Islam and Terrorism (23 page)
Is this just my wishful thinking or is there really any
hope that this might happen, that Muslims will try to reform Islamic law? The good news is that since the establishment of ISIS more and more voices in the Arab world call for reformation. This gives me hope. And this is what I am holding to in my life and what I don’t ever want to lose: faith, love, and hope.
H
OW
S
HOULD
W
E
D
EAL
W
ITH THE
T
HREAT IN
O
UR
C
OUNTRIES
?
When I witness terror attacks committed in our countries or hear in the news about the horrible acts of terror committed by ISIS, my heart is very sad. But we should not lose hope. My hope is that the shocking reports might push some moderate Muslims to rethink what kind of God they follow, and I hope it will push them to clearly distance themselves from radical Islam.
I am convinced that it will not help just complaining about the terrible things happening in our world. My personal conviction is this: “Better than cursing the darkness is to light a candle.”
You might wonder what kind of candle you can light and what you can contribute to make a difference. I am convinced that it is very important to have the right attitude and that each one of us is important. How do you deal with the information you read in this book? Many people take one of two extreme positions. Some put their head in the sand and don’t want to hear any of this. Others respond with fear and anger. If you feel fear or anger inside you, let me remind you that the majority of Muslims do
not
hold to the radical Islamic teachings presented in this book. Most Muslims just want to have a peaceful, good life.
My wish for our society is that the news about ISIS
attacks will cause people to rethink what kind of values they hold to and stand for. When a committed Muslim will tell you in the street that Islam has to come to the West to rescue the Western society from the moral decline, how will you respond? When Muslims see that adultery is not viewed any longer as a serious problem and that homosexuality is being legalized, they take this is as clear evidence for the moral decline of the society, and they claim the moral obligation to bring this society back to God. One of the reasons Muslims are so successful in winning young people for Islam is that many young people indeed have no more moral guidelines and deep in their hearts they feel that this is not OK. They feel that they are not OK with God. If a Muslim offers them the very easy solution to get right with God by confessing the Islamic faith statement, many young people easily follow.
Another aspect that draws young people to join Muslim groups is the family feeling in Muslim communities. Muslims stand together like brothers. So once a young man or young woman converts to Islam, he or she will immediately be member of the bigger Muslim family. The individualism of Western societies and the high divorce rate that leads to broken families leaves many people feeling very lonely and starving for close fellowship. What can we do to deal with this? When did you last invite someone in to your home for coffee or to share a meal?
Another characteristic of today’s Western societies is that many people’s lives are all about making money—either to secure their living or to have fun. Many people just live for themselves and don’t see a deeper meaning or purpose in their lives. How many people still live their lives driven by the question of where they will spend eternity, either in heaven or hell? This condition of our
society makes it very easy for Muslim groups to win new members by pointing them to a purpose in life. Can we afford to wait for Muslim groups to tell our young generation about the purpose in life?
So we can summarize that there are several issues in the Western societies that we should deal with, if we don’t want to wait for Muslim groups to deal with it in their own way.
I hope, my dear reader, that this book will have a fruitful impact on your life. Remember: better than to curse the darkness is to light a candle!
M
Y GOAL IS
to make this book as easy to understand as possible even if you know very little about Islam. In this appendix you will learn some important information about Arabic names, quotations from the Quran, and the geography of the Muslim world that will make it easier to understand the terms that are commonly used in this book.
R
EFERENCES TO
M
UHAMMAD
There are times when I refer to “the Prophet Muhammad,” meaning the founder of Islam. I use the word
prophet
to distinguish him from the many other Muhammads in the Islamic world.
R
EFERENCES TO THE
Q
URAN
Islam’s holy book, the Quran, which is considered the word of Allah, is divided into one hundred fourteen chapters called
surahs
. The surahs are also divided into verses. If you have a copy of the Quran, you can look up passages using the surah and verse numbers. Muslims often refer to the chapters by their chapter name, as the original Quran in Arabic does not contain chapter numbers. The chapter numbers were added later. In this book, however, I have not included the chapter names with every reference because they are of limited significance to the Western reader.
I have used two different English translations of the Quran. One is the version translated by Abdullah Yusef Ali. The other I referred to as
The Noble Quran
. This was
published and printed by the king of Saudi Arabia in 1998. This translation expands and clarifies the meaning of the text through comments in parentheses and brackets.
