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Spirit of Islam Issue 35 November 2015
earth. This assumption is wrong because it is based on a Quranic verse
taken out of context.
Another verse in the Quran says:
(5: 8)
‘Follow the principle of justice [in your
life]’. Misinterpretation of this verse has given it the transitive sense, instead
of the original intransitive sense used in the Quran. The verb used above
does not have any direct object of action, but the wrong interpretation has
taken the object of action as the outside world. Thus, the verse is being
taken to mean that justice should be imposed on people by force. This
misinterpretation has politicised the concept of justice, although such a
notion cannot be inferred from the text.
Any interpretation of the above kind is false. And this falsehood must be
made manifest so that people understand with certainty that the present
militancy has no sanction in Islam, and so that the extremists abandon
their violence on realising that their actions are completely un-Islamic.
The terrorist phenomenon is based on misinterpretation of the
scriptures. It can be eradicated only by universally publicising the right
interpretation of the Islamic texts.
In a speech on July 19, 2015, the British Prime Minister David Cameron,
expressing his anxiety about youngsters travelling to Iraq and Syria to
join the so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL), said,
‘We must de-glamorise the extremist cause, especially ISIL.
This isn’t a pioneering movement—it is vicious, brutal and
fundamentally abhorrent.’
It is true that present Muslim extremism is the result of the glamorisation
of the self-styled concept of global
Khilafat
or Caliphate. The solution lies
in de-glamorising this false ideology developed by extremists through a
misinterpretation of Islamic sources. De-glamorisation of the
Khilafat
can
be achieved only by de-Islamising this concept of the
Khilafat
based on a
political interpretation of Islam. And political Islam has no basis in Islamic
scriptures.
The UN has rightly adopted this dictum:
‘Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men
that the defences of peace must be constructed.’
To eradicate terrorism, we shall have to reengineer the minds of
terrorists along peaceful lines. No other method will be of any avail.
o
Maulana Wahiddudin Khan
editor@thespiritofislam.org