Based on this quote alone, I will refer to ISIS as Muslims with quotation marks around the word Muslim, because that's what they call themselves and I'll play along, as when someone sheepishly wants to talk about a problem they have but present it as, "I have this 'friend' who has a problem with carrying around tiny scissors and uses it for stealing locks of pretty people's hair..." and you're like "Okay, tell your 'friend' that..."
But Islam does have to do with violence. It has a lot to do with violence. That is, Islam came at a time when the commercial city of Mecca was oppressive to those who were left behind in the sudden influx of vast wealth that came in Mecca's relatively recent turn into a trading post empire. The idea of the powerful looking out for the poor and vulnerable, a tribal ethic most Arabs had outside of this city, had been fractured. And the deserts outside of this city were not faring much better; they were locked in a series of wars over the control of wells, which were few and far-between, as well as grazing-land rights.
Islam has to do with transforming this, and all, fractured societies.
Part 1- Humanity Was About War
Part 2- Making War: Non-Aggression and Chivalry
Part 3- Making Peace: Reconciliation and Forgiveness
Part 4- Last Resort: A Mass Killing
Part 5- Treating Captives/Slaves
Part 1-
Humanity Was About War
According to the book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, in pre-state societies, when people were still tribes, villages with chiefs, and loose alliances of confederacies, prisoners of war and raids were either slaughtered while their women and children were taken as slaves, or the men were taken as slaves too. Torture, mutilating bodies, trophies from dead bodies, even cannibalism. This happened world over, including in Europe.Islam Was and Is About Peace
Part 2-Non-Aggression
In Islam, war is seen as abhorrent in itself and should be done only in self-defense. In those days, you needed a guardian the way someone in Italy or Spain needed a don- for protection; since there was no government, and prisoners were turned into slaves, crimes were policed the old-fashioned way. If you were killed, your guardian had the right to avenge you by taking the life of one of the enemy; as it happened, this system itself was enough to deter people from murdering others, lest a retaliation go out of control and spiral into a cycle of endless retaliation, which no one could afford.Muhammad was born in Mecca, and the city watched him go from an orphan to a Prophet. It did not comprehend to most of them that he could speak with the authority to condemn their ways, so they mocked him and, when his guardian (his beloved uncle Abu Talib) died, a hit was put out on him by the city elite. He and his followers were marked men, and he narrowly escaped assassination as he fled to the city that we now call Medina. Here, the trouble did not end. The elite of Mecca would send wave after wave of army, and as the time for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca came around, Muhammad worried that he and his army would have to defend themselves violently in order to perform his duty to God.
It is in this context that Allah gives a beautiful verse summing up Islamic war theory. It calls for self-defense only, and for restraint; if your attacker stops fighting, you must stop:
[2:190] You may fight in the cause of GOD against those who attack you, but do not aggress. GOD does not love the aggressors. [2:191] You may kill those who wage war against you, and you may evict them whence they evicted you. Oppression is worse than murder. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque [Mecca], unless they attack you therein. If they attack you, you may kill them. This is the just retribution for those disbelievers.[2:192] If they refrain, then GOD is Forgiver, Most Merciful.[2:193] You may also fight them to eliminate oppression, and to worship GOD freely. If they refrain, you shall not aggress; aggression is permitted only against the aggressors.
Chivalry
Islam began with a progressive dream:In one hadith (a narration from the Prophet), Prophet Muhammad comes across a slain woman while riding in battle, and he frowns with anger.
According to the American Army's Strategic Studies Institute, (the college for U.S.soldiers)
His attitude prompted a distinct code of conduct among Islamic warriors which includes:
• No killing of women, children, and innocents―these might include hermits, monks, or other religious leaders who were deemed noncombatants;
• No wanton killing of livestock and animals;
• No burning or destruction of trees and orchards; and,
• No destruction of wells.
As this one article puts it, "In short, Muhammad wanted his armies to fight like freaking hippies. During the fucking Dark Ages. And they did.
"But the biggest territorial gains were made after Muhammad's death, right? Maybe that was when Islam earned its bloodthirsty reputation? Not exactly. His successor codified the existing rules and made them the standard for his army."
The Muslim army "exhibited a degree of toleration which puts many Christian nations to shame," argues one expert, Dr. Danial bin Zainal Abidin in his book Islam: The Misunderstood Religion. Forgiveness played a big role in this code of chivalry. The Prophet(P) refused to kill a woman who did intentionally try to poison him-
Narrated Anas bin Malik: A Jewish woman brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who ate from it. She was brought to the Prophet and he was asked, “Shall we kill her?” He said, “No.” I continued to see the effect of the poison on the palate of the mouth of God's Apostle.