E
NGLISH
T
RANSLATIONS OF THE
Q
URAN
You should be aware that different English translations of the Quran can render the same verse in very different ways.
For example, Surah 8:39 is a key verse regarding those who reject the Quran, yet the following translation is quite vague:
And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere.
—A
LI TRANSLATION
The Noble Quran
is a bit more straightforward.
Fight them until there is no more
Fitnah
(disbelief and polytheism, i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world].
R
EADING
A
RABIC
N
AMES
I have been told that understanding and reading Arabic names is often difficult for Western readers. Here are a few tips that will help you as you read:
• The words
bin
,
ibn
, and
bn
mean “son of.”
• The word
al
means “the.”
• When you see a
q
, it is pronounced like the
k
in
kite.
• When you see two consonants next to each other, the word is pronounced with a very short vowel sound between those consonants. For example,
ibn
would be pronounced “ib-in”;
Qutb
would be pronounced “kutib,” in one syllable.
Please see the glossary for a list of commonly referenced names and other key concepts.
T
HE
G
EOGRAPHY OF THE
M
USLIM
W
ORLD
Western readers are sometimes unfamiliar with the geographic scope of the Muslim world. Although the roots of Islam are in the Arabian peninsula, the Muslim world is much broader.
T
HE NAME YOU
see on the cover of this book is not the Muslim name that was given to me by my parents in Egypt. However, I would like to say that I have no desire to deceive anyone about my name.
There are some simple reasons why I changed my name—first as a pseudonym for my books and later as my legal name.
Reason #1—For security reasons
After I left Egypt, I spent six years in South Africa, where I became very soon well known. Consequently radical Muslims pursued me diligently, trying to kill me. Several times I was attacked, and it is only by the grace of God that I survived. I had to hide all the time and change my residency from one city to another almost on a monthly basis. Therefore when I wrote my first book in South Africa I decided to publish it under a pseudonym.
Reason #2—For identity reasons
In contrast to Western countries in Egypt you can usually tell by the name whether a person is Muslim or Christian. The name reflects the faith. After I became a Christian I was not comfortable continuing to live by a Muslim name. So when I got baptized it was very normal for me to leave my Muslim identity behind and to choose a Christian name.
Choice of name
I chose the first name of Mark because Mark was a writer of the Gospels. Mark was also the first Christian who went to Egypt with the good news. When Jesus sent the seventy out from Jerusalem, Mark brought the gospel to the city of Alexandria in Egypt.
I chose the last name of Gabriel because this was the surname of the first Christian family with whom I stayed in South Africa after my three months’ journey through the continent of Africa. Living with this family was a wonderful experience that made me feel I had become part of the family of Christ.
C
HAPTER
1: H
OW THE
A
RAB
S
PRING
T
URNED TO AN
ISIS W
INTER
1.
Islamonline.net
in Arabic, under the page titled “Ask the Expert,” under the question that reads, “Mahmoud from Jordan asked, ‘What is the meaning of Dar-ul-Islam and Dar-ul-Harb?’”
2.
Sayyid Qutb,
Milestones Along the Road
(Delhi: Markazi Maktaba Islami, n.d.), 221.
3.
Ibid., 223.
4.
Joshua Berlinger, “The Names: Who Has Been Recruited to ISIS From the West,”
CNN.com
, February 26, 2015,
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/25/world/isis-western-recruits/
(accessed June 17, 2015).
5.
Hannah Fairfield, Tim Wallace, and Derek Watkins, “How ISIS Expands,”
New York Times
,
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/21/world/middleeast/how-isis-expands.html
(accessed June 17, 2015).
6.
The Week, “ISIS: Can the Advance of Islamic State Be Stopped,” June 4, 2015,
http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/isis/59001/isis-who-are-islamic-state-and-can-they-be-stopped#ixzz3dKKzrP4g
(accessed June 17, 2015).
C
HAPTER
2: F
IVE
P
ILLARS OF
I
SLAMIC
R
ADICALISM
1.
“Translation of
Sahih al-Bukhar
,” Volume 1, Book 2, Number 36
,
narrated Abu Huraira,
http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/002-sbt.php
(accessed June 18, 2015).
