By Editor Bob Terry
If you have ever heard that the Muslim faith is tolerant toward Christians and Jews — referred to in some Islamic writings as “People of the Book” — then you are right. If you have ever heard that the Muslim faith is suspicious of Christians and Jews, even calls for holy war against adherents of these faiths, then you are also right.
These paradoxical teachings of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, reflect two different periods of the Prophet Mohammed’s life — the periods in which he lived in Mecca and Medina — scholars say, and form the basis for a division in the Islamic faith that continues to this day. More moderate Muslims are often referred to as Meccan Muslims. Medinan Muslims are the more radical.
In the news last week were some Medinan-type Muslims, people who were correctly called “would-be mass murders” by the British police when the police announced the break up of a terrorist plot to blow up civilian airlines over the Atlantic Ocean. These are people willing to kill and maim indiscriminately. They are people whose fury has turned against those of their own faith, as well as Christians, Jews and others they consider infidels.
One has only to recall the 2005 terrorist bombings in Jordan, Indonesia and other predominately Muslim countries to realize the rage of these religious zealots knows no bounds. They are pure hatred loosed on a vulnerable world.
The actions of these Medinan-type Muslims violate the faith they claim to love. In July 2005, more than 180 of the leading scholars of Islam, representing 45 countries, met in Amman, Jordan. The result of the meeting was a unanimous consensus on a number of critical issues. The declaration issued clarified the necessary qualifications and conditions for issuing fatwas, or legal pronouncements, exposing the illegitimacy of the extremist fatwas justifying terrorism. It also condemned the practice of calling those who disagree with one’s position an apostate to justify violence against those individuals.
Even if one were to grant the existence of a state of war, a claim some of the terrorists make, the actions still violate their faith. In 1990, the Organization of the Islamic Conference issued the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
Article 3 of that declaration states, “In the event of the use of force and in case of armed conflict, it is not permissible to kill non-belligerents such as old men, women and children.” Who would have been on the airplanes they planned to bomb?
Article 2 states, in part, “It is forbidden to resort to such means as may result in the genocidal annihilation of mankind.” What is the coordinated bombing of passenger airplanes except “genocidal annihilation?”
Other examples abound but the point is clear. The twisted logic of these Medinan-type Muslims has turned them into criminals. This latest plot has nothing to do with the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This scheme was hatched long before Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and plunged the region into armed conflict. The airplane-bombing conspiracy clearly displays the venomous evil spewed out by these bitter souls.
In 2005, King Abdullah II of Jordan called for a “relentless war” on the kind of teachings, “which embrace extremism, backwardness, isolation and darkness and are fed on the ignorance and naivety of simple people.”
While the world must be vigilant against treacherous acts wished on it by fanatics like these, it is Islam that is fighting for its identity. Islamic terrorists may form only a tiny segment of the Muslim population, but they have the potential for disrupting the political, economic and cultural stability of a large segment of the world stretching from Turkey to the Philippines to north Africa.
It is the terrorists who form the predominant image of Islam portrayed to the non-Muslim world. When these images are supported by atrocities such as the current religious wars in Africa and the Pacific Rim, it is little wonder the public image of Islam is the strident, sword-wielding Medinan-type Muslim warrior committed to jihad.
It is up to Meccan-type Muslims, moderate Muslims like Jordan’s King Abdullah and those scholars who met in Jordan last year, to battle the teachings of the militant terrorists. Only as they engage each other will the questions about orthodox and heretical beliefs and behaviors be answered.
All the world has a stake in those answers. Cultural and political isolation are impossible in today’s world. Leaders of Forecasting International, a firm associated with the World Future Society, recently estimated the Chinese will spend $100 billion on international travel in 2008. By the end of the next decade, 50 million people from India will travel abroad as tourists. Each group will take its religious convictions with it. Those of us who believe that God has made Himself known ultimately in Jesus Christ still make up the largest religious group in the world — Christians.
Encounters between people of different faiths will only increase. If Medinan-type Muslims win, then those encounters may focus on the strength in the arms of each faith’s adherents. If Meccan-type Muslims win, then the encounters may focus on the strength of the teachings of each faith.
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