Islam and violence
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Mainstream Islamic law stipulates detailed regulations for the use of violence, including the use of violence within the family or household, the use of corporal and capital punishment, as well as how, when and against whom to wage war.
Quotes[edit]
- I have experienced myself that physical and psychological violence is seen as normal in Muslim families. Unfortunately violence belongs to the culture in Islam.
- Sibel Kekilli, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/eklat-um-sibel-kekilli-in-berlin/782546.html%7C2=2011-10-08}} Eklat um Sibel Kekilli in Berlin] - Der Tagesspiegel, December 4, 2006
- Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence, and it has no place in Islamic teaching, and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses or ifs or buts. Good intentions cannot convert a wrong into good; they cannot convert an evil into good.
- When people go up and blow themselves up, and the religious leaders of this religion say nothing, something's wrong. It's not just a handful of extremists. If you buy the Koran, read it for yourself, and it's in there. The violence that it preaches is there.
- It was reported that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘Be gentle, and beware of violence and foul language.'
- Narrated by Al-Bukhari in Kitab al-Adab, no. 6030.
- "Ramadan typically brings a spike in violence in Middle East. I get grumpy when I don't eat - but I don't blow things up. Religion of peace?"
- Katie Hopkins — Katie Hopkins : her most offensive quotes Daily Telegraph, 8 January 2015
- At a time when Muslim communities are being exhorted to do more to tackle violence by a handful of extremists who purport to be Muslims, it is vitally important that our government and police are equally pro-active in seeking to tackle extremist violence against British Muslims and the Islamophobic climate that gives rise to it.
- What we are fighting, in Islamist extremism, is an ideology. It is an extreme doctrine. And like any extreme doctrine, it is subversive. At its furthest end it seeks to destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric realm. And it often backs violence to achieve this aim – mostly violence against fellow Muslims – who don’t subscribe to its sick worldview. But you don’t have to support violence to subscribe to certain intolerant ideas which create a climate in which extremists can flourish. Ideas which are hostile to basic liberal values such as democracy, freedom and sexual equality. Ideas which actively promote discrimination, sectarianism and segregation. Ideas – like those of the despicable far right – which privilege one identity to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of others. And ideas also based on conspiracy: that Jews exercise malevolent power; or that Western powers, in concert with Israel, are deliberately humiliating Muslims, because they aim to destroy Islam. In this warped worldview, such conclusions are reached – that 9/11 was actually inspired by Mossad to provoke the invasion of Afghanistan; that British security services knew about 7/7, but didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash. And like so many ideologies that have existed before – whether fascist or communist – many people, especially young people, are being drawn to it. We need to understand why it is proving so attractive.
- David Cameron, speech on extremism at Ninestiles School, Birmingham. (transcript by The Independent)
- This militarization of everyday Muslim life was noticed with keen interest by Count Keyserling (1880-1946 CE) during his travels in Islamic countries. He summed up his over-all impression in his The Travel Diary of a Philosopher. "Islam is a religion," he wrote, "of absolute surrender and submissiveness to God - but to a God of a certain character - a War-Lord who is entitled to do with us as he will and who bids us stand ever in line of battle against the foe" The ritual of this belief embodies the idea of discipline. When the true believers every day at fixed hours perform their prayers in serried ranks in the mosque, all going through the same gestures at the same moment, this is not, as in Hinduism, done as a method of self-realization, but in the spirit in which the Prussian soldier defiled before his Kaiser. This military basis of Islam explains all the essential virtues of the Musalman. It also explains his fundamental defects - his unprogressiveness, his incapacity to adapt himself, his lack of invention. The soldier has simply to obey orders. All the rest is the affair of Allah."
- Hermann von Keyserling quoted in Sita Ram Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition, ch. 8
Attributed[edit]
- The sword is the key of heaven and hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of Allah, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven, and at the day of judgment his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.
- Attributed to Muhammad, as quoted by John Galt in The Wandering Jew (1820), p. 262
- Also in Philip Schaff, in History of the Christian Church - Volume 4 (1886), C. Scribner's, p. 171
