Islam in Somalia and in the world?

Question

What do you make of the barbaric actions of insurgents in Somalia burning and dragging dead soldiers through the streets? How do you justify such a frenzy of hatred but especially inhuman behavior from Islamist? I hope some Muslims will answer me here in what do Muslims in the world do to condemn these actions committed in the name of Allah and what do you do to change the image of Islam in the world?
I have yet to hear or see a HUGE majority of Muslim leaders, Imams and figures openly talk against these actions and taking a stand to denounce them strongly continually and in plain view of the world.

Answer to gradjasan. Yes I am a Christian and yes I am a human being. Your rhetoric about how Christians killed many in the name of God (i.e.: crusaders) is missing one important fact. It happened at a time where men were not civilized. This is 2007 you cannot tell me that human race today can and do act like if it was 700 AD.
Other answers were about this being a generalized attack against Islam. IT is NOT. My point is that many of these militants / terrorists act in the name of God and under a holy war (Jihad) which is directly connected to their scripture in the Koran. My problem is that NO moderate Muslims condemn, or even act against these actions. Where are the people in the street chanting against the terrorists, where are the leaders taking a stand against the murder of innocents? All in all it seems that secretly every Muslim and every Arab in particular is happy to see those groups attack and murder infidels as they say and it is always hidden behind some political issue.

Answer 1

gradjasan is an idiot

Answer 2

You need to see the other side of this. We had been supporting one side of a civil war, and in our zeal, we had killed a significant number (100's) of civilians. Now, war is never neat and pretty, and civilians are always going to get caught in the crossfire, but from many accounts it seems the level of Somali casualties was excessively high. We were trying to take out Mohammed Aidid, and in the process, we supported several rather unsavory local warlords.

The backlash you saw was mostly driven by revenge (for dead relaitives), not hate for americans. Most Somalis do not hate america, butthey do hate the US and Ethiopian governments for intervening in their affairs.

This isn't to say that there aren't some radical, wild-eyed militant Islamic groups in Somali with designs against the US (like Al Qaeda)- because they certainly do exist and are a real threat. But you can't assume everyone over there is a 'bad guy Islamist'. You need to learn more about what's going on in the world, and stop assuming you are getting all of the information when you see a TV report. The situation on the ground is far more complex than you apparently understand it to be.

Answer 3

How many times must we be reminded what the war on terror is all about. Those that seek to reduce or eliminate our participation in trying to hamper or destroy this walking and talking human cancer from the very fabric of society only encourage its existence and success. These animals have adapted strategies that would make Attila the Hun blush. As I have said many times, if you cannot be strenuously opposed to these types of movements (Islamic Fascism) then there is little hope any type of behavior no matter how bizarre or detestable will ever move you to action. THIS IS NOT A U.S. PROBLEM. THIS IS A WORLD CONFLAGRATION IN PROGRESS IN ITS INFANT STAGE. The U.S., along with a few allies, recognize the threat this poses to everyone. Just because others want to sit on their hands and wait for their 9-11 does not mean we have to wait for our second. Deny if you must. But just remember, our decisions today may mean the difference in liberty supported or denied for the worlds children and grandchildren.

Answer 4

Again an unfair attack. Or rather, this attack is fair but not coming from a Christian. Or a human for that matter.

Yes what they are doing is barbaric, but no more so than what Christians have done. In America alone, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, The Spanish-American War, and World War I and II can all be traced back to some extent to Christianity. And while Christianity isn't solely to blame (there were economic and political factors as well), Christianity can practically be solely to blame for all the killings. Both sides invoked the name of Jesus as their backer as they killed the other side's humans for their evil ways.

Yet not once have I ever heard a Christian go after any of the Christian sects for having backed the deaths of millions. They cheered on the death of their brothers in their own country as heroes, and the deaths of their brothers in the other countries as monsters; but they were all brothers nonetheless. I don't hear you attacking them either. I don't see you attacking Bush when he has sent thousands of innocent American soldiers and millions of innocent Iraqis to their deaths; what I see is you grouping all of your brothers together and cheering on their death because they happen to be of the same race as one of your enemies.

Islam can certainly be attacked as evil for its unwillingness to step up and condemn these actions by their extremists; but they can't be attacked by Christians who refuse to stand up and attack their extremists (like Bush, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, etc.).

