LR imam: Muslims condemn terrorism

[PsychoDad]

LR imam: Muslims condemn terrorism
BY HEATHER WECSLER

http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=News&storyid=125002

Posted on Monday, August 15, 2005

Out of the more than 6,000 verses in the Koran, only seven or eight mention fighting, said a Muslim spiritual leader.

Aquil Hamidullah, the imam of Little Rock’s Islamic Center for Human Excellence, believes American Muslims can play a role in ending the religious extremism that led to last month’s bombings in London and Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. "Some clerics put all their emphasis on those passages, as if the Koran were a manual for war," he said.

Most of the Muslim holy book urges charity and faith. Those are the verses American Muslims can embody, Hamidullah said, and the ones Islamist militants ignore all too often. His mosque is affiliated with the ministry of W. Deen Mohammed, a wholly American Muslim movement that broke away from the Nation of Islam in the 1970s to embrace traditional Islam and its teachings of racial equality.

Hamidullah isn’t alone in his optimism. On July 28, the Fiqh Council of North America, an advisory committee on Islamic law, issued an edict — or fatwa — against terrorism and religious extremism. Since then, more than 170 North American Muslim organizations and mosques have endorsed the statement, including W. Deen Mohammed’s ministry and another Arkansas mosque, the Islamic Center of Little Rock.

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The edict says Islam forbids "all acts of terrorism targeting civilians." It also exhorts Muslims to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect civilians’ lives. The edict cites Koran verses that condemn violence, such as verse 5:32: "Whoever kills a person ... it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind."