The recent spate of ISIS-inspired suicide attacks in Orlando, Fla., Baghdad and Medina, and the ramming of a speeding truck into a crowd in Nice, France, underscores what mesmerized minds can do to support their mission.
Although for a different cause, we also saw this earlier when equally impassioned Japanese kamikaze pilots rammed their small planes into U.S. warships.
Becoming increasingly more sophisticated over the intervening 70 years, however, suicide bombings’ invisible hand has pushed back military preparedness significantly.
What makes the current assault unique and unprecedented is its targeting of innocent civilians. Thus, while a mesmerized Muslim minority committing these acts looks forward to being rewarded with “vestal virgins” in paradise, a perplexed Muslim majority bemoans incredulously, realizing that extremists might end up being “rewarded” with Pele’s punishment instead.
From the time when Muhammad was engaged in 100 military encounters over a decade, impassioned Muslims have found “ammunition” in their holy book, the Quran, to implement jihad, often against great odds, and often successfully.
But, since the Quran is not arranged chronologically with passages inciting violence (such as “Do not trust Jews and Christians”, verse 5.51) occurring alongside those promoting peace (such as “You can eat and intermarry with Jews, Christians, and other ‘People of the Book,’” verses 5.3 and 5.5), these “warriors of God” have invariably chosen the war option — buttressed by ambiguities in Quranic assertions such as “later guidance superseded earlier guidance” (verse 2.106), without specifying which is the “later guidance.”
Fortunately, my decades- long search for understanding the chronology of Quranic revelations was rewarded when I discovered the three earliest extant books on Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq, Tabari, and Waqidi, written within 100-250 years of Muhammad’s death.
I learned that verse 5.51 was revealed around 624 CE (Common Era), when Muhammad was engaged in incessant wars; and verses 5.3 and 5.5, in 632 CE after Muhammad had neutralized opposition. Muhammad died shortly thereafter.
Thus, Islam became a religion of peace only through the final revelation to Muhammad; a revelation which also bestowed upon the religion the name Islam (peace). Muhammad’s final years also saw “punishment” for adultery changing from stoning to forgiving; the call for veiling changing to a call for modest dressing by both men and women; and the religion’s ethos changing from exclusivity to inclusivity.
Lacking knowledge about the chronology of revelations, however, Quranic verses are treated episodically, with the more numerous violence-inciting passages winning hands down. In spite of this, a vast majority of Muslims follows Islam’s path of peace.
A dispassionate program of information collection and dissemination, employing the above-mentioned three books and others, might help clarify the Quran’s apparent “mixed signals,” thereby helping change the extremist Muslim mindset.
However, deluged during the past 1,400 years with calls for “martyrdom,” the proposed action might be difficult for extremists to digest, especially since this proposal might show that the Quran, considered “perfect,” carries many superseded verses — all favored by extremists.
I also realized that, instead of my spending time challenging Islamophobia by others (which I cannot control), I should drop my own Muslimiphilia of trying to defend other Muslims just because of their faith, regardless of their actions (which I can control).
Muslims could also learn from how Hawaii is benefiting from its multi-religious composition, with each group contributing to, and being enriched by, the others; each honoring the converging paths to the same divine consciousness that Muslims honor.
The directive to “invite all to the Way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching” (verse 16.125), being practiced effectively by Muslims and others through their own sacred texts, could serve as role model for extremists in all faiths.
Saleem Ahmed, Ph.D., is president of the Hawaii-based Pacific Institute for Islamic Studies and of the All Believers’ Network.
