As for this author, please refer to my previois postings（http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/archive?word=Mark+Durie）. (Lily)
1.FrontPage Magazine（http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/mark-durie/challenging-islams-warrant-to-kill/）
Challenging Islam’s Warrant to Kill , 25 March 2015
by Rev. Dr. Mark Durie
Last week the Islamic State’s ‘Hacking Division’ released the names and addresses of one hundred US military personnel. It urged the ‘brothers residing in America’ – i.e. American Muslims – to ‘deal with’ them, which is to say, it wants them killed.
There is much talk these days of radicalization and deradicalization. At the heart of both processes are religious ideas: theological dogmas. What are some of the key theological principles which might cause a Muslim to take this call seriously? What is the Islamic reasoning given by the IS Hacking Division in support of its call to kill non-Muslims?
The Hacking Division quotes two verses of the Qur’an:
• Sura 9:123 ‘fight believers who are near to you’ and
• Sura 9:14 ‘Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them, and satisfy [actually yashfi ‘heal’] the breasts of a believing people’.
The meaning of these two verses hangs upon the word qātilū, translated here as ‘fight’. The verbal root q-t-l from which qātilū is formed means ‘kill’, so the the Arabic actually means ‘fight to kill’ (see discussion here). These Qur’anic verses truly are commands to kill non-Muslims.
The second quoted verse, from Sura 9:14, puts forward a view concerning what Muslims should do about emotional pain and anguish they may experience because of unbelievers. ‘Allah’, the verse says, ‘will heal the breasts’ of Muslims, – and then the sentence continues into the next verse – ‘and remove the rage of their hearts’.
The key concept here is that if Muslims have strong feelings, including anger, against non-Muslims, their emotional distress will subside and be ‘healed’ as they kill, humiliate and triumph over non-believers. Strange therapy indeed for the human soul! According to the Qur’an, peace within the Muslim soul can be secured by shedding non-Muslim blood.
These are stock-standard verses used to urge Muslims to go for jihad against disbelievers. However what most caught my eye in the Hacking Division’s call to arms against infidels in America was a reference to Muhammad’s teachings. The Hacking Division refers to hadith 4661 in a published English version of the Sahih Muslim (translated by Abdul Hamid Sidiqqi).
The Sahih Muslim is one of the most revered and authoritative sources for the teaching and example of Muhammad, whose life is considered exemplary and compulsory for Muslims to emulate. This particular hadith can be found on page 1263 of Volume 3 of the English edition:
Chapter 789 (DCCLXXXIX)
About a man who killed a disbeliever and embraced Islam.
(4661) It has been narrated on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: A disbeliever and a believer who killed him will never be gathered together in Hell. [See here.]
This is a most significant statement. It is saying that if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, they cannot both end up in hell. The alternative to hell is paradise, so in other words, killing a non-Muslim – who is destined for hell due to their unbelief – can provide a sure ticket to paradise for a Muslim.
This tradition is the authority for a view widely put about by jihadis, that if a Muslim personally gets to kill a disbeliever, the Muslim will gain paradise. Put together with with the famous belief that for a Muslim to be ‘martyred’ in jihad opens the gates of paradise (see Sura 3:169-170; 9:111; and 22:58), fighting to kill non-Muslims can be a ticket to glory, win or lose. Either one kills and gains a get-out-of-hell free card, or one is killed and gains a get-into-paradise-free card. This is a win-win proposition for the jihadi.
Persuading Muslims to take the words of Muhammad seriously is the core strategy of radicalization. This tactic works as well as it does because it appeals to a plain reading of Islam’s holy texts.
To be deradicalized, a Muslim needs to repudiate the theological authority of the teachings of Muhammad and the Qur’an. This is a hard call for pious Muslims. Ayan Hirsi Ali was surely correct in her recent essay calling for reform of Islam when she wrote that:
‘the fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts.’
Hirsi Ali also declared:
‘we in the West need to challenge and debate the very substance of Islamic thought and practice. We need to hold Islam accountable for the acts of its most violent adherents and to demand that it reform or disavow the key beliefs that are used to justify those acts.’
Hirsi Ali was right: the Westrepudiate the Islamic dogmas needs to engage with and that killing or being killed in murderous attacks against non-Mulims is some kind of golden key which unlocks the gates of paradise. Until these beliefs and the canonical teachings they rely on are acknowledged and repudiated, the lives of non-Muslims will continue to be discarded as the ‘ticket to paradise’ of Muslim belligerents.
Hadiths such as 4661 from Sahih Muslim, and the Qur’anic verses cited here are a genuine part of the Islamic canon. Such verses remain unrenounced and unrepudiated by a great many Muslims and Islamic institutions today.
As long as such texts are not repudiated, the theological winds of Islam will all too easily continue to sweep pious Muslim hearts and minds towards radicalization, a process which exalts the idea that the lives of infidels are disposable.
Islam’s warrant to kill infidels is an idea which deserves to be exposed, challenged, thoroughly debated, and rejected.
・Mark Durie is the pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and Founder of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness. Mark Durie is an Anglican pastor and Associate Fellow at the Middle Eastern Forum.
・This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
2.Gatestone Institute（http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5444/offense-welcome-in-defense-of-free-speech-on）
Offense Welcome: In Defense of Free Speech on Campus
by Daniel Mael
26 March 2015
Banning such events, speakers and displays is not the answer. It is a stance not only intellectually bankrupt, but one that solidifies a dangerous precedent: the intolerance of free speech.
