3/8/2015 Burning in the Name of God | HOME CONTRIBUTORS & CONTACT SUPPORT US SHOP CLOSER MEDIA ENQUIRIES REVIEW HOME › COMM ENTARY › BURNING IN THE NAME OF GOD Burning in the Name of God BY BELLACALEDONIA on FEBRUARY 4, 2015 • ( 31 ) Stewart Bremner Design Newsnet Farage attacked for attacking immigrants and sheltering bankers BROADCAST NEWS 13: Lies, damned lies and statistics Land Matters By Alastair McIntosh Smith Commission & the Crown Estate Fast on the back of Charlie Hebdo, the callously choreographed The Only Anti-Austerity burning of the Jordanian air force pilot, Muadh al-Kasasbeh, is likely Plan in Town to reinforce in the eyes of much of the world the idea that Islam is synonymous with murder, and that all religions are a danger, because Commission on Local Tax Reform (turning a blind eye to secular warmongering), “they lead to war.” Earlier this week I was in a Pakistani-Scottish friend’s newspaper Media Lens shop. He said he had been listening to an imam interviewed about the Paris atrocities on Radio 5 Live. The poor man squirmed as he ‘A Conspiracy Of Silence’ tried to explain that true Islam is a religion of peace. The militants, he – HSBC, The Guardian And The Defrauded argued, had stolen its good name. However, the station was giving British Public him no quarter. “But the Qur’an says this, and Muhammad said that,” and to my young friend, it felt as if his religion, and with it is culture 'Corrosive, Shallow, Herd-Like And Gross' - http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2015/02/04/burning­in­the­name­of­god/ 1/24 3/8/2015 Burning in the Name of God | and identity, were themselves being executed over the air in a Peter Oborne And The kangaroo court. Corporate Media So, what does the Qur’an and the Prophet (peace be upon him) say Follow our RSS Feed about violence? First, it is true that all three of the Abrahamic faiths – here… Judaism, Christianity and Islam – speak in differing degrees of nuance, either because they express an historical evolution of the RSS - Posts human understanding of the divine, or because they are muddled messages, or because they seek to speak to people in differing contexts and differing stations of understanding. Email Subscription For example, Christian “just war” theory hinges most strongly on post-Christ teachings attributed to Saint Paul where, in Romans 13:4, Enter your email the authority of a state ruler is legitimised on the basis that, “he address to subscribe to beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger this blog and receive to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” This is further augmented notifications of new by the arguments of Augustine and Aquinas, albeit in tortured posts by email. contravention of the Christ of the four gospels who taught and Join 38,509 other practiced, not “just war” theory, but full-on nonviolence. followers The acceptance of “just war” theory was the victor’s narrative Enter your email address imposed on an earlier pacifist Christianity as it became cooped into Constantine’s Roman Empire around the year 312. Such is the ground Sign me up! to which most mainstream Christians today feel reconciled – the exception being what the World Council of Churches recognises as the “historic peace churches” of the Mennonites, the Quakers and the Follow us on Twitter Church of the Brethren (German Baptists). Augustine’s theory has the advantage, at least, of placing constraints on warfare, including such RT @iainmacwhirter: Labour Tory Coalition? principles as waging war only as a last resort, by “legitimate” The grandest suicide authorities, proportionately, and with safeguards for non- note in history. combatants. This remains the lynchpin of military ethics as is iainmacwhirter.wordpres explicitly taught in most western military academies to this day and s.com/2015/03/07/lab … … 3 hours ago as encoded in the Geneva Conventions. @MrMcEnaney that's it In comparison, Islam holds much the same principles, some of them 4 hours ago even more authoritatively encoded. The core Qur’anic text mandating Follow @bellacaledonia “just war” is Surah II:190: Fight in the cause of God Top Posts & Pages Those who fight you, But do not transgress limits; For God loveth not transgressors. Those limits are set out in various hadiths or oral traditions of the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him). As P.J. Stewart points out in his chapter, “The Prophet at War” in Unfolding Islam, the hadiths specify: http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2015/02/04/burning­in­the­name­of­god/ 2/24 3/8/2015 Burning in the Name of God | • Not to kill women and children (Bukhari 32) • POWs to be treated humanely (Bukhari 52) • Not to mutilate the dead (Sira 388) • No-one should be killed by burning (Bukhari 52) On such a basis, the overwhelming majority of