Respect.
It seems that our friends in Britain have declared a fatwa against Islamic extremism. For those who don’t know, a fatwa is essentially an official statement by an Islamic ulema, a kind of religious legal expert, that someone or some practice violates the law of the Koran. This specific case is probably surprising to many people, especially those who view Islam as a religion of violence.
The document, written by Dr Muhammed Tahir-ul-Qadri, a former minister of Pakistan and friend of Benazir Bhutto, declares suicide bombings and terrorism as “totally un-Islamic”. It is one of the most detailed and comprehensive documents of its kind to be published in Britain.
The fatwa, which was released in Pakistan last month, uses texts from the Koran and other Islamic writings to argue that attacks against innocent citizens are “absolutely against the teachings of Islam and that Islam does not permit such acts on any excuse, reason or pretext”.
What many people (Including many Christians!) seem to forget is that Islam is, to most of it’s followers, a religion of peace. But that news is hard to bare with the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Islamic extremists are seen as our one enemy. Truth be told, Islamic extremists are more than likely the most common, if not only enemy we face. But this fact has led to a horrible increase in anti-Muslim sentiments across the western world. What these leads to is- to put it bluntly, horrible cases of hypocracy.
Most Christians today seem to be getting uptight and generally paranoid about the government forces that they see as being “unfair”, “anti-religious”, or “prejudiced”. But how can we complain about our own treatment when we harbor such hatred against others? Have we forgotten the Golden Rule? Or maybe we just think it only applies when we are treated unfairly? Maybe what we need to remember is- fairness applies to everyone, and we are ORDERED to love everyone as we love ourselves. So instead of passing the blame for our misfortunes around, maybe when we begin treating others fairly we will get the blessings we want.
Tags: Analysis, Islam, News, Society, Tolerance
Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 6:03 pm • Uncategorized • RSS 2.0 feed • leave a response or trackback