Removing dissent -- however morally intended -- is intrinsically antithetical to education, especially at a university.
The greatest problem with the current lot of anti-Israel voices is not that they are "offensive" or "mean;" it is that what they say contains outright lies and falsehoods.
However malicious or misguided, the speech and conduct of those who oppose Israel --who cannot or will not see the difference between an open, tolerant democracy and repressive, authoritarian governments -- should be refuted, not suppressed.
In 1902, the Russian Jewish author and early Zionist leader, Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) responded to a fellow journalist's effort to label Zionism as "historically retrograde", "politically reactionary" and "unworkable". "Defame it if you must!" he wrote. "The dream is greater than its slanderers. It need not fear their calumny." [1]
In 2015, the pro-Israel campus movement, through its collective attempt to combat anti-Israel forces, risks failing to uphold Jabotinsky's proclamation.
Supporting Israel is now labelled an act of "racism" by some professors and certain campus organizations, such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Opposing Israel, however, is not considered the actual act of racism that it more likely is.
Hamas, which openly promotes genocide -- not only of Israel, but of all Jews -- is apparently considered justified in its behavior. Meanwhile Zionism, which has never even touched on the subject of genocide, is now thought of as a genocidal creed by the anti-Zionist groups on campus. In 2011, SJP founder Hatem Bazian organized the "Never Again for Anyone" speaking tour, which abused the memory of the Holocaust and claimed that Israel's actions toward its Arab neighbors resembled the actions of the Nazis. So how could Hamas not take up arms against "occupation"?
Students on campuses across the country are then left to decide how to respond. A select few on the pro-Israel side have attempted to carve out an argument that would call for censoring the "offending parties." Some have called for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to be blocked from receiving school funding; others have called for racist or bigoted speakers to be banned from campus.
Groups such as SJP gave up on the concept of coexistence long ago, in favor of a policy of "anti-normalization," in which dialogue with "Zionists" is forbidden. To cooperate with "Zionists," the thinking seems to go, would be to legitimize their rights. The Anti-Defamation League accurately branded "Anti-normalization" a "Strategy of Rejection."
The hatred of groups such as the SJP is starting to manifest itself on campuses across the globe in "Israeli Apartheid Week," in which Israel is demonized as a racist state on a par with apartheid South Africa. The week is billed as an "international series of events that seeks to raise awareness about Israel's apartheid policies towards the Palestinians and to build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign," according to the campaign website. Campuses are rocked with incessant posturing, events and even large displays of "walls," representing Israel's defensive security barrier, but described as "apartheid walls."
Banning such events, speakers and displays, however, is not the answer. The flaws in such proposals are twofold. To begin with, they make it seem as if people, rather than defend their own views, would prefer to shut down the ability of those on the other side to express their views. It is a stance not only intellectually bankrupt, but one that solidifies a dangerous precedent: the intolerance of free speech.
Life in an echo chamber is not an education. Removing dissent -- however morally intended -- is intrinsically antithetical to education, especially at a university.
As long as the anti-Israel, or anti-anything, actors operate within the campus rules -- which, among others, require that they properly reserve their space and respect the space of others -- their speech should be protected. When intolerant individuals act out of line, such as the Temple University student who punched a classmate in August 2014, then a response is certainly warranted. The student who threw the punch was rightly charged by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office.
In addition, speech often can and should be offensive. As Trevor Burrus wrote in Forbes, "Offensive speech contributes to the marketplace of ideas by expanding its borders." The greatest problem with the current lot of anti-Israel voices claiming to represent the Palestinian cause on campus is not that they are "offensive" or "mean;" it is that what they say contains outright lies and falsehoods.
Speakers such as Max Blumenthal or Ali Abunimah, who compare the state of Israel to Nazi Germany, or claim that Israel has a policy of ethnic cleansing, should be heard and called out as the malicious slanderers and vilifiers they are. Last summer, Abunimah infamously tweeted that, "Making Yom Kippur a UN holiday to honor the genocidal "state" of Israel would be sure way to increase global anti-Jewish sentiment." Blumenthal has mocked Jewish prayer by pretending to pray to a bloodied image of Benjamin Netanyahu. That students claiming to speak for human rights would sponsor such speakers uncovers their real intent.
One needs rigorously to challenge speakers such as Blumenthal and Abunimah in the marketplace of ideas. As Harvard professor Steven Pinker put it recently, "It is only by bruiting ideas and seeing which ones withstand attempts to refute them that we acquire knowledge." If the pro-Israel community in unwilling or unable to refute the most heinous challengers of Israel it risks relying solely on dogmatic reasoning and the reverberations of the echo-chamber, at a serious intellectual cost.
After the recent Israeli elections, countless students and organizations -- both Jewish and non-Jewish -- have again accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a "racist" or "marginalizing Arab-Israeli citizens." Rather than also marginalizing those critical of Israel or its leaders off-hand, the pro-Israel campus movement would do well to examine such claims in an objective, dispassionate fashion.
Those who understand the moral breach between Israel and its enemies should welcome debate and exchange in the open campus space. However malicious and misguided, the speech and conduct of those who oppose Israel -- who cannot or will not see the difference between an open, tolerant democracy and repressive, authoritarian governments -- should be refuted, not suppressed.
・Daniel Mael, a senior at Brandeis University, is a fellow at the Salomon Center.
________________________________________
[1] Halkin, Hillel. Jabotinsky: A Life. New Haven: Yale UP, 2014. Print.
（End）
