state can be understood fully only when we recollect a question asked by America (“Are we ready for a Catholic president.”) when John F. Kennedy sought the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency of the United States of America. About 1,300 after Mu’awiyah (661-680).
In summary, freedom is an integral part of the teaching of the Koran and the early Islam. So, the myth of Islam, being the cause for many Muslims in the east to hate America for its freedom, is rejected. Similarly, the media description of Islam as anti-science is also a myth. However, the state-sponsored form of distorted Islam, as practiced today in many parts of the world, breeds hatred towards us, Americans. Unfortunately, Western governments including our nation help these oppressive nations to promote the intolerant distorted form of Islam. We became partners of the regimes and cults for short-term gains and ignored the poison that is infused into the minds of children and adults by “our friends,” such as Saudi Arabia. We should not forget that we trained Osma Bin Laden and supported Sadam Hussain. We continue to give 2 billion dollars or more to Egypt. What do we get? The editors, appointed by Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, print poisonous editorials and news items to wind the fire of hatred against us, Americans. So, do not blame Islam for the cruelty and hatred emanating from the fanatics fueled by our tax dollars in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, etc. If early Islam is filled with hatred, Jews would not have their Golden Age. The Wailing Wall and the Church of Resurrection of in Jerusalem would not have survived after over 1,300 of Muslim rule. There would not have the letters of treaty between Christians and Muslims that we have read earlier.
Another myth after the attack on our nation created by the experts of American media is that Muslims hate scientific progress. Let the Western historians expose the myth.
America Historian, Will Durant states:
“Muhammed, unlike most religious reformers, admired and urged the pursuit of knowledge: ‘He who leaves his home in search of knowledge walks in the in the path of God…and the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr.” [Ref: “The Story of Civilization” by Will Durant. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950, Vol. 4. page 235].
British historian J.Bronowski states:
Muhammad had been firm that Islam was not to be a religion of miracles; it became in intellectual content a pattern of contemplation and analysis. [Ref: Brownoski. J. The Ascend of Man. London, U.K: The British Broadcasting Corporation, 1981. p. 166.]
British historian Robert Briffault states:
“It was under the influence of the Arabian and Moorish revival of culture, and not in the fifteenth century, that the real Renaissance took place. Spain, not Italy, was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe…It is highly probable that but for the Arabs modern European civilization would never have been arisen at all…The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to the Arab culture, it owes its existence.” [Robert Briffault: “The Making of Humanity.” London 1919. Page 188-191]
George Sarton, Professor of History of Science at Harvard University, states:
“Briefest enumeration of the Arabic contributions to knowledge would be too long to be inserted here…The creation of a new civilization of international and encyclopaedic magnitude within less than two centuries is something that we describe, but cannot explain…Indeed the superiority of Muslim culture, say in the eleventh century, was so great that we can understand their intellectual pride. It is easy to imagine their doctors speaking of western barbarians almost in the same spirit as ours do of the ‘Orientals.’ If there had been some ferocious eugenists among the Moslems they might have suggested some means breeding out all the western Christians and Greeks because of their hopeless backwardness. At that time Muslim pride would have been more conceivable because they almost reached their climax, and pride is never as great as when the fall is near. On the contrary only a few Christians were then aware of their inferiority; that awareness did not come upon them until much later—by the middle of thirteenth century.” [Ref: George Sarton: “The History of Science and The New Humanism.” New York. 1956. Page 87-90]
Professor Draper of University of New York and author of “Civil Policy of America” As well as “American Civil War” states:
“In what I have thus said respecting a work held by so many million of men as revelation from God, I have endeavored to speak with respect, and yet with freedom, constantly bearing in mind how deeply to this book (i.e., the Koran] Asia and Africa are indebted for daily guidance, how deeply Europe and America for the light of science.” [REF: John W. Draper: “History of Intellectual Development of Europe.” Vol II. Page 345.]
Historian Harry Elmer Barnes states:
Christian historians have frequently pointed out that Latin civilization of the West in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries reached about as high a level as Muslim culture. This may be true, but it must not be overlooked that this remarkable renaissance was owing in large part to Muslim information and stimulation.” [Ref: “An Intellectual and Cultural History of the Western World.” By Harry Elmer Barnes. Page. 403.]
