Aljazeera: "Intolerance shows ignorance of Islam"

This is quite interesting, and I am not posting it to sneer at it.

Eighty years ago, Marmaduke Pickthall, the British scholar of Islam and translator of the Quran, wrote: "It was not until the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they became more tolerant, and it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that they declined in tolerance."

Tolerance was regarded as irreligious in the Christian world, but was an essential part of Islam, but it is no longer credited to Muslims.

Nowadays, the more "religious" some Muslims regard themselves to be, the less tolerant they are. The cause is a troubling intellectual decline of the Islamic civilisation.

While Muslims complain about the Western lack of understanding of Islam, this misconstruction in the interpretation of religious texts is unfortunately prevalent in the Muslim mind today.

We noticed.

The conversion to Christianity by Abdulrahman, the Afghan recently pardoned from his death sentence after much pressure from the West, and its repercussions illustrate this confusion.

Pertaining to the Islamic texts and principles, whether the Afghani apostate was mentally ill or not, the whole trial was nonsense.

Had there been a worldly punishment for apostasy in Islam, Muhammad would have been the first one to apply it.

Killing a person because of his intellectual choice contradicts the essence of Islamic principles of freedom of faith and worship, repeatedly emphasised in the Quran and the practice of Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him.

Even I know that Muslim jurisprudence does not stop at the Quran. That is addressed in the following passage:

A question might arise: If the Quran explicitly affirms the freedom of faith, why is there all of this controversy about killing apostates? Good question.

The problem starts with the misinterpretation of a few hadiths (sayings of Prophet Muhammad) suggesting capital punishment as a penalty for apostasy.

However, what the Prophet meant by those hadiths had nothing to do with intellectual choices related to faith; rather it is the political treason and military sedition within the community, which Muhammad was concerned about as a part of his political responsibility.

The problem is that there are obviously other ways to interpret these hadiths and some of those who differ are not merely ignorant. That, I suppose, is the intellectually dishonest aspect of this essay although the author, Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti, may be perfectly sincere in presenting what he sees as the true Islam. (Will the true Islam please stand up?) The article is followed by the following disclaimer:

The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.

Tags: Islam, Apostasy, Quran, Hadith, Mohammed,