24 reasons ISIS are wrong: Muslim scholars blast Islamic State

Rasa - A large group of Islamic theologians addressed the head of the Islamic State in an open letter, articulately accusing the movement of practices that have nothing to do with Islam.

News ID: 1230

Date: 25 September 2014 - 19:11

RNA – According to HuffPost, more than 120 Muslim scholars from around the world joined an open letter to the “fighters and followers” of the Islamic State, denouncing them as un-Islamic by using the most Islamic of terms.

“Who gave you authority over the ummah [Muslim people]?” the letter questions. “Was it your group? If this is the case, then a group of no more than several thousand has appointed itself the ruler of over a billion-and-a-half Muslims. This attitude is based upon a corrupt circular logic that says: ‘Only we are Muslims, and we decide who the caliph is, we have chosen one and so whoever does not accept our caliph is not a Muslim,’” the document said.

Even translated into English, the letter will still sound alien to most Americans, said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, who released it in Washington with 10 other American Muslim religious and civil rights leaders.

“The letter is written in Arabic. It is using heavy classical religious texts and classical religious scholars that ISIS has used to mobilize young people to join its forces,” said Awad, “This letter is not meant for a liberal audience.”

In particular, the document stresses the unprecedented number of people executed by the Islamic State militants for their beliefs.

“Jihad is a noble concept in Islam,” told VICE News the national director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Nihad Awad. “It is the right to defend oneself and one's country. But people cannot take it into their own hands. As an act of aggression, it is a violation,” he said.

The children who died in IS attacks or were used in combat were added to the list of shameful IS deeds.

“In your schools some children are tortured and coerced into doing your bidding and others are being executed,” the letter says. “These are crimes against innocents who are so young they are not even morally accountable.”

The letter also calls attention to frivolous handling of the holy texts and intentionally-selective citation of certain passages in order to legitimize atrocities perpetrated by the IS.

“It is not permissible to quote a verse, or part of a verse, without thoroughly considering and comprehending everything that the [Koran] and Hadith relate about that point,” the letter notes.

The slavery that returned to the Middle East with the rise of the Islamic State was not ignored in the document either.

Despite Islam's consensus taking decision to abolish slavery over a century ago, “Islamic State militants have captured women from minority communities and forced them to marry fighters or sold them into slavery.”

The most effective ideological critics of the IS should come from within the Muslim community, shared Nihad Awad, who believes that the open letter is “intended for a conservative audience” and is “very convincing.”

“People should know that what ISIS is doing is not Islam,” Muzammil Siddiqi, the chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, which facilitated publication of the letter, told VICE News. “It's important that a large number of scholars are speaking up and saying this is wrong.”

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