Finally, Theory of Evolution is a major bone of contention in our technologically advanced American society. There are concerted efforts in our country to prevent teaching of theory of evolution in many public schools. Even our presidents have rejected the theory of evolution. President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said: “Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has recent years been challenged in the world of science—that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was.” [Ref: Gould, Stephen J. "Evolution As Fact And Theory." Science and Creationism." ed. by Ashley Montagu.Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1984. p.118-119.]
Let me give an example in which the US congress acted to control teaching of evolution in public school. Textbook publishers of the United States, avoids the mention of the word "evolution" in some public school textbooks, fearing condemnation from some Western religious establishments. For example, Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), began in 1963 by the National Science Foundation, was finally published in 1970 by the Education Development Center as an introduction to evolution for elementary school students. “No commercial publisher would touch the project because religious groups would not endorse the teaching of this type of material,” until a small foundation agreed to publish it. By 1974, many school districts in forty-seven states had adopted MACOS, but in 1975, when organized opposition began to assert itself, this sales rate plummeted 70 percent. “The National Science Foundation, which had provided $4.8 million to develop MACOS, suddenly was attacked in Congress. The House of Representatives passed the Bauman Amendment in 1975, giving Congress direct supervision and veto power over every single NSF research grant, [and] Nineteen eighty-one saw a drastic cut in federal support for social science research, and science education was virtually eliminated from the federal budget.” [Ref: Cole, John R, "Scopes and Beyond: Antievolution and American Culture. Scientists Confront Creation. Edited by Laurie R. Godfrey. p. 25-27.].
However, the theory of evolution was part of curriculum in Muslim schools centuries before Charles Darwin. Seven months after the publication of Darwin’s book (1860), William Draper, a contemporary of Charles Darwin and the president of the New York University, presented a paper at the meeting for the British Association for Advancement of Science in June, 1860 entitled "The Intellectual Development of Europe Considered with Respect to the Views of Mr. Darwin." Draper’s paper presented in the meeting led into the first discussion of Darwin’s book, Origin of Species. [Ref: Gould, Stephen J. "Knight Takes Bishop?" Natural History. (May 1986) Page 18.]
Professor Draper of New York University states:
"Sacred science,
as interpreted by the Fathers of the Church, demonstrated these facts:
1.
That the date of Creation was comparatively recent, not more
than four or five
thousand years before Christ;
2. That the act of Creation occupied the space of
six days;
3. That the Deluge was universal, and that the animals which survived
it, were preserved in an ark;
4. That Adam was created perfect in morality and intelligence, that he fell, and
that his descendants have shared in his sin and his fall. Of these points and
others that might be mentioned there were two on which ecclesiastical authority
felt that it must insist. These were:
1. The recent date of
Creation; for, the remoter that event, the more urgent the necessity of
vindicating the justice of God, who apparently had left the majority of our race
to its fate, and had reserved salvation for the few who were living in the
closing ages of the world;
2. The perfect condition of
Adam at his creation, since this was necessary to the theory of the fall, and
the plan of salvation.”
“(Christian) "(t)heological authorities were therefore constrained to look with disfavor on any attempt to carry back the origin of earth to an epoch indefinitely remote, and on the Mohammadan theory of evolution (emphasis added) from lower forms, of his gradual development to his present condition in the long lapse of time." [Ref: Draper, John William. The Conflict between Religion and Science. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1875), pp. 187-188.]
Draper has attested that early Muslims taught evolution of life in Muslim schools:
“Sometimes, not without surprise, we meet with ideas with which we flatter ourselves with have originated in our own times. Thus our modern doctrine of evolution and development were taught in their [Muslim] schools (emphasis added). In fact they carried them much farther than we are disposed to do, extending them even to inorganic or mineral things.” [REF: Draper, John William. “The Conflict between Religion and Science.” p.118.]
To give an example of the understanding of creation by early Muslims let me quote from Ibn-Khaldun as an example. 800 years before Charles Darwin, Ibn Khaldun, the most celebrated Muslim historiographer, wrote in his book, Muqaddimah:
“It started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected with the first stage of plants, such as herbs, and seedless plants. The last stage of plants such as palms and vines is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish, which have only the power to touch. The word 'connection' with regard to these created things means that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group. The animal world then widens, its species become numerous, and, in a gradual process of creation, it finally leads to man, who is able to think and reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from the world of monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but which has not reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At this point we come to the first stage of man (after the world of monkeys). This is as far as our (physical) observation extends.” [Ref: Khaldun, Ibn. The Muqaddimah. Trans. by Franz Rosenthal. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. Vol. 1, p. 195.]
