Jihadi Challenge

Will the "Real Allah" Stand Forth?

The alleged cold-blooded murder of an off-duty UK serviceman by two Islamic jihadis has shocked the nation.  The "note" left by one of those arrested provides their apologia for murder:

The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers, and this British soldier is one, and it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. By Allah, we swear by the Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. So what if we want to live by the sharia in Muslim lands. Why does that mean you must follow us and chase us and call us extremists and kill us? Rather, you are extreme.

You are the ones. When you talk of bombs, do you think it hits one person? Or rather your bomb wipes out a whole family. This is the reality. By Allah, if I saw your mother today with a buggy, I would help her up the stairs. This is my nature. But we are forced by … many many [sections] throughout the Koran that we must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

On the other hand, the Muslim Council of Britain has condemned the attacks.

The Muslim Council of Britain are holding a press conference. Farooq Murad, the MCB's secretary general, said he wanted to express his "outrage and horror" at what took place.  The culprits had "insulted Allah and dishonoured our faith" he said.  He added: "It has no basis in Islam and we condemn it unreservedly." 

He called on all British Muslims to "reach out to fellow Britons and testify the true reality of our faith".

We applaud the Muslim Council of Britain's condemnation of the attacks.   But it leaves us all with a significant problem.  On the one hand the alleged murderer says his conscience is bound by the Koran.  He is "forced" by many sections throughout the Koran to fight "them" as they fight us.  He is "forced" to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  In other words, he and his fellow conspirators acted as they did conscientiously, as commanded, required, and instructed in the Koran. 

On the other hand, the spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain says the alleged perpetrators have "insulted Allah and dishonoured our faith."  What they did "has no basis in Islam."

So who is being accurate?  Who is faithfully representing the teachings of Islam.  Clearly by the lights of the alleged attackers, the Muslim Council of Britain is insulting Allah and dishonouring the faith.  So, who is telling the truth?

Now is the time for Muslims in the UK to take some responsibility to explicate exactly what the teaching of Muhammad is, as presented in the Koran, the hadiths, the traditions, and the fatwas.   As it stands--and hopefully it will not be left to stand--Islam is a religion without meaning because it accommodates at least two diametrically opposed positions which mutually condemn.  As it stands, Islamic believers can apparently conscientiously believe totally contradictory teachings.  (On the surface of it, this seems to be a not unreasonable possibility, given eleven centuries of bloody, deadly conflict between Sunni Islam and Shi'ite Islam, which continues before our very eyes in these days in the Middle East.)

The burdens of explication and proof lie firmly on the shoulders of Islamic people and its teachers, not just in Britain, but everywhere.  It's not enough for the Muslim Council of Britain to condemn the alleged murderers by asserting they have "insulted Allah and dishonoured our faith" and that what they did "has no basis in Islam".  They now have a duty of care, an obligation, to prove it to us all by a thorough exegesis of the Koran, the hadiths, the traditions, and the fatwas.  After all, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it is the Muslim Council of Britain who are the heretics.  We hope not.  

We hope they will take up their duty of care.  We fear they will not--whether out of conscientious choice, or inability.