'Muslims should abrogate verses of war in Islamic Law', Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

'Muslims should abrogate verses of war in Islamic Law'

By Ida Indawati Khouw

The Jakartapost.com

November 03, 2008

Although Islamic scholars have repeatedly explained that Koranic verses endorsing war and the use of violence only apply in specific circumstances, for example, in justifying defensive violence when fighting against repression, nonetheless contemporary hard-liners continue justifying violent acts using these sacred texts and seek to legitimize their own actions on religious grounds.

"We should think of a way to end this advocacy of violence in the name of Islam. Apologists argue that the problem lies in Muslims having misinterpreted these texts. They refuse to look at the religion in a critical way but suggest a method of contextualization in interpreting these texts (emphasizing that the verses are historically bound to the era in which they were revealed). But I have become tired with this approach."

"The problem is, fundamentalists create context," Guntur explains further: "For instance, they apply the word 'holy war' to the struggle against United States domination. Another example, the hard-liners extend the meaning of 'enemy of Islam' not only to followers of the Jewish faith and Christians but also to Muslims they consider to be cooperating with the 'infidels'. So, they are very 'contextual' in their arguments."

In order to 'rescue' Islam from being tarnished by violent acts, he suggests Muslims should dare to abrogate the Islamic law on war and the use of violence, an approach that is founded on Islamic tradition itself, "Islam acknowledges a method called nasakh, abrogation of law. It is not a popular approach but we can take the step when certain stipulations are no longer applicable to the contemporary context."

http://newageislam.com/-muslims-should-abrogate-verses-of-war-in-islamic-law---/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/951

Egypt: Total cultural collapse, Islamic Society, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Society

Egypt: Total cultural collapse

Magdy Hussein, editor of the online Islamist paper Al Shaab, seems to think that change is upon us. “It’s the end of an era summed up by the fact that Egypt got no votes at all in the competition to hold the 2010 World Cup, a symbolic statement of the total cultural collapse we are in,” he wrote. “But this is happening at the same time that the American plan for hegemony in Arab and Islamic countries has witnessed a huge setback in Iraq, and this opens great possibilities for liberation from the American-Zionist alliance. This only confirms what we have been saying all along: that American power is in a state of retreat, not advance.”

This is an Islamist critique of Arab regional politics that concurs in essence with that of nationalists such as Muhammad Hassanein Heikal—Egypt and other Arab countries simply need more confidence in order to create bold new Arab alliances that can challenge U.S.-Israeli domination. With the descent of the Iraq project into chaos, the “new Arab liberals” are also under attack. Al Jazeera’s “The Opposite Direction” took up the topic in a recent show, giving a public airing to the view that pro-democracy activists made a big mistake in thinking that America’s Iraq adventure would allow them to replace the Arab regimes. Last month’s G-8 summit in the United States left the pompous and ridiculous Greater Middle East Initiative bereft of any real content—yet another great plan to democratize the Arab world crushed by the realities of Israel’s crazed mission to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous population.

http://newageislam.com/egypt--total-cultural-collapse-/islamic-society/d/172