What does Jihad really require of faithful Muslims

[Hank_Beecher]

@tomndebb

I was hardly talking about the imaginary Islam of your creation,

You are the one with the made up version of Islam.

(or the one you have borrowed from other haters).

Nice personal attack Mr. Moderator!

You would recognize that if you had bothered to note that Islam is NOT monolithic.

It appears you are barely able to comprehend the English language.

Beyond that, I will respect Marley’s instructions to avoid further hijacking this thread.

Oh, I see. You are not going to hijack the thread, you just dropped by to deposit an unsupported claim and a personal attack. It is good to see ignorance so vigorously defended here!

[Marley23]

@Hank_Beecher

It appears you are barely able to comprehend the English language.

That’s much more of an insult than “hater,” and yes, both of these posts continue the hijack. Let it go.

[bldysabba]

@tomndebb

I think that talking about “Islam” as if it is some sort of monolithic structure that is the same in all times or in all places at a particular time factually wrong and foolish. If someone wishes to express concern about Salafists or Wahhabists or political Islamists and the ways in which they have created a variant of Islam that is unhealthy for its practitioners and dangerous to others, I have no problem with that. When people go off on “Islam” and express ignorant beliefs about it and then play No True Scotsman with all the exceptions to their imaginary construct, I find that attitude and its promotion of ignorance to be just about as unsettling as the Islamists.

But nobody(especially not me) is referring to Islam as a a monolith. The post that you’re responding to explicitly acknowledges that Islam is made up of many parts. I feel it is pertinent to speak of Islam as a whole(as opposed to as a monolith) because

i) A majority of Muslims believe there is only one way to interpret Islam. Pew global

The survey asked Muslims whether they believe there is only one true way to understand Islam’s teachings or if multiple interpretations are possible. In 32 of the 39 countries surveyed, half or more Muslims say there is only one correct way to understand the teachings of Islam.

ii) These parts that you refer to as “unhealthy and dangerous” are significant, influential and have been gaining traction. Did you notice that in Indonesia, which you will surely agree is supposed to be among the more moderate Muslim majority nations, fully 30% of Muslims support the death penalty for apostasy? These are also the strains which call for the kind of Jihad that gives Islam a bad name.

iii) There are no equally significant/influential movements to counter the fundamentalists. In the other thread you linked to isolated instances of clerics speaking out, but when I asked for equally significant or comparable movements (or even something that showed promise), you didn’t respond.

iv) I sincerely do believe that all religion needs to go. Religion merely provides fault lines along which to divide humanity. And the more deeply held the religious beliefs, the more dangerous the fault lines. And it is my impression that most Muslims tend to take their religion more seriously than people of other religions. The linked Pew report backs me up. In 26 of 39 countries surveyed, more than 80% of Muslims say that religion is very important in their lives! And the countries where this is not true are generally the most sparsely populated ones in Central Asia.

ETA: Marley - I know some of my earlier posts were off topic. I made this post because while it is a response, I also think it addresses the ‘faithful Muslims’ part of the topic, which I thought is pertinent.

[Chief_Pedant]

So perhaps we can return to the question: What does Jihad require of faithful Muslims?

The short answer is that a very high percentage (in the double digits) of faithful Muslims in many–if not most–of Islamic-majority countries believe that Jihad requires a physical attack against persons who threaten Islam. Threats to Islam include proselytizing Muslims toward other religions, insults against God (such as suggesting God does not exist) or insults directed against religious figures–most notably but certainly not exclusively–Mohammed. (For example, an insult against any given teacher of Islam might be put in the same category.)

By “physical attack” I mean a mandate to personally silence such an individual by any means necessary, including killing them.

More moderate elements in most Islamic majority countries (and there are way more moderates than the personally-violent jihadist element) are willing to create an Islamic governmental structure which takes the “personal” out of jihad and relegates it to an Islamic-based court system. So instead of me needing to personally kill you for insulting Mohammed or proselytizing for a different religion, I can turn you in to the authorities who will put you on trial for that crime. What Jihad requires me to do in this instance is support a general court structure which in turn protects Islam.

Having lived in a Muslim-majority country for many years, I think of the difference along this rough analogy: Do I have a personally responsibility to lynch horse thieves, or should I leave it to the courts? What is not in question across the broad majority of Islamic countries is that severe penalties are in order for “attacking” Islam in any way.

With respect to Jihad as it is usually perceived in the West (personally-undertaken violence by individuals unilaterally defending Islam), it is, as I said earlier, a numbers game. And the numbers are that something like 20 to 40% of “faithful Muslims” in these countries are OK with the kind of personal Jihad that drives suicide bombings and the like. A much larger number are OK with a general Islamic structure that severely punishes blasphemy against Islam (suggesting that Mohammed was kind of a nutcase, for example).

I don’t find the overall approach of a typical radical Jihadist very different from how I understand the motivation of a radical Christian Crusader in the middle ages. The modern dilemma is that the non-Islamic world doesn’t seem to be in the middle ages anymore…

[truthSeeker2]

@bldysabba

The biggest issue I have with Islam though, in particular the radical, politicised version, is how its success(so to speak) inspires the kooks in other religions to start behaving similarly. India and its current experiments with political Hinduism for instance, are in my view almost entirely responses to political Islam. “Fight fire with fire” I’ve heard the fools say, ignoring entirely the fact that setting your house on fire does not make sense.

Can’t agree more with this. This is very relevant in case of India.