Islamic extremism as idolatry

Stephen B. Young, The Daily Record Newswire

Muslim extremism seems to be one of the most disturbing tempers of our times. Was Professor Samuel Huntington correct years ago when he wrote about our facing up to a "clash of civilizations"?

I read that a Somali youth group, Ka Joog, has asked the Minnesota Legislature for $4 million to help it come up with programs to help young Somalis resist the lure of Islamic extremism.

Confronting intolerance and extremism within any religion is not the business of a government where church and state have separate spheres of authority. It is up to Muslims to conform their faithful to high standards of equity, mercy and compassion just as it is up to Christians not to let their churches become sanctuaries for violence and injustice.

When sectarian arguments urge followers to commit crimes, then the state can and must step in to preserve the common right and good of all.

It is important that all Americans, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, know the teachings of the Quran about violent extremism - for Muslims to be confident that their scripture does not condone extremism and for non-Muslims to be assured that their Muslim neighbors are not under scriptural pressures to take extreme measures of self-assertion.

Islam provides within its teachings a complete rejection of the extremism that we see in the news. There is no Quranic justification for the murders, barbaric beheadings, and the maimings executed by supposedly faithful Muslims like ISIS loyalists, the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, the Kouachi brothers in Paris, Boko Haram, or by those followers of Osama bin Laden on Sept. 11, 2001.

The crux of the Quranic case against such taking of life in the name of Islam is the wrongful appropriation of God's (Allah's) right and power. The Quran assigns death by retaliation to all cases of murder (Surah 2, verse 178). It also provides "One who kills a human being without the latter being guilty of murder or corruption in the land, it would be as if he has killed the whole of humankind." (Surah 5, verse 35)

This is clear enough, yet the wrong committed by Sunni extremists also has an ideological dimension: It is idolatry, the worshipping of false gods and idols, in particular the putting of a person such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or Osama bin Laden, or oneself, in God's place as the arbiter of who should live and who deserves to die.

In Islamic terms the idolatry is called shirk.

God does not forgive those who serve other gods. The Quranic guidance for this rule is found at Surah 4, at verse 48, and Surah 2 at verse 22.

The other month I tested my application of shirk to Islamic extremists with a Somali taxi driver taking me to the airport. He was a bit surprised to have an obviously non-Muslim turn the conversation to Quranic exegesis but readily agreed that the behavior of Islamic terrorists was, in his words, "very shirky."

I have been studying Quranic guidance for political action for some 10 years now with highly reputed scholars at the International Islamic University, Malaysia. This University is one of the most accomplished institutions of higher education in the Muslim world, attracting distinguished thinkers from many Islamic countries.

With little effort, the problem of idolatry in Islam is quickly apprehended. The reasons why shirk is so wrong for Muslims are readily apparent in a reading of Quran.

God has all right and power. (Quran 2:109) To God do all questions go for decision. (Quran 3:109) His will prevails over ours. We are to hold fast to God, guided to the straight path by him and not by our own desires and pretensions. It is not our place, says the Quran, for us to rebel against God's power and authority. We were not created by him to challenge his judgment. God's mastery of life, death, the alpha and omega of all things is called his sole prerogative, an aspect of divine oneness and omnipotence (tawhid) over space and time.

He has no partner in this omnipotence - certainly not any human person. God never gave us a commission to think for him or to believe that we are his equal. We are to put our trust in God, not in our fellow man. (Quran 5:11)

If we think we are God's equal, we are wrong. Such thinking is shirk.

God decides who is good and who is not. His mercy and compassion have the last word on the last day. God has reserved to himself judgment as to the fate of those who deny the truth. (Quran 73: 11,12) No one dies unless God wills the death. (Quran 3:145) God will resolve differences among men. (Quran 5:49; 3:26) God pardons, punishes, whom he pleases. (Quran 3:129)

The duty of us as human individuals is only to warn others. Their actual fate is in the hands of God. (Quran 88:23-26; 73:11)

Quran records that we are not to take life, which God has made sacred, except by way of justice and law. (Quran 6:151)

Second, Quran teaches that humans are prone to error. Our judgment can never be as good as God's. No human can never fully know what God wants or wills. Our thinking is contingent, limited, bounded by our own biases, fears, and passions. We can never share in God's perfection.

If we should obey the greater part of those on earth, says Quran, we would be led away from God's path. (Quran 6:116) The teachings of Quran promise woe to those who write scripture for personal gain and say "This is from God." (2:78)

We are, Quran says, contentious, (Quran 18:54) given to injustice and ingratitude (Quran 14:34). We transgress in thinking ourselves our own masters. (Quran 96:6-7) We walk too proudly on the earth. (Quran 17:37) We mislead ourselves with our desires. (Quran 6:119)

Third, according to Quran, God enjoins charity, kindness, and peace among men. (Quran 4:114) God desires no injustice to mankind. (Quran 3:108)

He gave life to humanity with his breath so that each of us contains some portion of God's potentials. An important capacity of God is to be merciful and compassionate.

To reject mercy or to close our hearts to compassion is to fall short of God's standard of the good. It is to replace God's judgment with our own pettiness.

But how are we to know what verdict on the life of another is just in God's mind? How can we know when God will be merciful and compassionate with those of us who have done wrong?

How do we determine God's guidance? All human interpreters of Quran are only partially qualified as discoverers of God's will.

We cannot rely on other humans with their limited capacities to instruct us perfectly on God's will in any given case of human accountability. Thus, under strict Quranic guidance the entire body of scholarship since the death of the Prophet - the work of many brilliant minds - cannot take precedence over the will of God.

A danger leading to misunderstanding of God put before us by Quran is the wiles of Satan, who seeks to lead us far from right guidance. We need to be on our guard lest our pride and desires draw us closer to Satan's intrigues. Satan stirs up our vain desires. (Quran 4:120) Quran warns that for humans "Satan makes their deeds seem fair to them." (Quran 6:43) It is Satan's predilection to urge us towards the path of shirk.

Thus we can demand of an Osama bin Laden evidence that he is free from delusions and vanity. Similarly is not the self-promotion by al-Baghdadi of himself to the position of successor of the Prophet Mohammad (Caliph) only specious vainglory? What special revelation did either of these men ever get from God to guide their politics?

Their personal reading of scripture does not necessarily make either of them God's trusted confidant.

We may from time to time come under the influence of "vain conjectures and whims of [our] own words." (Quran 53:23)

We have no evidence that acts of Islamic extremism are divinely guided. To the contrary, all the evidence before us indicates that they are heinous excesses of damnable human arrogance and false pride. They are shirk.

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Stephen B. Young is executive director of the Caux Round Table, an international network advocating ethical principles for business and government.

Published: Fri, Feb 06, 2015