Imagine a politician going around town with a bunch of henchmen cornering people and forcing them to vote for him or her. While such politicians might at first believe they have a large following, they’d soon find that their efforts have only falsely inflated their influence. Such methods would neither help a politician’s cause, nor would it help the people. Rather, it would only stain the cause with fear and deterrence.
ISIS is currently trying this method, as it has been going around Iraq raising hell. Recently, ISIS forces captured 1,500 Iraqi soldiers, and forced them to convert to Islam at gunpoint.
As a practicing Muslim, I have yet to come across an example in history where the Prophet Muhammad used force to preach Islam. His examples show that he fought only to win the hearts of people.
Until ISIS changes its methodologies, its forces will continue to slander against Islam with their actions.
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ISIS is just using religion as the vehicle for gaining power, as has been the case throughout history. Are they corrupting Islam? Does it really matter? They’re certainly not going to care as long as they can get their political agenda across.
The end goal is to simply gain power and the methodology to get there is irrelevant. Guns, religion, money, and fear are all used in turn. Just look at our own political system and you’ll see all of those in use here just as it is in Iraq.
Critical difference
The problem is, many in this country equate the actions of radical islamists with being representative of Islam as a whole. Think of how many times – after some report of violent or terroristic activities by islamists – the call goes out wondering why the larger community of Muslims aren’t loudly and visibly denouncing such actions – the implication being that lack of such denunciation somehow implies agreement with the terrorists.
Well, here is someone loudly and visibly denouncing the actions of ISIS. The motivations of ISIS are immaterial to the reason for this article. I applaud the author for simply stepping up and saying “No! This does NOT represent who I am or what I believe, and I find it unacceptable!”.