Part 3:
Making Peace: Reconciliation and Forgiveness
If the Meccan elite had won the battles they launched against the Muslims who fled as refugees to Medina, it would have been a genocide. And yet, all the pictures you see of Muhammad on horseback with a sword raised in the air, lacking this context. These were battles of self-defense, as the Meccan army came with their women to fight the Muslim militia, which had assembled to save their own lives.There were losses on the Muslim side, and the dead soldiers would be mutilated by these Meccan women, though Muhammad forgave them. And after winning the war, he also forgave the actual leaders of the war campaign against his followers- even though they had been on his "hit list" originally. He never refused their pleas for mercy, even if one woman (the body-desecration) was short with him in her plea.
In fact, reconciliation was key for Muhammad (PBUH), who formed alliances with tribes he formerly fought with, by having political marriages with the women of conquered tribes whose fathers were key leaders. This would help to ensure peace. The Holy Qur'an says:
"Perhaps Allah will put, between you and those to whom you have been enemies among them, affection. And Allah is competent, and Allah is Forgiving and Merciful." (Qur'an 60:7)
War and hatred thus do not go together; war is only done out of necessity in self-defense- never contempt.
Check out this article to read about Muhammad and the Golden Rule
As the time for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca came around, Muhammad worried that he and his army would have to defend themselves violently in order to perform his duty to God. Muhammad entered Mecca warily, and decided to try something extraordinary: he had all his men lay down their arms in the one of the greatest acts of non-violence in history. The Muslims walked right in to Mecca, the enemy's stronghold, unarmed as pilgrims. Muhammad was asking to pray in the area where he once denounced the stone gods. It was crazy enough to work- the Meccans actually surrendered to this large army of unarmed Muslims and admitted they had lost the war against Islam.
After this non-battle, word of a twenty-thousand man army had amassed at the nearby oasis of Ta'if to fight Muhammad. Muhammad battled two tribes here- one of which, the people of Hunayn, lost and joined Muhammad's confederacy. The city itself could not be secured by the Muslims, but with the loss of their ally the Hunayn, they were so isolated that they gave up a year later. When Muhammad divided the booty of the Hunayn, he gave most of it to his former enemies at Mecca- Abu Sufyan, Suhayl, and Safwan. These were the very people who had put the hit out on Muhammad in the first place. One of them, Safwan, was so moved by this gesture that he said:
"I bear witness that no soul could have such goodness as this, if it were not the soul of the Prophet." He converted on the spot, and became one of many former enemies that converted due to either hearing the words of the Qur'an or being moved by Muhammad's actions.
Part 4:
Last Resort- A Mass Killing
The only time Muslims went old-school on their attackers was during a siege in Medina when the Meccan elite, that is, the Quraysh, had surrounded the Muslims. The Muslims ingeniously built a ditch around their stronghold which their attacker's camels would not dare cross, and set up archers too. (The Quraysh probably saw this as poor sportsmanship.) Then there was word of betrayal: one of the tribes in Medina had made a deal with the Quraysh to put an end to the community of Muslim refugees once and for all.This wasn't the first time Muhammad faced betrayal in which the town of Medina, which had accepted Muhammad as a Prophet and an arbitrator in their disputes in return for his allegiance in case they ever had to fight a war. The allegiance was mutual; the people of Medina were obligated to protect him from the mighty Quraysh of Mecca, who had come to see war as a kind of sport.
The last two tribes that had turned traitor on Muhammad before this- including one that had an assassination attempt against him - were merely exiled from Medina. No killings at all. And the exiled tribes simply set up camp nearby. Feeling scorned, they plotted to ally with the Quraysh to kill the Muslims. Muhammad, knee deep in a defense known as the Battle of the Trench, surrounded by the enemy, had to make a decision on how to deal with this betrayal. Would he exile them, like the others? He was likely afraid the third exiled tribe would form an alliance with the first two and become an unstoppable Muslim-butchering regime.
It was more than bad news that one of the tribes of Medina had double-crossed Muhammad and defected to ally with the attackers- and this left the Muslims vulnerable to imminent death. If a rainstorm hadn't driven the Quraysh away, it might have been over for the Muslims. After the Quraysh left and the Prophet was sure of this scheming tribe's plans, he asked a local chief to judge the traitor's fate for this breach of allegiance. The judgment was to go traditional on them- that all the men be killed and the women and children sold as slaves. Muhammad reportedly said, "You have ruled as if a king," which may have been a compliment (one of Allah's characteristics is The King), or a criticism at the despotic nature of the ruling (it is said in Islamic tradition that a caliph is a true human leader of men, as opposed to someone being a king, which is but a power-hungry lover of riches).
