Islam in the West

I originally posted a while ago after the Nice attack and although it’s good to see that people are actually listening to what people who know what they’re talking about instead of what’s in the media. Sadly some just aren’t getting the message, so I wanted to post a few thoughts on the subject in the hope that the hatred, racism and bigotry towards Muslims can end one day.

One thing that repeatedly gets mentioned is that Islam is at war with the West. This is not true, Islam is NOT at war with the west! Islam is not at war with anyone. Islam is an ideology, a belief system, a way of life, whatever you want to call it, it’s not a physical ‘thing’ so can’t actually wage war against anyone.

However, there are those who commit some of the vilest atrocities in the name of Islam. I don’t know anyone who understands the subject who classes these people as Muslims. Some sources suggest that approximately 0.006% of Muslims are terrorists. I dispute this, I see the number of Muslims as terrorists as 0. No other figure. Why?

The people who commit these acts belong to groups such as:

Takfiri

Wahhabi

Jihadi

So you can have a jihadi terrorist, a Takfiri terrorist, a Wahhabi terrorist however, would these groups be considered ‘Muslim’ per se? On a personal level I would say not, for the same reasons very few people in the West use the term ‘Christian’ to describe a national born person who commits a terrorist act and attends a Christian church, or group. These people are immediately defined as ‘mentally ill’, however I’ve spoken on that before. However, it is vital to remember, just because you see a Muslim on the street they’re not here to harm you, with many violent acts demonstrated towards Muslims, in particular here in the UK, it’s more likely they fear you.

For me the only people who can claim to be Muslim and followers of Islam are those that follow and adhere to the Five Pillars and the word of God as written in the Qur’an. The people who commit these acts throughout the world have no interest in religion as has been widely publicised by the former Dae’sh captive Didier Francois. This is the same for such other groups as Boko Haram. This is nothing to do with religion, but with power.

Something else I’ve read and something I’ve read a number of times over many years is that it’s a ‘Medievel religion’ and doesn’t belong in the modern age. Well, my answer to that is what religion actually does? All religions find their roots thousands of years ago and have adapted themselves over time and distance. This is important as people need to remember that religious texts weren’t written for you, they were written for the people who lived during that time and in that place and in that situation this means that works like the Bible, Qur’an, the Vedas etc were written for the peope living in that time, with no thought or consideration to anyone living thousands of years in the future. As such all religions are essentially outdated in this way of thinking.

Many say today that Islam is a backwards religion, I dispute this also. It took Christianity fifteen centuries to reach it’s reformation which culminated in one of the most bloody episodes in European History. Islam is now in it’s fifteenth century and is itself going through a reformation, with many of the old traditions being cast aside for a new modern approach, partly through the internet, so although they’ve not fulfilled their reformation remember that it took the same amount of time for Christianity to reach its own.

I’m not a religious person, but I see the value in religion which is one of many reasons I chose to study the subject in depth. With even the most basic understanding of this subject we can learn to accept how similar many cultures actually are, our roots are not so different and we’re all human at the end of the day. To those who say Islam refuses to integrate into our societies I offer this challenge.

What have you done to allow Islam to integrate into our societies?

Many who complain of others coming to Europe, the US and UK are indeed the ones stopping and refusing to allow those people to integrate, they shun, they fear, they rebuke and they pour hate to those people for no other reason than they don’t understand that we’re not all that different, we just do some things differently and that’s just one of the many things that makes the human species so wonderful, we’re not all the same!