By Ghulam Ghaus Siddiqi, New Age Islam
12 June 2017
The terror groups, most predominantly ISIS are viciously attacking Islam’s peaceful ideology from all possible angles, thrusting the world into the fire of hatred and prejudice. Completely bereft of true spirit of Islam, they continue to pen articles after articles in their mouthpiece “Rumiyah”—the magazine that replaces Dabiq, Dar al-Islam, and other magazines which were released until mid-2016. In order to justify their terror attacks, they repeatedly quote the verse 9:14 “Fight them and Allah will punish them through your hands”. Again in the article titled “The Ruling On the Belligerent Christians” (Rumiyah: 9th issue, page 10),they have referred to the same verse out of context in order to kill all those who do not belong to their ideology which is commonly called Wahhabism or Salafism.
Before proceeding further into refuting ISIS, it must be noted that the US and some of its Arab allies are trying to eradicate the terrorist outfit ISIS from the face of the earth. Islamic scholars from around the world have issued a number of Fatwas condemning all of the ISIS atrocities—mutilation, beheading, merciless killing of innocent people, etc. However, all such efforts failed to change the attitude of ISIS, as the terrorists are still striking in different parts of the world—Iraq, Syria, UK, France, Pakistan, Afghanistan and so on. Mere condemnation of the terrorist attacks or quoting only peaceful verses and ignoring the war-related verses will not change the attitude of ISIS militants. The learned scholars will have to tell them that the war-related verses are contextual and specific for the time. They do not apply to us any more. They urgently need to refute the misconceptions that ISIS and its founders have created with reference to the war-related Quranic verses and Ahadith.