Page 168 - Islam Denounces Terrorism

166 Islam Denounces Terrorism

nobody apart from themselves or the group to which they belong, and
even seek to portray the use of violence against those who do not share
their faith as a religious requirement, harbour numerous flaws of logic.
Denouncing people as unbelievers and misinterpretation of retaliation
in kind are examples of these:

The corrupted rationale of those who shed
blood in the name of Islam

In the Islamic world, some Muslims who believe in the same God,
who accept the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as His messenger and the
Qur'an as the true Book accuse one another of divorcing themselves
from the faith and of infidelity and kill one another. The mass killings

of Shias and the destruction of Shia mosques that have recently
cropped up have drawn attention to a radical deviance in the Islamic
world. The attacks of some Shia groups against Sunnis in some regions
such as Iraq have also contributed to this picture: However, this san-
guinary mindset is not limited to these radical organizations only nor
it is a new ailment.

What is responsible for those Muslims being killed in Egypt only
because they are Shias, or those murdered and dragged through the
streets of Iraq only because they are Sunnis are the rulings, or fatwas,
issued by some so-called scholars who claim to speak on behalf of

Islam. These so-called scholars speak in their mosques or appear on TV
channels and drag mostly ignorant people into such brutality with
their fatwas. In the Middle East, this flawed concept of religion based
on superstitions is seen in the fierce struggle between Shia and Sunni
groups within the same country. Meanwhile they are also seen in sec-
tarian wars between countries that are waged by means of proxy
groups and organizations. Of course the violence perpetrated by these
groups is wrong. But that mistake cannot be corrected without a return
to the Qur'an, the essence of the faith.