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The grueling struggle for the true face of Islam
It is now the time to save Islam from the ugly practices of bad, radical Muslims and to reinvent the true face of Islam for a better future of our nation.
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Fight against terrorism: Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization Muhammadiyah chairman Haedar Nashir on May 14, 2018 condemns suicide bombings that hit three churches in Surabaya, East Java. (JP/Bambang Muryanto)
T
oday, Indonesian Islam continues to face many contradictions in its believers’ lives. Islam teaches equality, but some Muslims carry out discrimination. Islam proclaims liberty, but some Muslims practice persecution. Islam affirms respect, but some Muslims incite hatred. Islam honors life, but some Muslims engage in terrorism.
The list of contradictions between the noble tenets of Islam and the ugly practices of Muslims continues to grow.
A critical question comes immediately to mind. What went wrong with Muslims?
To address this, one should begin with an honest recognition that Islam, much like many other world religions, is not comprised of only good Muslims. There is also a growing number of bad, radical Muslims who have changed the public discourse of Islam into an extremist and intolerant tone.
Thus, the first important task that bears upon us in every time and place is precisely to distinguish good from bad Muslims and to hold radical Muslims accountable for their hateful, cruel and intolerant interpretations of Islam.
Although relatively small in number and marginal in the great tradition of Islam, they have been outspoken in their abuse of passages in the Quran for hateful, violent acts and, even more dangerously, as a means to a “martyrdom operation”, to use a famous phrase from French scholar Gilles Kepel in his The War For Muslim Minds (2004).
The struggle for the true face of Islam actually begins with the act of interpretation. Any interpretation of Islam or the Quran by its believers that leads to concrete acts of disunity, intolerance, hatred, hostility, discrimination, persecution, violence, extremism, killing and terrorism, should not be tolerated and must be abated by all means.
