Are you a Good Muslim?

Wicked ideologies pervert, otherwise good, human beings, blur their vision of right and wrong and turn them into insane masses pursuing abominable objectives.  The most destructive are ideologies emanating from religious beliefs.  Voltaire said: “Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.” 

The Western mind in general, even after the atrocities committed by Muslim extremists, is still avoiding to link Islam, as a religion, to terrorism.  This goes beyond political correctness to the engrained conviction in modern societies that freedom of religion is sacred and no one should be judged based on his religious beliefs.  While we all agree with this principle we try to separate beliefs concerning faith and those concerning political and social issues.  Islam, by the acknowledgment of its followers is a dogma of “Religion and world”.  Thus, the separation between a true Muslim’s worship of God and his political or social behaviors is forbidden in Islam.

While other religions, such as Christianity, have come to accept, through the years, to concentrate on their spiritual duty and maintain a guiding and consultative mundane role, the fundamentalist Muslims have adopted the style of Mohammed and his early successors of empowerment and ruling in the name of Islam.  They base their thoughts on the Koran, being “the Word of God”, thus indisputable, and on the Tradition which was transmitted for over 300 years after the death of their prophet.   For these “True Believers” God meant what he said in every verse and his words should be applied irrefutably whatever the cost.  

Islam’s preaching about God and how to revere him are the religious rights which are granted under our constitution and of no concern here.  It is Islam’s determination of the relationships among the Muslims and  between them and the non Muslims that is disturbing and deplorable. Although most Muslims, to prove Islam’s tolerance, will state a verse or two where the prophet encouraged coexistence with the people of the book (Christians and Jews), the fundamentalists quote a wealth of verses that promote destruction and annihilation of the “Non believers”.  They create a blinding solidarity in hatred of the “other”.  Backed with this and using the lure of the heavenly rewards for those who die in the “way of God” they draft the gullible youth to blow themselves up and get a short cut to their promised “Divine Orgies”. 

Anyone, with a grain of common sense, can distinguish between this sick and perverted ideology and a guiltless religious belief.  The Muslims should be willing to concede that the Koran is not impervious, that it has both good and bad in it. Until they are willing to think critically about its contents, we have the right to be suspicious and they should expect our scrutiny.  Even, if millions upon millions of Muslims do not and will not accept or even think about harming anyone, they follow an ideology that preaches hate and destruction and which already produced monstrous results. 

During the cold war the forms for visa applications to the United States questioned if one was a communist.  How many communists came and blew themselves up in our cities?  As Bin laden and his likes, these “Good Muslims” by the Book, do not shy from stating verses from the Koran to support  their hideous actions against the innocents, it will be wrong, idiotic and suicidal for us to shy from asking people if they are "Good Muslims". 

William Muir, an author from the late 19th century, had stated: “The Koran is one of the most stubborn enemies of Civilization, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known.”  While we are in the West still hesitant to ban Islam from our lands till it fixes its Book, the “Believers” are celebrating our softness as an expression of the weakness of the “enemies of Allah”.   We owe it to ourselves and to our country to ask: “are you a "Good Muslim"?, till being so is no longer a threat.

=============

* Name kept private at writer's request

Disclaimer: The articles published on this site represent the view of their writers.