Need for greater understanding of Islam

Strangely, though it was expensively produced, there was no indication of the publisher, nor any biographical details about the author. I do not ordinarily read all the unsolicited pamphlets I receive, but, after reading a couple of pages, I found it gripping and I couldn’t put it down until I had finished it. It was an attack on the Muslim religion.

I do receive a not insignificant amount of Islamophobic correspondence. Often these emails are prompted by something a constituent has picked up on the internet, sometimes they are poorly researched, contain half-truths, confuse different things, or are just plain wrong.

In contrast Abdul Hurriyah’s essay was a closely argued effort, drawing heavily on the authoritative biographies of Mahomet, the Hadith (the recorded sayings of the Prophet), the Qur’an, and from the historical record.

His thesis is that Islam not only condones violence and discrimination against unbelievers, rather that it promotes such violence as a proper and legitimate expression of faithfulness and the main vehicle for propagating the religion.

Essentially, although he approaches from the opposite point of view, he is accepting as correct the jihadist interpretation of Islam, that the non-jihadist adherents of the religion are the slackers and backsliders and traitors to their faith.

I am always deeply suspicious of criticisms of other religions, having read so much nonsense about my own.

For example, when the polemicist Richard Dawkins attacks Christian belief, he first defines a caricature of it before demolishing it.

His definition of Christian belief and practice are not a description of any religion to which I adhere. I do not believe he sets out to deceive, he just fails to understand something that he is not part of.

As Dawkins is mistaken about Christianity, I suspect Hurriyah is about Islam.

There is certainly a grotesque aspect of religion that nothing can, or should, attempt to gloss over. We saw such an example last month with the Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar. What ghastly distortion of religion is it that believes God’s will can consist of drawing groups of terrified children out to the front of their class to be executed, having first made them watch their teacher being burned alive?

Even more extraordinary is the belief that, should the terrorists die while committing these shocking crimes, they will be transported to a paradise where they will receive the attentions of an almost limitless supply of virgins. Surely these cannot be the adherents of “God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful”, they have rather more in common with the devotees of the goddess Kali.

It strikes me that, for all his research and quotations from scripture, there are two fundamental flaws with Hurriya’s thesis. Firstly, overwhelmingly the victims of jihadist violence are not “unbelievers” but ordinary Muslims, as were the schoolchildren in Peshawar. Secondly, and more fundamentally, his description of the religion is so at variance with our own experience of Muslims.

In effect, he explains their normal and peaceful behaviour as a misunderstanding of their own religion, or a wilful refusal to practice it properly.

The Muslims I encounter are honest, decent, peace-loving individuals.

It is stretching credulity to believe, as Hurriyah would have it, that this is merely a pretence. In the days before Christmas I also received a Christmas card from Dr Mohammed Fahim, the head imam at Woodford Muslim community centre, wishing me God’s peace, mercy and blessings. The card pointed out something of which I was unaware: that more than 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide believe in Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his message, all his miracles, his ascension into heaven and his second coming. On the reverse of the card is the following statement: “Islam is a religion of peace, justice and tolerance. It rejects violence and condemns the killing of civilians anywhere in the world, irrespective of their race or religion even if Islam is Insulted or ridiculed.”

Abdul Hurriyah may think that Dr Fahim is deluded or dishonest, but I think we need to hear a great deal more from Dr Mohammed Fahim and the millions like him.