Islam and Terrorism by Mark Gabriel

Growing up in Lagos as a Christian with Muslim neighbours all around me was fun. I knew our religion was somewhat different from theirs but believed what separated us was just that they had different heroes from us; with us, it was Jesus Christ and them Muhammad. We attended our services unmolested or unchallenged as they did their many prayers and just like we do on Sundays, they have Fridays’ dressed-up grand assemblies. Despite the veil differentness which we saw as only ‘of mode of prayers and different heroes,’ it was a perfectly pleasant and non judgemental relationship. And, just as they always looked forward to and participated fully in our celebrations of Christ’s annual birthdays and all other Christian rites, so we also fully celebrated and habitually looked expectantly and with glee at their hero’s anniversaries and Islamic ceremonies.

And up till when I became adult, the dramas of sin and redemption, absolution, preaching, conversion were all engagements done in private and in cordiality. Many of my Christian friends have turned Muslims and Muslims, turned Christian; back and forth several times, without the slightest qualms and we remained friends, hardly ever bordering what creed the other belong.

We, the Christians obviously never were or seen as threat to them, and none of them till this day had ever been threat to us. So, it always is oddly disturbing reading Mark Gabriel’s emotionally and absorbing accounts of Islam and Muslims objective, based on Quranic injunction towards Christians. And, like his other books, Mark in ‘Islam and Terrorism,’ coats Islam and its faithful as violent and bloodthirsty hounds on the prowl for casualties.

            EXCERPT

Mark writes ‘...I couldn’t change the reality of what I read. As a Muslim, I realized I had two options: I could continue to embrace the “Christianized” Islam-the Islam of peace, love, forgiveness and compassion, the Islam tailor-made to fit Egyptian government, politics and culture-thereby keeping my job and status.

I could become a member of the Islamic movement and embrace Islam according to the Quran and the teaching of Muhammad. Muhammad said, “I left you with something (the Quran) if you hold on to what I left with you, you will not be led astray forever.’

Many times, I tried to rationalize the kind of Islam I was practicing by saying, well, you are not too far out. After all, there are verses in the Quran about love, peace, forgiveness and compassion. You only need to ignore the part about jihad and the killing of non-Muslims

I went to every interpretation of the Quran trying to avoid jihad and killing non-Muslims yet I kept finding support of the practice. The scholars agreed that Muslims should enforce jihad on infidels (those who rejects Islam) and renegades, (those who leave Islam). Yet jihad was not in harmony with other verses that spoke of living at peace with others.

In one place, alcohol was forbidden in another it was allowed; (compare Surah 5:90-91 with Surah 47:15). In one place the Quran says Christians are very good people who love and worship one God, so you may be friends with them ( Surah 2:62, 3:113-114). Then you find other verses that say Christians must convert, pay tax or be killed by the sword ( Surah 9:29).

All the contradictions in the Quran were really causing problem for my faith. I spent four years to earn my bachelor’s degree, graduated second out of a class of six thousand. Then, there were another four years for my Masters and three more for my Doctorate – all studying Islam. I knew the teaching well.

The scholars had theological solutions to these problems but I wondered how Allah almighty and all powerful, could either contradict Himself so much or change His mind so much.

Based on the above quotations from the Quran and many more other revelations, Mark Gabriel concludes that, ‘the history of Islam, which was,’ his ‘special area of study, could only be characterised as river of blood.’ Islam,’ he says is devotion centred on mission ‘of revolution and war. Islam doesn’t want a little piece of the world-it wants it all.’ He went on to say, that it is the teaching of Islam on jihad that have produced terrorists who through indoctrination seem capable of any kind of evil in the name of Allah. And, the people (terrorists) are victims of the philosophy of Islam. He backs these with the following verses; Surah 4:95, 8:16, 9:29, 9:81, etc.

