Muslims Start To Debate The Role That Islam Plays In Fueling Terrorism And Violence

Rally held in London on February 11, 2006 to protest the Danish Muhammad cartoons. The Augean Stables

AP: Violence fuels debate among Muslims over interpreting faith

WNU Editor: The debate has been ongoing for a very long time .... but I have definitely seen this shift accelerate in the past two years. I have also seen more Muslim religious leaders and clerics openly condemning terror attacks done in the name of Allah during this same period. Why now and not before? .... that is still open to debate. But I for one am grateful that it is happening .... and while many still push an intolerant version of Islam .... Saudi blogger Badawi 'flogged for Islam insult' (BBC) .... I am now seeing more and more other Islamic voices who condemn this for what it is .... ‘We All Now Look Like Terrorists Before the World!” (Raymond Ibrahim).

Will The Charlie Hebdo Massacre Fuel Europe's Growing Anti-Islam Movements?

Patrick Donahue, Bloomberg: Paris Killings Seen Fueling Europe’s Anti-Islam Movements

WNU Editor: The problem is not growing anti-Islam movements .... the problem .... a problem that is escalating worldwide .... explosively so with the rise of the Islamic State .... are the terror attacks and the killings that are being done in the name of Islam. As I have said on more than one occasion .... it is only those within the Muslim community who are in a position to put a stop to all of this .... but they themselves are now at war with each other. Muslims are killing Muslims .... and they are doing so at a rabid rate throughout the Middle East and North Africa. And no .... I do not see any good solutions or outcomes from all of this. If there is a solution (at least in the West) .... it is probably the time to now have Western governments engage with Muslim religious leaders who reside in the West to have that long needed debate on Mohammad, Jihad, and the teachings of the Koran .... and why some parts of it are wrong and not at all applicable to the 21rst century ... and to have that taught in the mosques Unfortunately .... I do not see that happening .... and for not lack of trying. As to the growth of anti-Islam movements in Europe .... what surprises me is not the growth .... what surprises me is that it took so long .... and yes .... the Charlie Hebdo massacre .... and future terror attacks done in the name of Islam .... all of this is going to unfortunately fuel Europe's growing anti-Islam movements.

Update: I do not think he is the right person to push this agenda, but at least it is a start .... From Egypt's leader, an ambitious call for reform in Islam (AP)

Is It Wrong To Equate Islam With Violence?

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople (2L) accompanies Pope Francis as he departs from Istanbul after a three day visit, November 30, 2014. Pope Francis said Islamic militants were carrying out a "profoundly grave sin against God" in Syria and Iraq, calling on Sunday for inter-religious dialogue and action against poverty to help end the conflicts there. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov

Pope Says It Is Wrong To Equate Islam With Violence -- Reuters

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Sunday that equating Islam with violence was wrong and called on Muslim leaders to issue a global condemnation of terrorism to help dispel the stereotype.

Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, told reporters aboard his plane returning from a visit to Turkey that he understood why Muslims were offended by many in the West who automatically equated their religion with terrorism.

Francis' predecessor, Benedict XVI, caused storms of protest throughout the Islamic world in 2006, when he made a speech that suggested to many Muslims that he believed Islam espoused violence.

Read more ....

My Comment: I would say that radical Islamists around the world are in disagreement with him .... and by deliberating targeting those who do not share their view and interpretation of Islam .... they are making a mockery of his claim that it is "wrong to equate Islam with violence" with each new and disturbing atrocity. As for the Pope's call to Muslim leaders to issue a global condemnation of terrorism .... I have heard this same call from many other leaders over the years .... and I predict the same result .... most of these Muslim leaders are going to remain silent.

We Are At War With Radical Islam

The Geography of Horror -- Peter Berger, American Interest

We are in effect at war with Islamist radicalism. It is very unhelpful if this reality is denied, as the Obama administration has tried to do.

Two news items, spread within days over all the media, must be seen together so as to disclose an ominous reality. One was the news that Meriam Ibrahim and her family had finally arrived safely in the United States. The other news was that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was proclaimed Caliph of the new Islamic State. The story of Meriam Ibrahim tells of yet another horrendous cruelty perpetrated in the name of Islam. The new Caliphate expresses the intention of globalizing the horror.

There are two ways of looking at the record of these atrocities. One is to see them as intrinsic to Islam, the other as an aberration of genuine Islam. The first view is rarely proposed publically in the United States, though it may be quietly held by some Americans less affected by the prevailing culture of tolerance. It is more openly stated in Europe, for example by the Dutch populist Geert Wilders, who admitted that he hated Islam as an enemy of freedom (among other things he proposed that the Quran, like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, should be banned in the Netherlands). It is also interesting to compare the different attitudes to Islamist terrorism by the successive administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Immediately after the attacks of September 2001 President Bush made a speech in which he declared that we are not at war with Islam but with terrorism. (He also said that “Islam means peace”, which it does not. A linguistically challenged White House speech writer must have confused two Arabic words—salaam/”peace”, a common form of salutation among Muslims, and aslama/”submission”, the root of the religion’s name. Not that this matters; Bush meant well.)

Read more ....

My Comment:The White House may deny that we are at war with radical Islam .... but as recent incidents have revealed .... radical Islamists certainly do believe that they are at war with us.