Islam and violence

I would like to explain what real Islam means to me from my humanistic point of view.

The word Islam means in Arabic; the action of submission or surrender (to the will of God and obedience to His law), its also a verb 'to give' that means give himself to God. When someone dies in Islam we speak; ‘He gives his soul to his creator, God, Allah, in Arabic; ('a'slamh al rohh iela rabah).

This point is very important in the Islam ideology; submission and surrender, the giving of our soul to God. In Islam the Moslem belongs to God, the great creator and the generous giver of all life.

In the Qur'an God tells us a very important story; God created everything in the universe, he loved humans very much (Adam and Eve) so he created them in Heaven (Al janah) and then God ordered the other creatures to pray for them, but Satan refused to obey so he was banned from heaven (Gods kingdom) because he was disobedient. God told Adam and Eve that they had the whole of the Garden of Eden to take what they want from, but from the tree of knowledge they were not to eat anything. Satan was very jealous of humans and wasn't happy with the love that God had for them, so he tried to convince Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, so disguised as a snake the serpent tempted her eat that fruit. This she did and immediately she saw things differently, she tempted Adam and he ate it also. God became angry with them and threw them out of the Heaven which was perfect, into the hard world which was not; they were exiled from heaven and sent to earth.

This story is the core of Islam, without understanding it you will understand nothing about Islam either.

In the Qur’an, we have been told that God is great in everything, in punishment the same as forgiveness. This punishment was very hard for humans, but it wasn’t eternal because God is very generous and always forgives us. For we believe God told us that through Islam we have another chance to return to Heaven if we follow Islamic instruction. Otherwise we will suffer in our life on Earth (our exile) and after death we will go to hell (our eternal punishment), our life on Earth is just a period of observation of our behavior and our only chance to show God regret for our sins.

The punishment is having to come to this life and forgiveness comes at the end of our life. Between the beginning and the end there is long and hard road, Muslims say it is called Islam. The Muslim must walk on that road to the end (death) to gain Gods forgiveness, without knowing if he will achieve forgiveness in his life. He must walk on the road guided by Islamic instructions (Qur'an) and in the footsteps of the great Muslims that have walked the path before us such as the prophet (Mohammad) and his friends (Al Sihaba).

There is so much to say about the road of forgiveness, and maybe we will come to it later for now I would just like to make some points about violence in Islam.

Violence,

Is using force as a way to gain needs or benefits.

Violence is prevalent in all societies and seen in human activities everywhere and all throughout the history of humanity on this Earth, regardless of race, nationality or religion. In spite of their beliefs, most humans have the ability to act violently if they feel challenged or helpless. Any human have intend to act violently according to his needs at first and to his beliefs at second.

Feelings è belief è action.

The human mind works according to this logic, whoever he is Moslem, Christian or Jew. I have spoken much about this subject in previous pages; so now I’ll speak about violence in Islam only.

Islam like other religions calls for peace and love and to deal with other humans with justice, all 3 major religions are from same source (God, our creator). So why is there all that speech about violence in Islam? I’ll answer that question briefly for you now.

Islam is celestial religion, and more than that it’s a state religion let me explain what I mean here; in Islam we believe God gives us a second chance to have his forgiveness by following Islamic instructions. These instructions are divided into 2 categories:

Beliefs.
Work (actions)

Beliefs:

The Muslim must believe in one God (Allah).
The Muslim must believe that Mohammed is a messenger from God.
Qur’an is the holy book of Islam; it contains the words of the God (speech of Allah). The Moslem must believe in every word in Qur’an without any doubt.
The Moslem must work with Qur’an and the prophet (Mohamed) speech (Al Hadith).
The Moslem must believe in death and the Judgment day (Al Yuom alakhir).
The Moslem must show his regret for his sins that he has committed in heaven (in Islam all humans are one).
The Moslem must ask God for his forgiveness, in last minutes before his death.

Work (Actions):

Reading the Qur’an and work with its instructions.
Pray 5 times a day (Salah).
Fast at Ramadan (Al Sayam).
Pilgrim to al Ka’ba in Mecca.
Pay Al Zakah (charity) and Al Khomus (financial tasks, al khomus is a tithe which is one fifth of the Moslem’s yearly income).
Al Jihad fie speal Allah (Al Jihad on the God’s road, in English).

Beliefs are the spiritual side of Islam and actions is the state side. Every Islamic state had it’s own legislation and laws based on the Qur’an.

The Qur’an isn’t just our holy book but it’s also our guide in our daily life. God explained the type of the life that we need to live and the kind of our relationship we should have with other people. All the laws that we need are written in the Qur’an. The Qur’an is the source of our governmental system which is then able to provide us with the justice that we need.

In every state there are systems or ways for people to meet and to discuss common matters, the prayer of Al jim’a (Friday) where the Moslems meet and speak together and when the Imam of the mosque or the Caliph can make a speech about current issues and give specific advice in public. It is a governmental concept, this ceremony is happening in Islam every week. It’s some thing like the weekly speech of the president of the USA every Saturday.