Answer 5

I am a Muslim and here is my answer:

The answer is simple, you don't and can't justify the barbaric actions of the militants. They can think that they are doing this in the name of Islam, but they are not. They will be judged for their actions. They await severe punishement on the Last Day, no doubt about it.

Answer 6

I agree the acts are barbaric to me as well. Unfortunately, people of all types of religions have twisted religion to justify some horrible murders. Ever heard of the Crusades?

Answer 7

It has nothing to do with religion.

People who want to be just like Hilter are using Islam as an excusxe to allow themselves to rule the world.

Answer 8

islam does not punish those people, those people who commit such acts, it is viewed as a jihad, as being ok!

Answer 9

Blah bla bla
Why doesn't the Un make themselves useful rather than useless?

Answer 10

Killing for religion?
Our consciousness is manipulated and entrapped, to some extent, by slogans. Conceptions like democracy, freedom, and human rights are the three most effective slogans used to benumb public opinion and maintain the world’s order. As ideas, even as values, we do not necessarily object to them; rather, we do not approve of them when they are used by certain powers as cruel and cynical deceptions that are as corrosive as chemical weapons.

The world powers usually accept the most ruthless tyrannies for as long as they can manipulate them easily. They seek stability in those areas of a country’s life that allow their economic interests to function and flourish unopposed. But yet they oppose any democratic country that jeopardizes their interests by seeking political or cultural independence. They interfere in such countries’ internal affairs on the grounds of “democracy and freedom,” even though their own human rights’ record is by no means good.

Leaving aside colonialism’s past and present excesses in different guises, we note the continued existence of racial, cultural, and religious discrimination within their own lands. Concessions are made regularly to extremist political parties (ostensibly to prevent greater popularity); the number of crimes and prisoners continues to increase; and physical torture, especially of activists on behalf of minority interests, is unofficially tolerated. Yet they still claim the right to champion democracy, freedom, and human rights wherever they want to—just as long as it serves their own interests and they can justify the use of military or economic force to their own people.

They wage war thousands of miles away to assert their interests in an island, yet do not allow others the same right in an island on their very borders. Western intelligence activities abroad are “heroic,” but somehow become “barbaric” or “terrorist” when used by other countries seeking to maintain or assert their independence and self-defence. In short, the moral or philosophical value of democracy, freedom, and human rights is utterly compromised by the naked and cruel cynicism used to secure their dominion. Such practices remind us of the famous chant in Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”.

Nothing is so effective against such cynicism as serious and sincere religious belief that can inspire the thoughts and actions that govern life. Therefore it is no surprise that political opinion-formers sometimes take swipes at religion on the absurd claim that religion inspires killing. Recently, Time magazine presented the Divinely inspired religion—whether Judaism, Christianity, or Islam—as a way of life that encourages “killing for God.”92 Some extremist groups misrepresent religion as a narrow political ideology and use it to display their hard-heartedness or rigidity, or to sublimate their inferiority or superiority complexes. However, a system that condemns such actions cannot itself be condemned whenever self-professed adherents use it to justify their reprehensible actions.

Islam: a mercy for all creation

Religion is a contract between God and humanity, and all of its conditions favor and benefit us. As complex and civilized beings who, in addition to many other things, need a secure coexistence with other people, we seek peace and justice in our individual and collective lives. Just as individual motives differ, humanity’s “collective reason” cannot comprehend the true nature of that necessary peace and justice or how to realize it in practice. The subsequent need for a transcendent reason—religion—therefore was given to us by God. Religion is nothing more than an assemblage of the principles laid down by God for human happiness and security in both worlds and for the realization of justice in practical life.

Since people’s essential nature and needs never change over the course of time, all Prophets preached the same fundamentals of religion. Any differences were confined to secondary matters related to the ever-changing circumstances of life. The religion chosen by God Almighty to ensure individual and collective human felicity in both worlds, and which He revealed through all Prophets, is Islam. Islam means belief in and submission to God, and thereby peace and justice in our individual and collective lives. Judaism and Christianity are names given to the earlier revelations of Islam under Prophets Moses and Jesus, respectively. No Israelite Prophet ever said Judaism. Jesus never claimed to establish Christianity on Earth or called himself a Christian. Christian appears only three times in the New Testament and first by pagans and Jews in Antioch about 43 AD, long after Jesus had left this Earth (Acts 11:26).