He writes that though the moderate Muslims would point to the ‘nice’ verses in the Quran to try to invalidate his claims, he says, such verses do not represent the overall true sense of Islamic articulation because every one of such verses is blighted and countered by a worse contradictory command certified by ‘naskih,’ (meaning new revelations to Muhammad overrides previous or preceding revelations on same subject matter). He compares Surah 2:19 and 5:90, and 2:62 and 9:5, 5:51.

Mark argues that jihad is a contractual obligation of every Muslims with Allah and the only guaranteed assurance of a direct ticket to heaven. He cites Surah 4:74; ‘Let those (believers) who sell the life of this world for the thereafter fight in the cause of Allah, and whose fights in the cause of Allah, and is killed or gets victory. We shall bestow on him great reward,’ and the over flogged and often quoted Surah 9:89; that guarantee blissful forever life after.

The reality according to Mark is that Muslims practice Islam in shades of adherences: There are the moderate secular leaning Muslims who though overtly reject Jihad yet selectively take on other ‘cultural trappings of the Quranic messages,’

There are also traditional Muslims: one half, who though traditional, are moderates. They do not see jihad as an Islamic battle cry to ‘fight and destroy,’ but crusaders’ call to stand against societal man inhumanity to man, help tackle issues of the decadence, lust, corruption, immorality, etc in the social order. To these halves, jihad also is an individual’s deep meditational and physical struggles to remain upright and pious in the face of the many worldly social traps and vices. And, the other half he says are those who though comprehend jihad for what it truly is; as physical warfare and hostility, would rather not risk being directly involved or have their immediate families carry out the execution of the call to arms because of their place and standing in the society and the implication of being found out, branded and loosing honours.

The secular and traditionally moderates Mark infers, who chose to be selective in what section of the Quran they practice; leaning more on the Medina revelations that speaks of peace, love, compassion, etc, do not represent faithful Islam, even if they make up the majority of Muslims around the world, the bulk of whom are in the western countries.

Personally, I think perhaps this also is a lesson to Christians not sure of their devotional level of best practice. For, if Mark’s position is that selective practicing of the ‘nice/good’ aspect of the Quran is the yardstick for faithless Islamic religiousness, then possibly, all those Christians who selectively pick the messages and model their lives to only aspects of the characters of ‘God’s chosen men and women’ in the old testament of the bible; believing and adhering to the nice, kind, sweet and softly, softly compassionate and no violence approach of Christ who rejected and in His messages as was His life, did not support or advocate the ‘eye for an eye,’ philosophy of the old testament or the forceful, bloodletting and warring to convert practitioners of other religions/pagans/gentiles (present day, seen as those not born-again) practiced by the then Christian Crusaders, are doomed; damned as not true practitioners of the virtuous Christian faith!

Anyway, Mark’s analysis continues: There are core few vociferous, vicious and permanently in depth of despair fundamental Muslims who are the criminals, narcissists, evil angels and wardens of terrorism. They are the ones who gather the funds, recruit, train, and dispatch ‘pun’ fanatics responsible for the killings and havocs all over the world. Mark writes that these are the real Muslims; for they faithfully follow the precepts in the Quran and wholesomely live like Prophet Muhammad as documented in the books of Hadith.

Marks underlying reasons for writing this book is simple and straightforward: he is out to prove that it is jihad that has metamorphosed into today’s terrorism: that terrorism is not rooted in the social, political or cultural set-up or estrangement as some would claim but purely the symptom of the philosophical indoctrination rooted in the precepts of the Quran and the intolerant and totalitarian disposition exemplified in the books of the Hadith.

 Clearly, Mark is a missionary; a Christian disciple, an evangelist who sees Christianity as the answer. That is, the conversion and reorientation of every Muslims, anywhere found into the Christianity, the antidote to the menace of terrorism.

Root Cause of Terrorism

However, since terrorism is the use of violence for achieving particular selfish group or personal goals; to instil fears in others (people) to stop them from challenging illegal acts or domination of their will to act, then I think that perhaps we should look beyond Mark’s simplistic conclusion that the Quran is the root cause of today’s worldwide terrorism.

