In the pious month of Ramadan, the world is witnessing the violent side of a religion which is known as the “religion of peace”. The violence has transcended the boundaries of nations to manifest itself in Orlando, Turkey, Bangladesh and numerous other such places. When the world was recovering from the shock of the Orlando shooting, Turkey felt another tremor of Islamic violence, and the recent ones were in Bangladesh and Iraq. The ubiquitous thing about all these terror attacks is the motivation for such acts and the response of world leaders after the violence. It’s no surprise that Islam is the driving force for these acts of violence in the month of Ramadan, as sacrificing oneself for the cause of Jihad and killing infidels will yield a better place in heaven. Liberal media are always careful after the incident not to link it with Islam, although the terrorist will chant Allahu Akbar after killing people or declare his allegiance to ISIS publicly. The reporting starts with the mighty phrase “Terrorism has no religion” and ends with the even mightier phrase “Islam is a religion of peace.” But it’s difficult to conceal the truth for too long. Even if the truth is concealed for a longer time, it won’t ensure that the truth has died. Truth will surface one day for sure.
After terror incidents, people of the world who are not Muslims look at moderate Muslims in the hope that they’ll condemn the act of violence. Another demand from people is reformation of Islam, and it too comes from people who do not follow Islamic theology. But there is nothing like moderate Muslims and reformation of Islam is an impossible task for anyone to do.
If you analyse the reactions of moderate Muslims after terror attacks, the reactions follow a similar pattern and continuity in thought worldwide. First of all, they distance themselves from the act of terror. The next step will be to call it a “hate crime”, an “act of a few misguided people”, or a “random event of violence”, as there is an enormous amount of violence in this world. In reality, all these words are nothing but convenient lies to mislead the world and conceal the truth. Hate is an irrational feeling which arises in someone’s mind without any profound basis. However, any terrorist attack is not irrational. Terrorists make a conscious choice which is advocated by their scriptures in order to wipe out kafirs or infidels. Their acts have well-calculated end results, a religiously sanctioned guideline and a rational choice based on their own morality. Another lie which they tell is labelling them “misguided people”. They’re not misguided at all. They are being guided by the supreme scripture of their religion in the words of Prophet Muhammad, who is the perfect human being ever born. The act of terrorism is a political choice with political implications to convert the whole world into the land of Allah. A random act of violence has different characteristics from a terror attack. Random criminals neither shout Allahu Akbar nor kill people just because they can’t recite verses from the Quran. Thus moderate Muslims are among the biggest liars who act to conceal the truth from the world.
Their next argument is to hypothesize that such crimes are not allowed by Islam. But a simple look at Islamic history suggests a completely different narrative. Beginning from the battle of Badr to the recent attack in Bangladesh, it only shows that such crimes are allowed by Islam and its scripture. The Quran contains more than 100 verses which clearly command war against non-believers and either conversion or killing. In the same breath, moderate Muslims try to defend Islamic theology and profess that Prophet Muhammad never sanctioned all these acts of crime. This is another blatant lie. The life events and acts of Prophet Muhammad reveal that he was a vile man who always resorted to violence throughout his life. He slaughtered more than 600 Jews after the Battle of the Trench. There are similar countless examples from the life of Muhammad. Now, there arise some serious questions.