contemporary Islamic thinkers hold that terrorism is un-Islamic. (Some extend this to all of modern warfare that kills by firepower.) For example, Scotland’s most From the Bella Vaults senior Sunni Muslim, Dr Bashir Mann, a past president of the Glasgow Central Mosque, has been outspoken for years on this point Select Month in his letters and articles in the British and Pakistani press. He draws attention to Surah V:35 of the Holy Qur’an: “If any one slew a person [unjustly] it would be as if he slew the whole people.” Actions & Campaigns In a current effort to redeem the good name of Islam, the Muslim Attac Council of Britain features prominently on its website a forthright response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre: Autonomous Centre ECAP Nothing justifies the taking of life. Those who have killed in the name of our religion today claim to be avenging the insults made against False Economy Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace. But nothing is more Holyrood 350 immoral, offensive and insulting against our beloved Prophet than such a callous act of murder. Scotland CND Stop the War To return the focus to Jordan, in 2004 King Abdullah II, out of concern over the use of Islam to justify terrorism, brought into being the The Bridge Network Amman Message. Here leading scholars from all major branches of Treasure Islands Islam declared infighting between Moslems to be anathema. Today this would include the Islamic State’s war on the rival Shi’a tradition, Word Power though until it sprung upon them, the Jordanians had not anticipated the rise of such a force as ISIS. Alt News When an organisation or individuals kill innocent parties, or kill by Common Dreams burning, they violate fundamental principles of Islam. Such is the idolatry of violence – the worshipping (or “giving worth towards”) of a Media Lens false god – the perversion of Islam into which alienated, angered and Newsnet emptied young Jihadists are drawn. It is the antithesis of the opening Pulse Media verses of the Qur’an, known as “the Essence of the Book” – “In the name of God (Allah), the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be Scottish Review to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds.” Wikileaks Even within the terms “just war” theories, even without recourse to the stronger ethos of nonviolence, terrorism perverts religion, and all Blogroll religions, to idolatry. The problem with idolatry and the reason why it remains a pressing modern spiritual problem is that it “can’t get no 107 Cowgate satisfaction.” It is a false-satisfier. It falsely satisfies the spiritual http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2015/02/04/burning­in­the­name­of­god/ 3/24 3/8/2015 Burning in the Name of God | imperative, irrupting into life (as it can do) as an innate human need. A Few Kind Words That need, arguably reflecting ultimate reality – the need for profound Abbeyhill Chronicle interconnectedness, the need for a life that is embedded in love. In War is a Force that Gives us Meaning the Pulitzer Prize-winning war Abysssia Henry correspondent, Chris Hedges, reveals the psychological Alba Matters consequences of worshipping a god that demands human sacrifice to this end and is only satisfied by death (pp. 10 & 162): Andrew Barr Andrew McPake Arc of Prosperity In the beginning war looks and feels like love. But unlike love it gives nothing in return but an ever-deepening Baffie Box dependence, like all narcotics, on the road to self- Barefoot Crofter destruction. It does not affirm but places upon us greater Bellegrove Belle and greater demands. It destroys the outside world until it is hard to live outside war’s grip. It takes a higher and higher Better Nation dose to achieve any thrill. Finally, one ingests war only to Bid for Freedom remain numb. The world outside war becomes, as Freud wrote, “uncanny”. The familiar becomes strangely unfamiliar Both Sides the Tweed – many who have been in war find this when they return Bright Green Scotland home. The world we once understood and longed to return to Burdzeyeview stands before us as alien, strange, and beyond our grasp. Caledonian Mercury Calum Cashley The motivations of young European Muslims who go off to fight for the Carmelo Ruiz Islamic State – and they are numbered more in dozens than in hundreds – is probably very similar to bygone Christians who went off Chap Chap to the crusades. In his definitive study written in Scotland, A History City Strolls of the Crusades, Sir Steven Runciman described crusader ideology as having been, “nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the Cornish Republican name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.” Cosmopolitan Scum We won’t start to tackle the roots of terrorism unless we recognise Craig Murray that we’re all in this together.