To find the answer(s), we need to answer some basic questions of: why would people resort to violence to seek attention or, to seize power? Be crazy enough to want to annihilate others at whims or why do such person, persons or group have ready pools and dedicated pool of recruits ready to die for a cause they did not initiate or be easily hypnotised and remain obsessed with the dazzle of new found powers and ability to challenge the power that be?

My answers rope in these: The real root of terrorism or all organised criminality are no accident or sudden irruption of irrationality but deep-seated in the ways we live and relate to each other. In the order of society; cultivated by society that nurtures nuts who believe it is their God-given right to dominate others; sick people seeking supremacy by any course; society that breeds sets of neurotic and irrational people who deluded about their place in humanity and taking advantage of the injustices of the twisted social order that generationally profits some leaving most others, weakened, intimidated, permanently disenfranchised, castrated, alienated and are left to scavenge in abject poverty and misery. When the first group, the narcissist or egoists; whether in the guise of racism, organised crime, fundamentalism, bigotry, nationalism, ethnicity, dictatorship, fraternises with the second group; the alienated, then terrorism and all other criminalities in the world, are the end result.

The alienated and narcissists constitute the majority voiceless and toothless mass in the society but locked outside the powerful inner circles though are witnesses and participants in the social order; some narcissists are wealthy and have some influence, but because they too, like the alienated cannot help shape, control, direct or be beneficiaries in discourses, they feel cheated. Repelled at every steps by the society in every conceivable way, the alienated sooner give in, ready to settle for whatever crumps are thrown at them. Their longing for a change in their existence doused and extinguished by their need for survival. The narcissists however would not let go the struggle or let their longings be quenched. They plot in every plausible ways to overturn the status quo, seeking platforms such as brotherhood, sisterhood, nationhood, race, ideology, philosophy, etc to transform themselves. The implicit aim of the narcissist is the establishment of supremacy in the society; to continue to reign, to rule, remain the oppressor or to wrench power rather than remain on the sideline. As demonstrated in history by Hitler, who grabbed power on the platform of race as was the American KKK, fighting not to concede or share power by using race supremacy; or in Nigeria, the Niger Delta militants, who on the pretext of crusading against underdevelopment went on rampage until they now have a share of the roguery and oil plundering in their region; the Crusaders used Christianity; others have used explorations, wealth, ethnicity, nationhood, religions, like the bokoharam, al-jihad, al-qaeda and other similar terrorist groups, whose platform is the Islamic religion.

Profile of Terrorists and their Organisation:

The obsessive narcissists involved in terrorism are master tacticians: Armed with the idea or thought, they align themselves with all others with similar deluding self importance and form an organisation. Such organisation of mutual admirers helps to reaffirm their manifesto, refuting anything not in the extreme and interlaces their survival by sets of canons that make certain the practice of totalitarianism. Depending on the circumstance, such group acknowledging their weakened position set off by establishing favourable terrain for themselves through propaganda and putting themselves forward as defenders of the poor, making promises of better social order and, or creating fears of the ‘polluted’ others’ ideology and in doing these find ready listening ears and pun-recruits among the mass alienated.

The organisation through continuous falsehood, lies, thuggery, armed-robberies and other forms of criminalities build up treasures and, when further armed with wealth and foot soldiers, become militant. It then sets out to extend its influence and control on the society. At the point of militancy, the organisational founding goal based on ideology is quickly jettison taken over by ego-tripping or narcissism. The ideology is only then needed as means of coercion, recruitment, justification or for repressive practices.

Conclusion

So, to put blame of terrorism on the door step of the Quran and not the twisted practitioners who manipulate the precepts to propagate falsehood is inappropriate. Furthermore, clearly anyone who would take the time to read the Quran, bible, other religious texts and historical book, would discover that like all human practical living, teachings and activities, inconsistencies, inequality, manipulation, etc has been, are and will be the order of society, no matter the ideology. It only behold on us, people who are liberal, humane, just and considerate to continue the struggle to demand justices and curtail, by whatever mean, the excesses of the narcissists among us.