The Innocence of Islam

How strange it is. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi clearly stated that Islam is long overdue for clearing out of the egregious passages of expressed hostility to other religions and its express instructions to its faithful of their duty to ensure that Islam remains on a growth trajectory. Muslims have an obligation under the most critical of Islamic injunctions, to persuade by whatever means required, non-Muslims to surrender to Islam or suffer the consequences. The consequences in jihad are dire: surrender or die.

"I say and repeat, again, that we are in need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting on you. The entire world is waiting for your word ... because the Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands."

"We need a revolution of the self, a revolution of consciousness and ethics to rebuild the Egyptian person -- a person that our country will need in the near future."

"It's inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible that this thinking -- and I am not saying the religion -- I am saying this thinking."

"This is antagonizing the entire world. It's antagonizing the entire world! Does this mean that 1.6 billion people (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants -- that is 7 billion -- so that they themselves may live? Impossible!​"

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi -- January 2015

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi spoke out against Islamic extremism on New Year's Day, which coincided with the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

 

So much for one courageous, forward-thinking, Islamist-rejecting man who is a pious Muslim capable of viewing the world in the round, not through the prism of primitive, barbaric tribalism. And he is not alone in calling for Islam to expunge its justification of extremism and violence. The King of Morocco has also addressed the theological meaning of jihad, taking aim at jihadists who use Islam to justify the killing of innocents, and citing the Koran as their guide.

An influential religious figure in Christianity years ago brought the Muslim world to the cusp of enraged violence against Christians when he mused about the violence historically inherent in Islam, quoting an earlier 14th-century dialogue between a Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, and a Persian scholar, about the utility and place of violence in Islam: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI delivers an address in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006, which caused a firestorm of protest across the Islamic world. (Credit: AP.)

Pope Benedict's intention was not to impugn Islam, but his quote had the unfortunate effect of lighting a fire of rage throughout the Muslim world, forcing him to make an abject apology rather than risk a complete schism between the two religions and in the process helping to promote the poisonous virus of jihadist violence and global terrorism by fuelling the Islamic world with a renewed belief in "Islamophobia" emanating from the most elevated Christian source, requiring a response in 'defence' of Islam.

The explosive responses that arise out of the world of Islam any time a public provocation however innocently meant surfaces as when images of the Prophet Mohammad are published, or criticisms of Islam, or equating terrorism with Islam, have resulted in the mainstream news media, government agencies and heads of government themselves turning intellectual cartwheels to avoid leaving the impression that Islam is somehow involved in global terrorism and Muslim societal dysfunction.

The current Pope Frances engages in circumlocution to avoid admitting that Islam is the fount from which global terrorism has arisen. And nor would he ever accuse a bloody despot like the president of Syria of mass murder related to Islam, though the bloody civil war taking place in the Middle East is one of sectarian hatreds bred by Islam and tribal societies' detestation of one another. Frances prefers to excoriate Christians for their moral failings though terrorism is not among them.

Similarly, Nobel Laureate Barack Obama would bite off his wayward tongue before emoting the belief that Islamist violence has any relation to the religion of peace that pious Muslims claim Islam to be. The most powerful spiritual leader in the world today and the most powerful government executive in the world both agree; even while the scourge of Islamist terror through jihad threatens the world, none of it has anything to remotely pin on Islam.