Having studied Islam, read a lot of hadith, read the Qu’ran, and did a bit of studying on Islamic terrorists, I’ve come to this conclusion on Islamic peace, unity, and brotherhood:
- Islamic peace means the peace that only Islam can bring: namely, to spread Islam is to spread peace. This ultimately comes to fruitation in an Islamic country. However, the peace that Islam wants is not a peace founded on justice but a peace founded on obedience: obedience to Allah, obedience to the Qu’ran, and obedience to the rulers.
- Islamic unity and brotherhood means the unity and brotherhood that only Islam can bring: namely, to make of all people converts to Islam is to build up unity and brotherhood in the world. This ultimately comes to fruitation is an Islamic country. However, the unity and brotherhood are not founded on charity or mercy but founded on submission: submission to Allah, submission to the Qu’ran, and submission to the rulers.
- Islamic peace, unity, and brotherhood is a religious ideal that can never fully come into realization, because there are many sects in Islam that differ on theology and on social norms. Moreover, since peace, unity, and brotherhood are founded on submission and obedience, and each sect believes it is fully submissive and obedient to Allah, they can never fully come to agreement and they would constantly wage wars in the name of Allah.
- This brings us to Islamic terrorists. There are extremists and terrorists in every group and movement, but the Islamic terrorists are one of the most violent and deadly, because they wholeheartedly believe that they are fighting for Allah and no one can tell them otherwise: anyone who so dose is either ignorant of the Qu’ran or a hyporitical Muslim. Hence, they attack Muslims who don’t support terrorism. Some terrorists, however, are really bent on evil ends and only use Islam to appear good, to confuse, and to make an excuse for evil.
I admire Muslims’ desire for a moderate Islam, but it just isn’t possible so long as Islam continues to believe that submission and obedience are the keys to peace, unity, and brotherhood. If Islam based peace on justice and unity and brotherhood on mercy and charity, than I can see a moderate Islam in the future.
While I have seen responses like this before, I find it odd when such responses come from supposed monotheists. What else is all of life but submission to, or giving oneself back to God in all of one’s existence. Everything we are comes from God, the totality of our individuality is what it is only because it is in and from the One. It must therefore be the case that all of life, including political life, a life lived in submission to God. Christians can’t possibly think anything different and remain monotheistic.
The idea that politics is not submission is the illusion that somehow one can be one’s own creator, at least this area. One can see how an atheist might want to hold such a position. It is self-destructive and impossible to carry through in reality, but it is at understandable. Nonetheless the atheist too much deal with the reality they receive their existence, the totality of who they are, from beyond themselves. The attempt to avoid this politically in the establishment of secular governments and, in particular, liberal governments, explains the constant fight of those governments against tradition and the gratuity of creation: secularity resents not being its own creator, resents receiving itself through tradition and embodiment.
But if you are Muslim (and more broadly, if you are monotheistic), this gratuity ought not be resented, but embraced, as the basis of freedom. One is only free in God. It is precisely as beings, embodied through time, that we receive and know God. Tradition becomes the way of revelation: a revelation which is eternal, yet always new.
The problem with the extremists is that they fear the gratuity of creation. They want to possess God instead of receiving themselves and God through history. To compensate they try and absolutize one particular moment of history, contain God and deny the wisdom of the creator who made us in time and body. They make an idol of the Prophet (pbuh) and the Salaf. By focusing on a certain moment, or a certain thing, they do not submit to God, but to something else, and treat God as something to be owned.
Ali (as) said, “The Qur’an is a book covered between two flaps, and it does not speak. It must therefore necessarily have an interpreter. Human beings are the only ones who can be its interpreters (Nahj-ul-Balagha, ser.124).” Islam is about finding oneself included within the revelation of God in every aspect of life including, of course, the political. That revelation is ultimately a revelation of peace and unity, because Allah (swt) is Peace and the One. There is no other path to peace than finding oneself in the One: i.e., submission, Islam.
wa Allahu alam.
Spot on!
Haha…Good one!