Why Obama is wrong about ISIS
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, November 29, 2014
Is it the faith of the prophet Muhammad, who "conducted Jihad by sword against the unbelievers," in the words of Sunni scholar Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti? Is it the faith of influential 14th century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun, who said, "In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the mission and (the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force"? Or is it the faith of Notre Dame professor of Arabic and Islamic studies Asma Afsaruddin who said in 2004 that, "There is absolutely no religious imperative for [beheading]."
Was Obama referring to Sunni or Shite Islam? Within Sunni Islam itself there are at least four major schools of madhhab, or schools of thought on Islamic jurisprudence (Hanbali, Hanati, Shafi'i, and Maliki).
Clearly there are a lot of interpretations of Islam, so there is no way of knowing which one is "true Islam," and there are many verses in the Quran to justify either a violent or peaceful interpretation of Islam.
According to the Hidayah of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, "If the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay a capitation tax, it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them."
Similar language can be found in the Old Testament of the Bible, which includes commandments for the Jews to commit genocide against seven Canaanite nations and Amalek.
In both religions, there are teachings that called on their people to kill anyone who didn't either profess faith in the religion or abide by its theocratic laws and pay taxes.
According to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus didn't bring peace, but he brought the sword. "For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother," Jesus is quoted in Matthew 10:34-36. "Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth?" Luke quoted him in 12:51-52, "I tell you, no, but rather division."
In Tibet, people were enslaved by Buddhist lamas and forced to pay crippling taxes.
Indeed, wherever you go, you can see examples of religion sowing division and hate, from the conquests to the crusades to the inquisition to today's terrorism, abortion bombings, and beheadings. Far from the claim that "No religion condones the killing of innocents," the complete opposite is true.
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