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After the Paris attacks, here’s how to think about the relationship between ISIS and Islam and Hillary Clinton

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The horrific terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night have 
sparked yet another debate about the Islamic State and Islam. 
The question boils down to this:Does Islamic scripture justify 
the violent actions of ISIS?

It’s worth noting at the outset that Islamic scripture is vast. 
It’s not just the Koran; it includes many statements later 
attributed to Muhammad, the founder of Islam, by his followers. 
Muslim scholars debate the authenticity of these scriptures like 
Christian scholars debate the authenticity of various passages 
in the Gospels.

Because the body of scripture is so large, it’s full of 
contradictions. Christians, for example, are both praised as 
brethren and scorned as infidels. Different schools of thought 
proliferated in early Islam to make sense of the contradictions. 
The Islamic State belongs to one of the more austere of those 
schools, so it’s already predisposed to intolerant readings of 
Islamic scripture.

Just as there are many passages in Islamic scripture that one 
could cite to justify religious intolerance, there are plenty 
more that justify violence. After all, Muhammad waged a war to 
establish a religious state. He fought infidels, assassinated 
rivals and executed prisoners. His career has a lot in common 
with the leaders of the ancient Hebrews, who established their 
own religious state.

Still, Muhammad was not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He could be 
lenient with his adversaries, make truces with his enemies and 
collaborate with the infidels for the common good.

The Islamic State elides these parts of Muhammad’s career or 
argues that they don’t apply today; its enemies are simply too 
powerful or too ruthless. The best example of this is the 
burning of the Jordanian pilot. Muhammad expressly forbade the 
burning of apostates, which is what the Islamic State labeled 
him.

Recognizing the contradiction, the Islamic State pointed to 
other scriptures where Muhammad endorsed retaliating against 
your enemies with the same sort of violence they used against 
you. The Jordanians dropped bombs on Islamic State targets, so 
ISIS had the right to incinerate one of Jordan’s pilots. If one 
scripture doesn’t justify ISIS’s violence, the Islamic State 
will find another one.

Which brings us to the attacks in Paris.

The Islamic State claims that the attacks are justified by 
scripture, but most Muslims claim they are not. As someone who’s 
spent most of his adult life studying Islamic scripture and the 
career of Muhammad, I find it implausible that Muhammad would 
have sanctioned such attacks were he alive today; he made too 
many pronouncements against attacking noncombatants.

Then again, the Islamic State can point to passages in scripture 
and incidents in Muhammad’s life to make the case.

Ultimately, it’s for Muslims to decide whether the Islamic State 
is being faithful to scripture. For the nonbelievers, it’s 
enough to recognize that Islamic scripture is contradictory when 
it comes to violence and to rejoice that most Muslims makes 
sense of these contradictions in a very different way than ISIS.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-
faith/wp/2015/11/14/after-the-paris-attacks-heres-how-to-think-
about-the-relationship-between-isis-and-islam/
 

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After the Paris attacks, here’s how to think about the relationship between ISIS and Islam and Hillary Clinton "Bill Clinton Started The Iraq War" <liars@nbc.com> - 2015-12-11 05:00 +0100

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