Solving Muslims' Crisis of Values
Year Delivered or Published: None
Author: Siddique Malik
Author's Faith: Islam
Date Submitted to Inspiration and Issues: November 4, 2007
Topic: Religious Conflict
A crisis of values has gripped the Muslim world. Suicide terrorist attacks by fanatical Muslims constitute the symptom; the disease is the fact that some Muslims are glib toward these murderous actions, looking upon the suicide attackers as "martyrs" eagerly awaited by the paradise's voluptuous virgins.
Is the Quran being misunderstood or rather understood?
Some commands in the Old Testament of the Bible (e.g., execute children who disobey their parents) and in the Torah (e.g., stone a disobedient child to death) would make today's even hardened criminals cringe. Thankfully, Christians and Jews do not insist upon following these draconian instructions. Long time ago, these spiritual cousins of Muslims learned to ignore nonsensical verses in their scriptures and focus on the humanistic ones.
Like other religious books, the Quran has both types of verses. There are verses that command Muslims to take care of young orphans in a community. "Look after them, protect the wealth that their dead parents bequeathed and hand it over to them untouched when they come of age," says the Quran. These commands are undoubtedly timeless, and there are eternally magnanimous instructions on various other issues.
But the Quran also embodies verses that are suppressive, cultist and murderous, e.g., beat "disobedient" wives (notice the plural) into submission, cut the throats of "infidels" unless they accept Islam, strike fear in the hearts of "infidels," kill the "apostates," etc.
This is where common sense is required. Instead of incessantly reciting these verses in mosques and homes in front of children and for that matter any one, Muslims should declare them null and void and/or inapplicable to modern times. This would engender a much-needed revolution of values in the Muslim world.
But this transformation would not occur until and unless logical Muslims make courageous pronouncements. They should disavow isolationist verses and emphasize the humanistic ones, and there is no shortage of the latter in the Quran. It is time to create a "new testament" of the Quran?
