Word: sura
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Both the Bible and the Koran make sternly clear the manner in which injury is to be avenged. "Thou shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth," says the Book of Exodus. In Sura II of the Koran the Prophet advises: "O believers, prescribed for you is retaliation touching the slain; freeman for freeman, slave for slave, female for female." Unfortunately for the Middle East, this sense of bitter, retaliatory justice persists to the present...
...sacred conquest to an ethic of self-defense, early Islam moved the other way. When his group was still small in the early years at Medina, Mohammed preached a doctrine of self-defense. "Fight against those who fight against you," Allah warns in the Koran's second sura. "But begin not hostilities. Allah loves not aggressors...