Page 100 - Age of Peace Goodword.indd

It Requires a Literary Bomb

important to take lessons from historical experience. We have,
therefore, to replace chemical bombardment with literary
bombardment. This is the only way to success in this field.

Modern terrorism in the name of Islam is based entirely
on the misinterpretation of Islamic texts. One example of this
misinterpretation derives from a verse of the Quran, which
says: In al-hukmu illa lillah. That is,
‘All power belongs to God alone.’ (12:40)
In this verse, hukm is used in the sense of the supernatural
power of God. However, the Muslim extremist thinkers have
misinterpreted it to mean political power. Furthermore, it is
said that Muslims, as representatives of God, should establish
God’s rule on earth. This assumption is wrong because it is
based on a Quranic verse which has been taken out of context.

Another verse in the Quran says: ʿIdilu. This means,
‘Follow the principle of justice [in your life].’ (5:8)
But a misinterpretation of this verse has taken it in the
transitive sense instead of the original intransitive sense in
which it was used in the Quran. That is, the verb used in the
above verse does not have any direct object of action, but
because it has been wrongly interpreted, it comes to have an
object of action, which in this case is the outside world. Thus,
the verse has been taken to mean that justice should be imposed
on people by force. As a result of this misinterpretation, the
concept of justice has been politicized, although this notion
cannot truly be inferred from the text.
Any interpretation of the above kind is false. And this
falsehood must be made manifest so that people may
understand with certainty that the present militancy has no
sanction in Islam and so that extremists will give it up, in the
knowledge that their actions are un-Islamic.

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