Does Islamic State really have nothing to do with religion? Fathima Nazeer

[mralstoner]

I don't know anything about this woman, but she's talking sense ...

Fathima Imra Nazeer
Writer, scientist, mom

Does Islamic State's Brutality Really Have Nothing to Do With Religion?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fathima-im...37388.html

In his remarks on the brutal execution of James Foley in Iraq, President Obama claimed "no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day." It's a common refrain, the usual condemnation of a brutal act by Islamists inspired by religious ideology, by their own admission, and the flat out refusal by well meaning liberals to even consider that such brutality could be inspired by religion.

How about we consider what these Islamists are trying to tell us repeatedly; that a certain plausible interpretation of Islam might be at the root of all this brutality.

Here is a sampling of the Quranic passages that Islamists fluently quote: ......

So, the Quran does tell its followers to kill those who don't believe in Islam, in certain contexts. Those contexts of course are debatable.

Now I can almost hear the indignation from well-meaning liberals "but the Bible has violent and hateful passages too.."

However, unlike Christians with the Bible, the vast majority of Muslims believe the Quran to be of divine origin and believe in its literal interpretation. To a Muslim, the Quran is God's literal words to mankind, passed on through the angel Gabriel to prophet Muhammed.

This makes the violent and hateful verses a very real problem.

To be fair the Quran has its share of peaceful verses too.

The issue here is that the Quran contradicts itself and in general the chronologically earlier verses tend to be more peaceful while the latter verses tend to be more violent. Now anyone with a decent understanding of the Quran knows the law of abrogation, which basically means that when there is a contradiction, the latter verse takes precedence....

The argument that ISIS's brutality has nothing to do with religion simply does not hold....

We do have a real problem with a very plausible interpretation of the Quran that ISIS cleverly uses to its advantage. It's time we take our blinders off and started openly talking about the connection between ISIS's brutality and Quranic literalism. It has become far too dangerous to be polite and leave religion out of the discussion.

Couldn't agree more. Great article.