Submitted by Charles Knighton
“Bulbulia said Islam did not preach violence or terrorism and groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, though claiming Muslim roots, operated outside the teachings of Islam.” Muslims: No terrorists here, headline page 6 article, October 20 Nation
While I believe the accuracy of this article’s headline, actions always speak louder than words. When one considers the current state of world affairs, does it not foster a sense of uncertainty in the general population at the motivations of local Muslims who wish to establish an exclusive Muslim community in Barbados?
Just this summer, many Muslims marched in the streets of London, Paris and other cities to condemn the deaths of Gazans at the hands of Israel. Even in Bridgetown a small group of Muslims, accompanied by Barbados’ patron saint of questionable causes, Mr. David Commissiong, staged a protest. But where are the demonstrations against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s horrific, wide-scale slaughter of Christians, Yazidis, Kurds and fellow Muslims?
Yes, many Muslim clerics and Arab leaders have spoken out (again, words) against ISIS’s depraved aggression. But where is the outrage and passion among mainstream Muslims, who should be furious that fanatics have hijacked their religion? Despite their condemnatory words, does this silence on the part of mainstream Muslims, and silence is an action, indicate their tacit approval?
To much of the non-Muslim world, the brutal extremism of Isis, al-Qaeda, Nigeria’s Boko Haram and other Islamic terrorist groups has come to represent Islam. Muslims cannot respond by mildly saying that what the extremists believe “is not Islam” and by dismissing the events in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere as someone else’s problem. Muslims must either reject the Islamic State and groups like it in the clearest possible terms, inclusive of military force, or the rest of the world will come to think of them as masked men with knives, gleefully butchering people in the name of Allah.
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