Terrorists and Their Quranic Delusions
Egypt’s grand mufti on ugly distortions of Islam masking a hunger for power and bloodshed.
(reprinted from the Wall Street Journal April 9, 2015)
by Shawki Allam the Grand Mufti of Egypt
Terrorist groups who flagrantly use religion as a cloak to cover up acts of violent extremism cannot hide their serious ideological flaws. These reveal the warped logic and ill-informed and unauthentic sourcing from religious texts as they try to justify what in reality is an insatiable desire for power, control and bloodshed.
The first ideological flaw is related to the terror groups’ abominable crimes against the Quran and hadith, or reports of prophetic statements, when they take the Quranic verses and the Prophet’s words out of context and imbue them with savage meanings. The terrorists are totally ignorant and incapable of comprehending the Quran and hadith or the objectives of Islamic law and its principles.
As a result, the words of God in the Quran or of the Prophet—which should fill hearts of believers with peace and mercy and reverence for religion—are replaced with ugly distortions that fill hearts with repulsion and fear. The radicals willfully misquote or misuse Quranic verses, and then hold tight to their deviant interpretations.
These groups have the audacity to dismiss any Quranic verses that don’t fit their claims. They declare unilateral war against both Muslims and non-Muslims who don’t share their barbarous mentality. They completely disregard the Quranic conception of human brotherhood and peaceful relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.
For example, in the Quran, God says, “O Mankind. We created you from a single pair of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. And God has full knowledge and is well acquainted with all things” (49:13).
The Quran urges the embrace of people from different religious affiliations, cultural backgrounds and racial origins. Yet the radical groups insist that anyone who rejects their extremist ideology is a legitimate target who may be killed. This lunacy stands in total contrast to the clear Quranic message in which God says, “If anyone kills a person, it is as if he kills all mankind while if anyone saves a life it is as if he saves the lives of all mankind” (5:32).
Second, the radicals narrow the concept of jihad and restrict it to combat and slaughter while claiming that such distortions represent the jihad legislated by God. The truth is that jihad, in essence, is the human endeavor of striving to improve the individual and the society and to bring life closer to the divine model. The extremists have made physical jihad an end in itself, when in fact it is one means of seeking individual spiritual understanding of God’s path for us, or guidance.
Whenever jihad deviates from this goal it backfires, becoming a means of outright harm that repels people from God’s religion. The extremists cannot declare “jihad” on behalf of 1.5 billion Muslims. Simply put, the declaration of armed struggle is the prerogative of the ruler of the state or his deputy. These terrorist groups, as nonstate actors, are not allowed to declare it.
Third, it is delusional for these terrorists to think that those who were killed in the line of “duty” are considered martyrs and will be rewarded with paradise. The terrorists who are killed aren’t considered martyrs according to Islamic law, even if they considered their act to be a form of jihad, had sincere intentions and were acting out of ignorance. Good intentions don’t justify illegal acts—and it is totally prohibited by Islam to kill innocent people. Thus terrorist acts like 9/11 in the U.S., 7/7 in London or any other similar horrendous attacks are sheer murder and have nothing to do with jihad.
In sum, the noble form of physical jihad—which is waged by legitimate state authorities to fend off aggression and establish justice—has nothing to do with the supposed jihad of these terrorists, who practice nothing more than the ruthless mass murder of innocents. Jihad is a war fought with honor and guided with moral codes of conduct.
Since terrorist groups have the audacity to interpret from the Quran selectively to suit their own agendas, their deviant ideology must be debunked by intellectual responses. The fight will be stronger with the help of the international media and academia in publishing and broadcasting the voices of authentic Muslim scholars who can counter the extremists’ false claims and their warped interpretation of the Quran.
Dr. Allam is the grand mufti of Egypt.