It is clear that Muhammad preferred violence only as a last resort, then. The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was drafted by Muhammad with Quraysh, when they were ready to negotiate. So willing was he to make peace, that Muhammad's treaty with his enemies seemed to his followers disadvantageous and lopsided: the Muslims could go on the pilgrimage to Mecca but could not enter the main prayer grounds until next year; any Muslims who defected to Medina to join the Muslim community had to be returned if they had left without the permission of their guardian. However, the terms were not mutual- the Quraysh would not have to return any Muslims who defected to Mecca. The Quraysh didn't like how the treaty referred to Muhammad as a prophet, so Muhammad rubbed the words out himself since no other Muslim wanted to do it. If all this was the only way to secure peace, so be it; the Qur'an had said that if the enemy wants to negotiate, you have to prevent yourself from warring with them.
Part 5:
Treating Captives/Slaves:
When Islam was revealed to Prophet Muhammad, slavery was a worldwide common social phenomenon; it was much older than Islam. Slavery was deeply rooted in every society to the extent that it was impossible to imagine a civilized society without slaves. Today's economy still works this way.
It says in the Qur'an, slaves (which were P.O.W.s directly or indirectly) and concubines (slaves that acted as midwives, bearing their captor's children) could not be refused their freedom ( Noble Verse 24:33), must be treated with dignity (no overworking, no separating mothers and small children, no mistreatment, etc.) and wear and eat the same things as anyone else in the family. The penalty of hitting a slave was the slave's immediate freedom.
If this was not enough, in the Qur'an's very definition of righteousness, the freeing of your own slaves or buying other slaves / P.O.W.s to free them was actively encouraged as the righteous duty of a Muslim. Noble Verse 2:177 states: "Righteousness is not that you turn your face to the east or west (during prayer), it is...for giving wealth, in spite of love for it, for freeing slaves."
The biggest proponent of reforming slavery was 'Umar, Muhammad's successor and companion. A conversation between he and a man named Naafi, after the Muslim conquest of Mecca: "Who have you appointed as your deputy over the people of the valley (i.e. Makkah)?” asked Naafi. “One of our freed slaves,” replied Umar.
“Indeed your Prophet (salallaahu `alaihi wassallam) said: Surely Allaah raises people by way of this Book and makes others lowly by way of it.”
and,
"One day ‘Umar ibn al-Khattaab passed by and saw some slaves standing and not eating with their master. He got angry and said to their master: What is wrong with people who are selfish towards their servants? Then he called the servants and they ate with them."
This stands in contrast to the Quraysh who fought the Muslims- they put heavy stones on the slave Bilal that crushed him painfully as the stones absorbed the scorching Arabian heat, all because he converted to Islam. Slave women were sexually harassed on the street, and Muhammad's wives were harassed in Medina under the pretense that, "Oh, sorry, I thought they were slaves," leading to the revelation about Muhammad needing to veil his wives and daughters and local harassed Muslims who went out traveling, so that others no longer had the excuse to treat them like prostitutes. Without Islam, slaves were treated like dirt, it is shown.
Conclusion
There are examples of early Muslims breaking the hinges of the institution of slavery, and we know that after a while caliphs got drunk with power when Islamic empires became the biggest slave traders in the world, with Muslims having racist views toward Black slaves specifically, but we should know that is about power, not religion. In fact, the current people killing Christians in Iraq are doing it out of power, too:
"The Isis demand for a caliphate is about power, not religion," writes one Middle East scholar.
Cultural practices and power plays have hijacked Islam, just like how power plays have turned president Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel into Pharaoh, in a land where Jews were once oppressed. With his human rights abuses and war crimes against the Palestinians, Netanyahu and the religious right of Israel, has thus turned Israel anti-Jewish the way in which ISIS's "Islamic State" is actually anti-Muslim. ISIS is "Muslim" in the way that Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda is "Christian," as they go around forcing children to be their soldiers so they can force Uganda to become based on the 10 Commandments; or the way some Christians in the Central African Republic are lynching and eating body parts of Muslims because they believe it brings them special powers.
The Muslim response to the rebellious terrorists in Iraq who call themselves "Muslims" has been swift and forceful. The terrorists have been called heretics. The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) issued a condemnation of the forced expulsion of Iraqi Christians. The terrorists are not only killing Christians, but these Sunni extremists started out killing Shi'a Muslims and any Sunni Muslims who got in their way (Sunni and Shi'a are the two main sects of Islam).
Yet the fact that ISIS is anti-Islamic doesn't help the arguments of people like Pam Geller and Ayan Hirsi who believe that Islam is inherently violent. Here is a photo of soldiers fighting these terrorists:
Yet the fact that ISIS is anti-Islamic doesn't help the arguments of people like Pam Geller and Ayan Hirsi who believe that Islam is inherently violent. Here is a photo of soldiers fighting these terrorists:
Left to Right: I am Sunni, I am Shi'a, I am Kurdish, I am Christian
