“Surely, those who believe, those who are Jewish, the Christians, and the converts; anyone who (1) believes in GOD, and (2) believes in the Last Day, and (3) leads a righteous life, will receive their recompense from their Lord. They have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve” This is how Islam inculcates Muslims not to judge others, because obviously it’s the Lord who does that. Despite this verse and many other verses in Quran which promote for peace and love among humans, still people combine Islam with terror. I have seen many false allegations about Islam in the media. All that made me wonder, did I understand my religion wrong? What really interests me is whenever I look for the word terror on the internet; I find verses from Quran and images of Islamic and Arab figures. Nowadays whenever a Muslim does anything illegal, then Islam goes in trial.
Purpose and questions
Ever since Sep. 11th 2001, Muslims have been discriminated and treated as terrorists worldwide. Unfortunately the media promoted this distortion of the Islamic values by spreading false perceptions about the religion, also the false stereotyping about all Muslims as people. However most of the terrorist attacks take place in Islamic countries, targeting Muslims themselves. Those conflicting facts motivated me to make a comprehensive research regarding this matter. In order to achieve that aim, I should start answering the questions below:
• What is terror?
• What is the Islamic Jihad?
Method
I will present facts about terrorism, furthermore I want to uncover facts about a well known terrorist organization; Al-Qaeda . On the other hand I will seek the true meaning of Islam as a religion in order to define the meaning of Jihad. Finally I will disc...
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...ran “To kill one innocent man or woman is to kill all of humanity; to save one human is to save all of humanity”. The word humanity doesn’t mean only Muslims but all the human beings. I can’t find any reason to give explanation for any terrorist attacks, especially the ones which uses God’s name as a weapon. I am a Muslim and was forced to leave my home country Iraq because of the terrorist acts which turned our life upside down. Everybody endured a terrifying life full of the violent brought upon us by Al-Qaeda. On the other hand I resorted to Sweden, a christen country that provided me safety, a country which I will always be grateful for.
To sum up, I believe that Islam had declared a war against violence 1400 years ago by estimating peace, putting instruction for warfare among people and most importantly ensuring everybody’s right to live a decent life.
Likewise, Goodwin illustrates how the use of categorical terrorism can be seem being used by Al-Qaida during the attacks of 9/11. Nonetheless, it is evident that Al-Qaida is unusual in terms of using terrorism to influence the rise of unity rather than trying to overthrow a standing state. For the purpose of instigating a pan-Islamic revolutionary movement, Al-Qaida tries to unite all Islamic people under one state to develop umma, or Muslim community. The logic of Al-Qaida remained that if their “revolutionaries” could illicit a reaction from the powerful US state, resulting in oppression of the middle-eastern region, that Al-Qaida could, as a result, unite all Muslims to counter this suggested oppression. Although the end goal of Al-Qaida clear failed, it does suggest the organization’s attempt at implementing categorical terrorism.
Violent Jihad as a struggle against one’s enemies has its root in [these] situations. When the Islamic religion spread over the region, Jihad became a religious tenet and assumed the form of a peaceful, internal struggle to strive for the good and reject the evil in one’s action. Violent, external conflict was never r...
A missionary character and mandate birthed Islam. From Mecca to Indonesia and in between all over in previous 1400 years, it has spread its cultural values, beliefs, material wealth, worldview, spiritual aspirations and practices. Jihad, its “sixth pillar” of faith has constantly been a tool of religious struggles, violent wars and struggles on Allah and His prophet’s behalf
... There are those individuals that have a strong hatred for Islam, than we have people that feel sorry for Muslims in America and make them feel like they actually belong to society. However, it would be fantastic if people can start to actually separate terrorists from the Muslim community. Their religion was hijacked by the attack. Like I previously mentioned, we many not seem to stop and realize that our own religion might be part of terrorism. Religion should not matter when we look at a person because there are two kinds of people in the world, the good and bad. If we all had to look at the flaws in everyone’s beliefs and religious we would probably come to the conclusion that we aren’t all terrorists but some people with the same beliefs as us, might be. We tend to find the bad in something and associate it with everything else that is somehow connected to it.
Islam, a religion of people submitting to one God, seeking peace and a way of life without sin, is always misunderstood throughout the world. What some consider act of bigotry, others believe it to be the lack of education and wrong portrayal of events in media; however, one cannot not justify the so little knowledge that America and Americans have about Islam and Muslims. Historically there are have been myths, many attacks on Islam and much confusion between Islam as a religion and Middle Easter culture that is always associated with it. This paper is meant to dispel, or rather educate about the big issues that plague people’s minds with false ideas and this will only be touching the surface.
Muslim children face high level of discrimination at their schools as they are welcomed with negative comments about their religion by the children of other religions. Though abnormal but normally Muslim students are labeled as Terrorists and they are often verbally coerced and mocked to migrate back to their native countries. The overall conclusion can be drawn as the study that United States suffered a lot during the attacks of 9/11 but the ones who are still facing the aftermath of that incident are the Muslims around the globe and especially those present in United States. Various reasons other than 9/11 attacks behind Muslim stigmatization around globe include stereotyping against Muslims in terms of non-flexibility, uncommon culture, simple life style and aggressive behavior.
