Islam Denounces Terrorism

The True Jihad in the Qur'an

"Waging jihad" in Islam means to educate the other side, to teach moral virtue and to strive to turn people away from evil. Those who murder in the name of jihad are not acting in the light of the Qur'an.

There is no killing in the jihad in the Qur'an. There is no raining bombs down in the jihad in the Qur'an. There are no suicide bombers or cowardly attacks on the civilians. There is no hatred or cursing people in the jihad in the Qur'an. The children of the Prophet Abraham (pbuh), of the Prophet Jacob (pbuh) and the Prophet Moses (pbuh) are not accursed in the jihad in the Qur'an. There are no threats and intimidation in the jihad in the Qur'an. Islam is not that kind of faith.

There is no slaughter, death, hatred and rage in Islam, nor in Christianity or in Judaism. Therefore, if someone says, "I learned from the Qur'an that I must kill, bomb and curse people" then he is lying, or has been mistaught. A radical who says he is a Muslim follows a faith invented solely for the purpose of killing, bombing and cursing. That invented faith does not stem from the Qur'an.

The Holy Book they kiss and touch to their foreheads and hang on the wall may never actually have been read. That is the kind of faith in which everything is dark. It offers hatred instead of love, anger instead of affection, enmity instead of brotherhood, afflictions instead of beauty and ignorance instead of art, beauty, science and culture. It is easy to put a gun in the hand of someone who believes in such a faith. It is easy to say, "That community are your enemies." It is easy to stir such a person up. It is easy to produce communities of rage. This terrible scourge, which exists not only in Islam but also in all the true faiths and even in Marxism, satanism and materialism, in short in all religions, ideologies and ways of thinking, is the scourge of radicalism and bigotry.

Why does radicalism or bigotry exist? The answer is evident: Because that is what many people are taught. They know no other faith. That is all the radicals who appear in the name of Islam know as Islam. They have been left in ignorance, in a ghetto. They have been turned away from society, art and science. They have always been misinformed about the concept of "jihad" and have applied it wrongly because that is what they were taught. They have always imagined that by acting on what they were taught they were doing a good thing. They never even imagined they were actually harming themselves, their faith, their own families, their own peoples and, of course, others. However, the "jihad" described in the Qur'an is very much different than the picture of jihad painted by the radicals.