c01dphu510n's reactor
Jihad
Gregory Rice
Osama bin Laden is known recently as an Islamic extremist accused of fostering, training, and financing the bombings of United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, Africa and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He has also possible ties to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. Bin Laden has used the Muslim principle jihad to justify his openly proposed "holy war" on the United States and all its interests throughout the world. The Muslim word jihad, which in fact relates to the Islamic goal of "reforming the earth," has been used primarily in the twentieth century as rationalization for the Western colonization of Muslim lands (probably financial colonization). This concept has been used in the past by medieval Muslim rulers to justify wars with solely political amibitions, and using this as a prerequisite, as well as qiyas, or analogical reasoning, modern Muslim fundamentalists and extremely can justify killing hundreds in terroristic action. Qiyas seem to be similar to the US justice system's concept of prerequisite in deciding current questions. Also, jihad is used to spread the ethical norms set forth in the Koran - through military force if necessary. If United States society is so morally deficient, violent, and corrupt, how is more violence to help bring that to an end? Those who reject the laws set forth in the Koran are destined for hell, no matter by what name they call themselves. Why is the death of innocent people legal under the Koran?
With those thoughts established, I can say that they are a sad excuse for killing people. I am under the impression, although I cannot find this in the research I've conducted, that Islam expressly forbad murder except under condition of jihad, and that jihad can only be declared with good reason. If, as it says in the Koran, Muslims and Christians all worship the same God (under different names), and Catholicism's Jesus Christ is a such an important prophet leading up to Mohammed, and that there exists a very special link between Muslims, Jews, and Christians as all Abraham's children, can bin Laden truly rationalize killing his brothers in faith, part of the House of Peace (religious sects with which Islam has pacts of peace)? One of Roman Catholicism's primary laws (one of the Ten Commandments) is "thou shalt not kill." Is it safe to assume that this laws should extend to all God's people, since Moses is also one of the important Prophets in the Islamic faith?
Honors Social Studies
03/24/1999