What’s more important for moderate Muslims: to defend their religion or look for remedies for terrorism? Their reactions only reveal that all they want is that Islam should be free from any kind of blame irrespective of how violent it is. Moderate Muslims don’t want to get labelled as moderate ones. Sarfaraz Manzoor writes in The Guardian in his article, “Can we drop the term ‘moderate Muslim’? It’s meaningless”: “This is about more than politeness and semantics. The language matters because if ordinary Muslims feel they are being divided into camps, into ‘good’ (moderates) and ‘bad’ (non-moderates), then any statements made by politicians will be heard with great scepticism, especially if for many Muslims ‘moderate’ has come somehow to mean more secular.” Moderate Muslims try their best to shield the Prophet from any kind of attack and always hail him as the most perfect man. If they keep praising such a violent person, then any change in reality is only a dream. In Islam, a true Muslim can only be one who follows the Quran word for word and tries to imitate the Sunnah of the Prophet. Moderate Muslims know this fact quite well. Deep down, they know that the people carrying out terrorist attacks are doing all these things to be perfect Muslims. According to Islamic theology, they can’t be questioned. In this dilemma, moderate Muslims also realise that the word “moderate” makes them feel less religious than people who don’t call themselves moderate. They don’t want to get labelled as moderate, but they’re doing so now because this is best in their interests under the current politically correct regime.
In such a situation, moderate Muslims feel that the word “moderate” is already creating a division among Muslims by labelling half of them as moderate or right and the other half as wrong. To balance things in this dilemma, they take the above-mentioned approaches to fulfil the aspirations of their own community and liberals of the world who hail them. However, moderate Muslims are well aware of their goals and the goal of Islam. They become happy inside that these terrorist attacks are only helping their religion to expand. And there should be no objection for them. After all, Islam is a military cult which wants to expand its horizon. Around 1,400 years of Islamic history is testimony to the success of the violent approach. As long as Islam is gaining success as a military cult, moderate Muslims are less bothered about the methods. The goal of moderate Muslims and extremist Muslims is in sync with each other, i.e. expansion of Dar-ul-Harb. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS is exactly the same and their methods differ only slightly during the beginning phase. In the later phase, the method of moderate and extremist Muslims to convert the whole world into the land of Allah will be the same. ISIS reminds moderate Muslims about the glorious time of the Caliphate when a larger chunk of Europe, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan countries were under Islamic control. They have no objection when another person is trying to establish the Caliphate which was uprooted in the last century. Moderate Muslims are reactive elements but lack the catalyst or favourable conditions to react. Iran is the best example of how quickly moderate Muslims became extremists when they got the catalyst and favourable conditions to react.
We will now look at the prospects of reformation in Islam and the Quran, which is the ultimate source of all the violence. Reformation in the Quran means either erasing the satanic verses from it or changing it completely. Neither of these is permitted by Islam. Allah states in the Quran in Surat al-Hijr, verse 9: “Indeed, it is We who sent down the Quran and indeed, We will be its guardian.” It means that Allah will protect the Quran from any change or error. In another verse, Muhammad says, “How can you improve something which is perfect? You can’t change the Quran.” The clue which these two verses give is that it’s impossible to change the Quran as long as someone has faith in Islamic theology and the Prophet. All that the Prophet allows Muslims is to reinterpret it. But interpretation and reinterpretation have serious limitations. How will you reinterpret “Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” in a peaceful and non-violent way? It’s foolish to think so.
The only way to change the Quran is to get rid of Muhammad and the Quran. But you can’t do so because you have no authority to do so. You can’t be bigger than the Prophet and the Quran because Muhammad said that he was the last Prophet. As soon as someone tries to challenge this convention, it will be labelled blasphemous and the reward will be death. Prominent and mainstream Muslim voices confirm that Islam doesn’t need reformation. Mehdi Hasan, presenter of Al Jazeera English, writes in The Guardian, “Why Islam doesn’t need reformation”: “The truth is that Islam has already had its own ‘Reformation’ of sorts.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an atheist who was advocating reforms in Islam, was rebuked by Muslims in hard-hitting words. The Quran is a closed door and you can only bang your head against it. There are not even genuine voices coming from Islam for reformation or dropping the violent parts of the Quran. For the sake of argument, to say that the violent part of the Quran should be left out has no basis. Someone else will ask why that part should be left out to embrace another part. Which authority sanctioned this? There will be no answer. Thus the moderate Muslim is a myth and reformation in Islam or the Quran is a far-fetched dream which will never become reality.
This article is written by Satish Verma.
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