These historical records from the western historians and Pre-Darwin Muslim scholars expose the myth that Islam hates science. Early Islam loved science and they invented it as the historians after historians retell the story. In their schools, they even taught their Muslim children the theory of evolution centuries before Charles Darwin while we are still fighting the theory in America. Therefore, the idea of “Islam hates science,” created by so-called experts of American media after the cruel attack on our nation, is only a myth
Unfortunately, the Islamic free society of Prophet and his early followers does not exist in the contemporary Muslim societies and nations. The experimental science of the early Muslim centuries evaporated from their nations. Clannish and tribal Wohabism of Saudi Arabia, Talibans, terrorist Osma ibn Laden and other oppressive totalitarian dictators rule them. This fanatic and cruel Wohabism of Saudi Arabia has become a threat to our own freedom in America even though our nation joins hands with them unfortunately and force our citizens to surrender to their religious practices. When our great daughters in military arrive in Saudi Arabia, our government forces them even to wear the black veil (purdah).
Media blame Islam for the atrocities of Taliban, other oppressive regimes, and cults in Muslim majority countries. They say that the practice of the people who claim to be Muslim shows that Islam is intolerant and violent. In that same vein, Christianity becomes a violent religion because of the cruelties of Roman pope and crusaders for centuries until America came along 200 years ago to protect freedom. American historian John Draper describes the cruelties committed by the crusaders as followers:
“[In] the capture of Jerusalem [by Crusaders], the brains of young children were dashed out against the wall; infants were thrown over the battlements; every women that could be seized was violated; men were roasted at fires; some were ripped open, to see if they had swallowed gold; the Jews were driven into their synagogue, and there burnt; a massacre of nearly 70,000 persons took place; and the pope’s legate was seen ‘partaking in the triumph.’ ” [Ref: John W. Draper: “History of Intellectual Development of Europe.”1876. Vol.II. Page 23].
We must not blame Christianity for such cruelty by Christian Europeans and by the head of their church. We must not describe Christianity as anti-science because of the burning of Bruno and the Inquisition by Europe and their church. Similarly, we must not associate Islam with cruelty of some people who masquerade as Muslims.
Probably it may be the most opportune time than ever for Muslims to engage in an introspective glance on themselves. Many American Muslims accept that the nostalgic free society of early Islam and Prophet does not exist among the current Muslims of the Middle East and the South-east Asia. What we have in those countries is fanatic intolerant cults of various definitions masquerading as Islam. The Islam in those countries exists only as mechanical rituals called prayers and Islamic ethics called as dress codes. In America, Muslims have a true free Islamic society where freedom to seek God without priestly or juristic intermediaries called Fuqaha. However, Taking cues from the Spaniards who arrived in America seeking freedom from authority of the church, Muslim Americans have a responsibility to liberate the Eastern Muslims into a free society from all forms of oppressive totalitarianism. At the same time Muslims of West must not allow the decadent Talibanism, Wohabism of Saudi Arabia, or any form of extremism to corrupt Muslim minds of the West. Western Muslims must teach their children to re-discover Islamic free society within American free society. This American free society of ours accepts Islamic principles such as: “To you your religion and to me my religion (Koran 109:6), ” and “Let there be no compulsion in religion, for rectitude is henceforth distinct from perversity (Koran: 2: 256).” The principle enshrined in these verses is what is written in the US constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.” Such freedom, allowed by the Koran, does not exist in any contemporary Muslim majority countries.
American media very often point out that Islam is incompatible with democracy and the existence of only monarchies and the totalitarian governments is the evidence for it. What is happening in the Muslim majority countries is a distorted Islam for preserving political power for the elite kings, dictators, and military generals. After all, only one thing matters in Islam. Faith is a matter of exclusively personal and private experience. We embrace faith individually just as we confront our death individually. An Iranian philosopher, Souroush, correctly said that we have communal actions but not communal faiths. We can express faith in public but the core of the faith is mysteriously private. The preeminence of Islamic faith is for the hereafter where people are judged individually: "Everyone of them will come before Him all alone on the Day of Resurrection. Surely A-Rahman will show love for those who believe and do right." [Koran :19:95-96]. Hence, there is no Original Sin that transcends over the goodness of whole mankind in Islam. Therefore, the only things that matter on the Day of Judgment are actions at the individual level. Community actions are useless.