One of the targets is to unify people in Islam, for that Islam uses public ceremonies like the prayer of Al jim’a, fast in Ramadan and pilgrimage to Al Ka’ba. All these ceremonies help to bring Moslems together when they are all doing the same thing at the same time. I think it’s unique amongst all religions.

In any state (government) there are taxes to provide the state with financial resources and to organize economical activities within the state or with other states. In Islam there are financial taxes on the people who are living within the Islamic state. There are many of these taxes like Al Zakah, Al Khomus and Al Jisaya also due to be paid by non-Moslems residences in the state also as the feeling is that all benefit. There are other financial regulations too like the rules to deal with inheritance and others. It's the same as any tax and financial system in any modern state in our recent time; government has to be paid for.

I heard that Al Jisayh (amount of money the non-Moslem must pay) is a racial punishment for non-Moslems. Actually that is not true because the Moslem must pay more than non-Moslem, for example for Al Khomus the Moslem must pay fifth of his income, so if he is paid 1000$ in one month he will pay 200$. So you see it's a lot of money beside that there is Al Zakah and also the Moslem must pay some amount of money but I don't know how much exactly. In some modern countries the foreigners must pay some amount of money yearly to have legal residency (like in Lebanon for example) it's just a tax. The Moslems and non-Moslems must pay with no differences!!!

The last point is; Al Jihad fie speal Allah,

Al Jihad = hard work or excessive work or straggle.

Fie = in or on.

Sepeal = road or way.

Allah = God.

A jihad is an important part in Islamic history and was hard for western people to understand and they used to attack Islam because they believed in the west that a jihad indicated a motive for violence in Islam. I’ll try to explain little about a jihad here.

Like I mentioned before Moslems needs to prove to God that feels regret for his sins and gain God forgiveness. To believe in that isn’t enough but it must be compounded with work, a jihad is one type of required work in Islam.

A jihad can be divided into 2 categories;

work for individual interests.

Islam expects each Moslem to learn (study) lots of skills in his life for different purposes like culture, art, science or even technology. The first word from the Qur’an that the Angel Gabriel (the messenger of God to Mohammad) said was READ. According to that, the Moslem must learn as much as he can about his religion and life, in the past this was hard to achieve with information not very easily accessible, either through distance or cost. The amount of effort that was spent on learning was considerable, so we talk about if a Moslem was doing mojahid (some doing Jihad) or not. That was aimed at spreading learning and culture between Moslems; Creative thinking is also a part of Jihad.

Moslem working to support himself and his family financially is another kind of a Jihad. When a Moslem uses force to defend himself, his family, or his belongings is another kind of Al Jihad.

Work for common interests.

Under this category we can put many different kinds of Moslem activities. Helping is a social activity, helping in spreading Islam or defending Islam is big part of Jihad. Moslems believe to give your self for the sake of Islam is the biggest thing a Moslem can do to have Gods forgiveness. Moslems feel that sometimes fighting and violence is the way to reach Al Shihada (Martyrdom) so from knowing this we can understand why some Moslems are looking to die for the sake of their religion and God. For al shihada there are some rules which have to be followed for it to be right.

Maybe for this reason Islam had been described as a violent ideology. Actually there are regulations for using force in Islam but some people have used these regulations for personal interests now and in the past (like the war between Iraq and Iran) it’s to big a subject to speak about all the history of Islam so I’ll just stick with the general points.

Islam like any other new idea once had backlash from the old religions that existed before. Humans always like to stick with their old systems and beliefs and resist anything new, because its always more comfortable to stay with the things you understand and people feel there could be more risks in the future if they change to new ways.

Islam had been rejected by the old systems like the nonbelievers in Mecca or the Jews and also the Christians, not only rejection but they also tried to stop it from spreading by fighting the prophet and his people. Therefore the Moslems found themselves having to fight for their very existence.

This was not only because Islam was a new ideology, but also because the people who were holding the power at that time felt that Islam composed a threat to their existence. This was especially true of the nonbelievers and Jews in Mecca so they tried to destroy the Islam by every means they could. The Moslems had no other way but to fight back and defend themselves.

The Qur’an, the Moslems holy book, took many years to complete that meant it wasn’t written all at one time. God told the Prophet to spread Islam with words and good deeds, but the nonbelievers used violence against the Moslems. The Moslems were attacked, tortured and killed everywhere in Mecca, after that the prophet left Mecca with his followers and moved to Al Medina. The first battle in Islam was near Al Madina when the nonbelievers tried to attack the Moslems and this was the beginning of violence in Islam.

Like any other state, Islam used force in defense of their beliefs and to fight the nonbelievers in their wish to spread Islam. Here I would just like to explain what a nonbeliever means. Moslems, Jewish and Christians believe in one God (Monotheist), the great creator of everything. A nonbeliever is someone who doesn’t believe that there is one God or maybe doesn’t even believe in anything. Islam didn't call for the fight with the Jews and Christians and believed that God ordered them to spread Islam with words and good deeds first and only using force as the last option.

I hope that article will help you to understand more about Islam.