Islam can be best summed up in the Basmala, the formula uttered at the start of every good act: In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. The word translated as the All-Merciful is al-Rahman, which denotes God as the One Who, out of His infinite Mercy, protects and sustains, as well as guarantees the life of and provides for, all members of creation without exception. The word translated as the All-Compassionate is al-Rahim, which denotes God as the One Who has special mercy for His good, believing, devoted, and upright servants in both worlds. Moreover, the Qur’an states that the Prophet was sent as a mercy for all worlds [all species of beings] (21:107). A religion so based on mercy and compassion seeks to revive, not to kill.

Unfortunately, modern materialistic thought is fed by modern science’s extreme positivism and rationalism. It therefore reduces life to the physical or material dimension and ignores the fact that peace, harmony, and contentment in this world depend upon human spirituality. A true spiritual life, one based on enlightening the mind or intellect through scientific knowledge and enlightening the heart and refining feelings through belief, religious knowledge, worship, and inspiration, is essential to the Prophets’ preaching. For example, the Qur’an proclaims: Respond to God and the Messenger, when the Messenger calls you to that which will give you life [which will revive you intellectually and spiritually] (8:24).

Muhammad Asad, a Jewish convert to Islam, likens Islam to a perfect work of architecture: All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other, nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. Therefore, it gives almost as much importance to our physical life as it does to our spiritual life. Islam regards each person as the representative of its kind and as having the same value as all humanity. This is why God condemned Cain, for his unjust murder of his brother Abel introduced murder into history. As a result, he is held indirectly responsible for all killings until the end of time. As this sin is considered so grave, the Qur’an declares that one who kills someone unjustly is just like one who kills all of humanity, and that one who revives someone either spiritually or physically is just like one who restores all of humanity to life either spiritually or physically (5:32).

Clearly, a religion that attaches to such importance to the life of each person will never preach killing for its own sake or glorify it. Islam also does not approve of forced conversions, but rather seeks to remove whatever prevents us from making a free choice of what we will believe by establishing an environment in which all beliefs can be presented freely. Once this is guaranteed, Islam asks us to use our God-given free will to choose and reminds us that we will be held responsible for it, as well as for whatever we did in this world, in the Hereafter: There is no compulsion in religion, as right and guidance have been distinguished from wrong and deviation (2:256).

Who is responsible?
Prophet Muhammad was attacked many times by his enemies, and sometimes was forced to wage war on them. In all these wars, only about 700 people were killed on both sides. Given this, consider the following questions: Was religion responsible for the many millions of deaths in the Soviet Union and communist China? Did religion cause the Soviet massacres in Afghanistan and Chechnya [by Russia], and the brutal suppression of freedom movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia? Did religion kill more than one million people during France’s war to deny Algeria its freedom? Did religion urge America to its adventure in Vietnam, which cost more than a million lives during the war and many more indirectly since?

Did religion or modern civilization, extolled as the most advanced and humane in history, cause the death of more than 60 million people, the majority of them civilians, and force countless millions more to remain homeless, widowed and orphaned, during and after the two world wars? Is religion responsible for using scientific knowledge to make nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction with which to intimidate poor and weak nations?

If the world powers want to impose their new world order in the name of “world peace, democracy, and human freedom,” but in reality for their own political and economic advantage, and give themselves the right to commit such atrocities, surely people claiming to serve God can use the same rationale to clear the world of such atrocities and establish true peace and realize true freedom. But believers do not justify, like modern political cynics do, such atrocities and war-mongering in the name of merely political ends. Believers, unlike unbelievers, realize that those actions sincerely undertaken only in the Name of God, the All-Merciful and the All-Compassionate, and that have no other motive and do not transgress God’s limits, can revive truly humane values.

‘Ali ibn Abi Talib presents such an example. During a battle, this noble Companion and future caliph felled his enemy and was on the point of killing him. But at that very moment, the man spat in ‘Ali’s face. To his surprise, ‘Ali released him immediately. Later on ‘Ali explained that the man’s action had made him suddenly angry and, therefore, fearing that his motive for killing the man had become mixed and therefore sullied with his anger, he released him. This enemy soldier later embraced Islam and thus was revived both spiritually and physically.