Ulasan Irshad Manji sangat mengena untuk sikon di Indonesia terutama menilik
sikap Islam Moderat yang tidak bisa atau tidak berani secara aktip menolak
sikap para isfun yang menggunakan kaidah agama dan jihad untuk melempengkan
tindakan teror-nya.
Baca mulai bait(paragrap) yang diawali dengan......Moderate Muslim denounce
violence in the name of Islam.........
Jadi kita tahu kenapa para muslim moderat tidak bisa berbuat
banyak...misalnya mengutuk dengan keras soal jihad2an itu, karena untuk
menunjukan hal miring ini mereka akan melangkah memasuki aspek agama yang
nantinya akan merepotkan diri para islam moderat sendiri. Suatu dilemma. Inilah
eranya dimana agama pegang peranan penting dan semua orang yang memberikan
argumentasi betapapun realistisnya memberikan tangkisan betapun riilnya,akan di
cap sebagai anti agama dan patut di eliminir ujung2nya.
Harry Adinegara
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Irshad Manji: Religion is the root cause of terrorist threat
Why are most of the terror suspects (so far) well-educated medical
professionals, not poor and dispossessed types?
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05jul07
THIS week's arrest of Mohamed Haneef in Brisbane may be more curious for the
fact he's a professional lifesaver than for the possibility that he's a
terrorist. So far, most of those being investigated in the latest British car
bomb plots are, as is Haneef, doctors. The seeming paradox of the privileged
seeking to avenge humiliation has many scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim
martyrs supposed to be poor, dispossessed and resentful?
September 11 should have stripped us of that breezy simplification. The 19
hijackers came from means. Mohammed Atta, their ringleader, earned an
engineering degree. He then moved to the West, opting for postgraduate studies
in Germany. No aggrieved goatherder, that one.
In 2003, I interviewed Mohammad al-Hindi, the political leader of Islamic
Jihad in Gaza.
A physician himself, al-Hindi explained the difference between suicide and
martyrdom. "Suicide is done out of despair," the good doctor diagnosed. "But
most of our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives."
In short, it's not what the material world fails to deliver that drives
suicide bombers. It's something else. Time and again, that something else has
been articulated by the people committing these acts: their religion.
Consider Mohammad Sidique Khan, the teaching assistant who masterminded the
July 7, 2005, transport bombings in London. In a taped testimony, Khan railed
against British foreign policy. But before bringing up Tony Blair, he
emphasised that "Islam is our religion" and "the prophet is our role model". In
short, Khan gave priority to God.
Now take Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Moroccan Muslim who murdered
Amsterdam filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Bouyeri pumped several bullets into van
Gogh's body. Knowing that multiple shots would finish off his victim, why
didn't Bouyeri stop there? Why did he pull out a blade to decapitate van Gogh?
Again, we must confront religious symbolism. The blade is an implement
associated with 7th-century tribal conflict. Wielding it as a sword becomes a
tribute to the founding moment of Islam. Even the note stabbed into van Gogh's
corpse, although written in Dutch, had the unmistakable rhythms of Arabic
poetry. Let's credit Bouyeri with honesty: at his trial he proudly acknowledged
acting from religious conviction.
Despite integrating Muslims far more adroitly than most of Europe, North
America isn't immune. Last year in Toronto, police nabbed 17 young Muslim men
allegedly plotting to blow up Canada's parliament buildings and behead the
Prime Minister.
They called their campaign Operation Badr, a reference to prophet Mohammed's
first decisive military triumph, the Battle of Badr. Clearly the Toronto 17
drew inspiration from religious history.
U
For people with big hearts and goodwill, this must be uncomfortable to hear.
But they can take solace that the law-and-order types have a hard time with it,
too. After rounding up the Toronto suspects, police held a press conference and
didn't once mention Islam or Muslims. At their second press conference, police
boasted about avoiding those words. If the guardians of public safety intended
their silence to be a form of sensitivity, they instead accomplished a form of
artistry, airbrushing the role that religion plays in the violence carried out
under its banner.
They're in fine company: moderate Muslims do the same. Although the vast
majority of Muslims aren't extremists, it is important to start making a more
important distinction: between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones.
Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam but deny that Islam
has anything to do with it. By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of
theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions, effectively
telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because
mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing
interpretations. To do so would be admit that religion is a factor. Moderate
Muslims can't go there.
Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's scripture and
history are being exploited. They argue for reinterpretation precisely to put
the would-be terrorists on notice that their monopoly is over.
Reinterpreting doesn't mean rewriting. It means rethinking words and
practices that already exist, removing them from a 7th-century tribal time warp
and introducing them to a 21st-century pluralistic context. Un-Islamic? God,
no. The Koran contains three times as many verses calling on Muslims to think,
analyse and reflect than passages that dictate what's absolutely right or
wrong. In that sense, reform-minded Muslims are as authentic as moderates and
quite possibly more constructive.
This week a former jihadist wrote in a British newspaper that the "real
engine of our violence" is "Islamic theology". Months ago, he told me that as a
militant he raised most of his war chest from dentists. Islamist violence: it's
not just for doctors any more. Tackling Islamist violence: it can't be left to
moderates any more.
Irshad Manji is a senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy.
She is creator of the documentary Faith Without Fear and author of The Trouble
with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in her Faith (Random House,
Australia).
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