KILLERS BETRAY ISLAM AND ALL MUSLIMS
THERE has understandably been revulsion and outrage across the world at the massacre in Paris, one of the darkest atrocities perpetrated in France for decades. All right-minded people will join unequivocally in condemnation of this barbarous, pitiless act.
Our response must be one of resolution in defence of liberty and freedom of expression, two of the central foundations of our democratic society. There can be no compromise with the twisted extremist ideology that inspired this slaughter.
Like all Islamic fanatics, the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo killings loathe the liberal values of open, pluralistic societies. Driven by their wilfully perverted misinterpretation of the Muslim faith, they want to establish theocratic, authoritarian rule across western Europe, complete with all the instruments of dogmatic oppression, including Sharia courts and the compulsory wearing of the face veil for Muslim women.
European authorities must not give in to this blackmail, imposed through the barrel of a Kalashnikov or the shell of a suicide bomb. The principles of freedom must be upheld for all citizens, including Muslims.
For the truth is that there is nothing remotely Islamic about all this murderous fundamentalism. The true tradition of the Muslim religion is one of tolerance and respect for others. When the Prophet Mohammed moved from Mecca to Medina in 622AD to establish the first Islamic state, he did not set up a sectarian Caliphate like today’s violent thugs in Al Qaeda and ISIS demand. On the contrary, in the Charter of Medina he created a multicultural, multifaith society where the rights of everyone, Muslims, Jews, Christians or pagans, were upheld.
So the idea, so popular among the zealots, of Islamic supremacy under Sharia law has absolutely no basis in either the Koran or the earliest biography of the Prophet.
Just as false is the belief that the Koran provides some sort of justification for the Charlie Hebdo murders, on the grounds that the satirical magazine has consistently published derogatory images about Islam. This is more dangerous nonsense.
As a devout Muslim, I have been deeply offended by some of the vulgar material in Charlie Hebdo. Indeed, it has often seemed the magazine went out of its way to be gratuitously, childishly provocative. But I would defend without any reservation the magazine’s right to publish such stuff. That is the essence of freedom of speech.
MuSLIMS who want to avoid being offended don’t have to buy the magazine or read it. In our open society, we cannot allow one group to impose censorship in the name of protecting their faith from any ridicule, mockery or even criticism.
As they left the scene of the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo office on Wednesday, the assailants shouted ‘ Allahu Akabar’ (God is the greatest) and ‘ the Prophet Mohammed has been avenged’. But this is another grotesque warping of theology.
Nowhere does the Koran sanction taking any human life in the name of defending the Prophet’s reputation. A host of verses, like Chapter 109, verse 6, or Chapter 10, verse 99, actually set out the need to defend freedom of religion. According to the Muslim scripture, no one has the right to deny other people – whether they be Christian, humanist or even atheist – their beliefs. Similarly, the Charter of Medina lays down the right of all citizens to be free and equal.
So, contrary to all the vicious, despotic propaganda from ISIS and Al Qaeda, respect for essential liberties is at the crux of Islam. The supposed ‘crimes’ of blasphemy and apostasy have been invented by the religious zealots to justify their jihadism, and have no basis in true Islam.
That is highlighted by two key incidents in the life of the Prophet, who called on his followers to ignore the ridicule and contempt heaped on him. In Chapter 74, verse 11, responding to complaints that he had been labelled ‘crazy’ and ‘a sorcerer’, the Koran reveals that God will ultimately deal with all those who mock him. It is not for us on Earth to decide their fate.
In the same vein, when Mohammed first put forward the revelations he received from God that would constitute the Koran, one of the renowned poets of the time, Musaylimah, became vexed at Mohammed’s growing power. He therefore claimed that his own poems had been inspired by divine revelations, and that he and Mohammed should work together to rule the nascent Muslim community.
Mohammed’s followers were appalled at this effrontery and urged the Prophet to take action. But Mohammed merely said: ‘Let him be. He is just a liar. Ignore him.’ So, ‘Musaylimah, the Liar’ is the name history remembers him by – profound theological proof that the Prophet felt disdain, not bloodsoaked vengeance, was the correct response to mockery.
That should have been the reaction of all Muslims to even the most provocative Charlie Hebdo cartoons. The Prophet does not need to be protected by self-proclaimed zealots. God will protect his reputation.
Indeed, it is an offence against Islam to assume the role of religious defender, with the arbitrary power of life and death against declared enemies of the faith. There is not the slightest theological vindication for that kind of savagely arrogant conduct. In Islam, all life is sacred and no one has the right to end it in the name of the deity or to take the law into their own hands.
Filled with hatred, the Charlie Hebdo killers took it on them- selves to act as judge, jury and executioners. In doing so, they were the real heretics. They not only betrayed Islam but also shamed Muslims.
LIKE too many of their ilk, they had been pumped up by a toxic version of Islamic theology promoted by reactionary, dogmatic clerics with no understanding of the humanity at the heart of Islam. These hardliners have substituted the divine, compassionate texts of the Koran for man-made, intolerant, narrowminded, misogynistic works of later times, like the Hadith – the highly disputed collection of sayings of the Prophet written more than three centuries after he lived – and by medieval Sharia, a medley of masculine time-bound opinion that is NOT Islamic law.
Spread by bigots, this twisted, demented theology has no relevance to the modern world and no relationship to the original, tolerant message of Islam.
Like the notorious imposition of fatwas by fundamental clerics – the hounding of Salman Rushdie being one of the worst examples – this lethal dogma has done incalculable damage to the Muslim faith by unfairly painting the religion as divisive, extreme and dangerous.
When Muslims are finally able to move away from clerically-manipulated theocracy and return to the uncorrupted, divine text of the religion, they will clearly see through all the horrific posturing of the jihadi militants.
Muslims will then be able to embrace the Koran’s pristine vision, with its emphasis on inclusiveness, pluralism, peaceful co- existence and mutual respect. This is the message that will be preached at our mosque in Oxford. And it presents a far more appealing world than the terrifying, macho sectarianism the crazed zealots want to inflict upon all of us.