Page 122 - Islam Denounces Terrorism

120 Islam Denounces Terrorism

Terrorism and violence are the inevitable results of an education
system that believes human beings are mere animals fighting for their
lives in a cruel setting; this system teaches people cruelty, selfishness
and mercilessness. In this system, altruism, cooperation, compassion
and love are not valuable. A human becomes strong only if he is cruel
and selfish. When a spiritually weak person is educated like this and
especially if he doesn't know how to use his conscience, he will be eas-

ily swayed by any ideology that sees "violence as a means to prove
himself and to obtain his rights." To sum it up, a person who is trained
with such education can be convinced to adopt the ways of terrorists,
sometimes through communist principles and sometimes through rad-
ical influences which pose as Islamic. For this reason, the first measure
the world needs to take against terrorism is fixing this wrong educa-
tion system.

It is true that content of Charlie Hebdo and other similar publica-
tions offend Muslims. This magazine published content that offended
not only Muslims, but also Christians, Jews, Buddhists and many other

people. However, what a Muslim should do in the face of such a situ-
ation is resorting to legal recourses, to ask that his values are not
offended. Better yet, he can approach the offenders (or those with sim-
ilar ideas) in a friendly manner and explain to them - kindly - that their
attitude is not nice, that humour can be made in a more elegant style,
and encourage them to adopt a more loving and compassionate atti-
tude instead. They can write and talk about the fact that such wrong
ideas should be fixed and let the whole world know about these facts.
However, a Qur'an-abiding Muslim can never kill another person sim-

ply because the other person doesn't follow Islam.
On the other hand, all around the world, murders are being com-

mitted and brutal acts are carried out in the name of Islam and the vic-
tims of these horrible acts are most typically Muslims. Scores of Mus-
lims lose their lives everyday as a result of terrorist attacks carried out
around the world.