Word: prophetic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wanted al-Qaeda terrorist in Iraq, appended a theological message. Berg's murder, the masked man intoned, was sanctioned by Islam's holiest texts. "Has the time not come for you to lift the sword, which the master of the Messengers [Muhammad] was sent with?" al-Zarqawi asked. "The Prophet ... has ordered to cut off the heads of some of the prisoners of Badr ... He is our example...
...does Islam also excuse al-Zarqawi-style atrocity? Well, one verse in the Koran condones beheading, but in the heat of battle. Some accounts of the Prophet Muhammad's life, called hadiths, record the execution--by what method is debated--of a tribe that had lived among Muslims and then betrayed them. Al-Zarqawi's specific bid to sacralize Berg's slaughter rests on an allusion to Muhammad's great victory on the battlefield of Badr. According to some hadiths, Muhammad was left wondering what to do with the resulting prisoners. This, the texts claimed, was the context...
Indeed, most Islamic experts condemn the hostage murders for the same reason that--anti-American sentiment aside--they condemned the Sept. 11 attacks: the Prophet's prohibition on killing noncombatants, or, as he put it, "a woman or a child, or a hermit, a farmer plowing his field, [or] a person who is not carrying a weapon against you." Says Ingrid Mattson, vice president of the Islamic Society of North America: "Other than from the spokesmen for these different terrorist groups, everything I've heard is a complete rejection" of the beheadings. Scholars at Cairo's venerable al-Azhar seminary...
Those of us pushing for reforms are not seeking to change Islam. We are questioning defective doctrine from an intellectual and theological position, using the Koran, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and ijtihad, or critical reasoning, as ideological weapons in the war over how Muslim communities define themselves. Islamic scholar Amina Wadud notes that we are emboldened to take public action to reject the way extremists have defined Islam since 9/11. We are in the midst of jihad li tajdid al-ruh al-Islami, a struggle for the soul of Islam...
...dilemma facing most Muslims is that this war pits us against ourselves. For guidance, we need look no further than the lessons from the time of the Prophet Muhammad. In Mecca in the 7th century, the Prophet faced off against his own tribe, the Quraysh, for worshipping false idols. In much the same way, modern Muslims are pitted against people worshipping false idols of hatred, violence and intolerance. After he fled Mecca, the Prophet heard a chapter of the Koran called Al-Nisa (The Women), which said, "O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice as witnesses...