Most religions specify that violence is not allowed and yet extremists will cause major destruction in the name of their God. However, some people are too quick to blame religion on terrorism (Winchester, 2). In actuality, it is the nature of human beings to prove that their way is right, there way of doing that is using fear and destruction (Winchester, 3). It is not religion that causes the terr...
The prophet did not show mercy or spare the lives of people criticizing Islam. His views remain a big motivator to Muslims that fight other people for belonging to the different religions. Muhammed orders Muslims to fight the non-Muslims everywhere and ensure that they acknowledge that “Allah” is the only God. The position taken by the prophet is openly one that escalates existing tensions and creates war. People from different cultures in the world have different religions that relate to their cultures. Muslims should use ideologies to convert people to Islam and war as directed by the prophet. The use of force calls for retaliatory attacks from non-Muslims who may be unwilling to join the religion. The prophet also instructs the Muslims to kill those who choose to leave the religion in favor of other religions. Killing those who leave creates an example of Muslims waging war to their fellow Muslims. The prophet clearly illustrates Muslim is a religion that does not promote peace by viewing other members as inferior. According to his teachings of the prophet, it is not a sin for a Muslim to kills a non-Muslim. The heavenly rewards Allah gives for killing non-Muslims encourage the Muslims to follow the teachings of killing peaceful and innocent members of other religions. Often people rely on the prophet’s views and teachings to interpret the scriptures they are not able to
a Muslim does such perils, it is blamed on the faith on whole and not
War has always been, and will always be, a necessary action perpetrated by man. There are many reasons for war: rage, passion, greed, defense, and religion, to name a few. When differences cannot be resolved or compromised through mediation with an opposing party, war is the last remaining option. Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun wrote in fourteenth-century Spain, that “War is a universal and inevitable aspect of life, ordained by God to the same extent as the sky and the earth, the heat and the cold. The question of whether to fright is not a significant moral question because fighting is constant; the minor decision not to fight this war will be made only in the context of knowing that another war will present itself soon enough because it is simply always there.”
Robinson, B.A. (2002, October 14). Islam: Is it a religion of violence or of peace.
After 9/11 has induced negative attitudes towards Muslim peoples who tend to be strongly associated with any act of terrorism. The media has played a colossal role in developing such negative association wherein it constantly portrays Muslim people in combination with violent terrorist acts. It does so in a way that they both go hand-and-hand. In other words, it has made it as though the Islamic religion is synonymous with terrorism. The media has perpetuated Muslim stereotypes over the years that followed the 9/11 incident. Because of this, society has developed, and still has developed, this prejudiced mindset about the Islamic religion and the Muslim communities around the world. People immediately assume that any violent act being depicted through the media is the direct result of Muslims. They automatically generate this idea that the act was performed by a Muslim terrorist even when they were not involved whatsoever. Regardless of whether it was true or not, Islamic religion and its Muslim adherents are at the top of societies’ agenda just waiting for the evidence to be generated so that they can then safely blame them for such world affairs. Again, this has led to the attack on the Islamic religion itself wherein people have come to postulate Islam as an act of oppression, violence and hatred towards non-Muslims. Anti-Muslim sentiments and campaigns have resulted from such misinformation the media has been generating and feeding its viewers.
Terrorism is one of the most extensively discussed issues of our time and at the same time it is also one of the least understood. The term itself “terrorism” means many different things to different people, cultures, and races. As a result, trying to define or classify terrorism with one universal definition is nearly impossible. The definition of terrorism used in this research is a reflection of much of the Western and American way of defining it. The definition of terrorism is,
In this world there are many different topics of controversy. With every controversial topic comes different views and arguments explaining why people believe what they do. There are problems that can be just within one country or throughout the entire world. Terrorism affects everyone in the world, specifically us as Americans, which is why it is one of the biggest controversial topics. Of course with a topic as big as terrorism, there are emic and etic perspectives involved. With past history, there are specific countries and religions that we think of when we hear the word terrorism, specifically Afghanistan, located in the Middle East and the Muslim religion in that general area. Being part of the American
Throughout history, violence and religion were always related, however, how this violence is formed and for how it is used differs in every religion and also on one’s view. Even the most serene religions are capable of supporting violence since all religions incorporate a violent nature along with the dedication and belief. In “Understanding Islam”, Kenneth Jost poses a question: Is Islam a religion that promotes violence? His answer is no but he does not answer it directly. He does bring up possible arguments from the opposite side and rebuts it. He “A CBS poll in April 2006 found that 46 percent of those surveyed believe Islam encourages violence more than other religions. A comparable poll four years earlier registered a lower figure: 32 percent. These perceptions are sometimes inflamed by U.S. evangelical leaders... [Franklin] Graham called Islam ‘a very evil and wicked religion’ and [Jerry] Vines, called Muhammed, Islam’s founder and prophet, a “demon-pos...