Muslims need to face up to the violence of the Koran
by Gavin Ashenden, The Times:
On New Year’s Day, President al-Sisi of Egypt made a remarkable speech . How, he asked, could belief in Islam make Muslim nations a “source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction”?
“Is it possible,” he added, “that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants — that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live?”
He was asking where the mechanism of restraining Islamic violence lay.
But this heroic intervention has not sparked a worldwide theological debate amongst Muslims. The only perceivable response was the slaughter of 21 Egyptian Copts by Isis in Libya.
To understand the lack of protest by moderate Muslims, we need to look at Islam on its own terms and not try to see it through “Christianised” spectacles.
Study of the Koran by Muslim scholars is more geared to its application than to challenging its authority, its internal coherence or its integrity. The Reformation was a European and a Christian phenomenon. To imagine it will or should happen to Islam is nothing more than western chauvinism.
Jesus made it very easy in the gospels when he explained what principles took priority. First the adoration of God the Father and secondly the wellbeing of our neighbour. As for enemies, they were to be loved and forgiven. But Islam appears to lack such clarity.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
