The belief is the fact that “Islam,” as previous president George W. Bush said shortly after the 9-11 attacks, “is peace.”
Islam’s Hatred of the Non-Muslim
by David Bukay Middle East Quarterly Summer 2013 , pp. 11-20 (view PDF)
It’s accepted as a truism by many liberals and multiculturalists and touted by a lot of the Western news that the “clash of civilizations” between the western as well as the Islamic world is a clash of values between a secular, tolerant, post-Christian world and a minority (albeit a sizable one) of Muslims, fundamentalists, and literalists who pervert this is of the faith-traditions. The Qur’anic verse, “there is absolutely no compulsion in religion,” is often invoked to prove that Islam isn’t the intolerant, subjugating religion that Islamist clerics like Yusuf Qaradawi or terrorists like Osama bin Laden make it down to be.
But imagine if Bush’s statement, combined with the conventional view, ignores the fact of Islam’s main principles? Are the Islamists’ thinking actually only a minority that is warped or will they be a truer reflection associated with the inherent nature for the Muslim faith-system? Can the West ever reach a modus vivendi with an Islam that by its very nature considers Western civilization an unclean “other” that must definitely be brought in to the orbit of Islam through subjugation at most useful or destruction at worst?
Despite attempts to reframe this is of jihad for Western audiences, like in this ad for a Chicago bus, classic Muslim commentators are clear Jihad reflects the normal relations current involving the believers therefore the infidel. Islam views jihad while the way of producing comfort by subjugating all others and enforcing order that is islamic. A pax Islamica within the world may be the aim of jihad, which can be therefore a simply war.
A closer examination of Islam’s central tenets is called for, one that gets past the feel-g d nostrums of multiculturalism and that engages the Muslim belief-system on its very own terms, starting with the most fundamental of these principles, the doctrine of al-Wala wal-Bara (love and hate for the sake of God). (more…)