I agree with the author of The Discovery of Freedom. She said that in principle the American struggle against authority is only a deferent version of Prophet’s struggle against authority. American Muslims struggle along with the rest of America against any threat from external or internal forces that threaten our re-discovered freedom. Freed Muslims of America know that America and American freedom must be protected and preserved at any cost if Muslims want to practice Islam as each Muslim understands it, not as enforced by authorities such as kings or religious bigots. Muslims must keep reminding themselves the wise words of Secretary of the Health in Clinton Administration once said. “The American dream is fulfilled not when we achieve our dream but when we make the dream come true to our fellowmen.” So, the freed Muslims of America must struggle to fulfill the Muslim dream for freedom and liberal democracy in the rest of the world to escape from the tyranny of enforced outward Islam in order to fill their hearts with true faith. Muslims must also struggle to make American free society more free than what is now so that Hillary Clinton and others are free to testify truthfully without fear of authority other than God.
Finally, I have given every reason to disagree with Rev. Graham’s, Attorney General John Aschroft, Rabbi Hier, and Cal Thomas’ outburst against honest Muslims, the Koran, and the religion of Islam in general. Rabbi Hier, Director of Tolerance Center, knows that when the West persecuted Jews, they flood East to Muslim lands for freedom and co-existence. Rev: Graham, Rev. Graham’s, Attorney General John Aschroft, Rev: Pat Robertson and others know that our ancestors had to flee from their homes in Europe to north America to escape from the tyranny of Cal Thomas’ Roman church and other European Christian churches. Puritans of Massachusetts Bay and Pilgrims fled Christian Europe in search of freedom not due to Muslim persecution of Christians, but to escape from intolerant misguided Christians of Europe. The reason for our nation to come into existence is the tyranny and persecution of Christians and other freedom loving people in Europe by Christian Church. So, the idea of the freedom of faith reemerged and it became common practice among Christians only 200 years ago when America was found. So, Islam is not at fault for lack of religious freedom until very recently. Most western historians attest that Christian heretics and Jews expelled from Europe by the Roman church found freedom in Muslim majority countries. [Ref: “A History of God” by Karen Armstrong. Page 258]. It is definitely unchristian to blame Islam, Koran, and Muslims as a whole for the crimes of a few Jim Jones, Timothy Mcveys, Hitlers, KKKs, Irish Republic Army, Pope Bonifice VIIIs , and the crusaders [Jihadists] among Muslims. We would not blame Christianity for the practice of Church during the Dark Ages of the West. Similarly, Christianity is not accountable for Hitler even though he proclaimed that in exterminating Jews, he was “doing the Lord’s work.” I request you not to blame Islam and the Koran for the practices of extremists and terrorists in the current Dark Ages of Muslims. So, I request you and Americans in general to speak against Muslim bashing by Rev. Graham, Cal Thomas, John Aschroft, and others.
No! Our nation cannot afford to repeat another internment similar to that of Japanese, Americans during the Second World War. So, do we want to repeat our sad history with Muslim and Arab Americans? Bombing and conquering a nation would only convince the victors that they are the superpower. It would not destroy and eliminate the terrorists, terrorism, and cruelty coming out of hatred and humiliation of that part of the world. The superpower victory by force would only multiply the terrorists and religious bigots into several folds. We all agree that we must bring the criminal to justice. At the same time, we must not forget to practice the similar Justice outside as we do at home. In this war against terrorism, we must fight this fight not at the expense of our own values. If we compromise on our values, we become losers. Terrorists win. I believe that America must struggle to conquer the mind of those who follow religious bigotry. Without conquering the mind, terrorism will not die.
S.H.Leeder, a devout Christian, stated in 1912:
“We Christians may well ask ourselves if we are for ever to regard it as our first duty to discourage the men of this faith, who want to help forward the millions of Moslem world by leading them back to the simpler and purer teaching of their early days. When they turn to their scripture for help in restoring the days of pure religious fervour, with its fine principles of toleration, and its encouragement of pursuit of learning, is it the Christian critic who is to be the one to search for detached text and try to make of them insuperable obstacles and unbreakable bond?” [Ref: “Veiled Mysteries Of Egypt And the Religion of Islam.” By S.H. Leeder. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1912. Page. 306].
I make a plea to my American compatriots to help Muslims to find “the simpler and purer Islamic principles of tolerance and encouragement of pursuit of learning” existed in their early history that the Koran and the respected historians describe.
Finally, I pray for God to bless
America, the land that struggles to establish and preserve a free society, so
that some day Muslims will have a chance to find Islam preached by Prophet and
Koran.
updated
3/14/04
posted
3/20/02