Nowadays, many people only know what the media portrays Islam as, so I was requested to do a thread outlining the details of the Religion and how it differs from extremism- which is not Islam at all.
First, I have to start with the basics of Islam, and that is the belief. The belief is a key difference between the mainstream Muslims (also known as Sunni Muslims), which are the majority of the Muslim nation, and the extremists who have what is known as the Wahhaabi creed, which is named so after Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab who emerged from Najd in Saudi Arabia approximately 270 years ago. He is the founder of the Wahhaabi movement. So I will refer to this movement throughout the thread as the extremists follow this ideology. The amount of people following this sect would amount to probably about 3 million people in the world out of the 1.6 billion people who identify themselves as Muslims. The problem with this sect is that they go under many different names (so you hear al-Qaeda, Daesh, ISIS etc). Also, some say they are Sunni Muslims, but they follow the Wahhaabi creed, thus making them a part of this sect as opposed to a mainstream Muslim.
Belief of the Sunni Muslims
The Muslims believe that God is One, not in the context of numbers, but in the context that He does not have a partner with him in Godhood. The essential belief in God for the Muslims is to clear God from resembling any of the creations. We believe that God is not like the creations in any way and that He is the Creator of everything. The Muslims also believe that God does not need any of the creations as He existed before creating the creations. We believe that the existence of God is without a beginning and without an end since He created time and His existence does not have any relation to the passage of time (so time – a creation – does not lapse on Him). So anything with a beginning means that time lapses on it and therefore, is a creation. Everything other than God, be it the universe, the stars, the sun, etc., is created. Since the existence of God is without a beginning, it follows that His attributes are also without a beginning.
So, the Muslims believe that the existence of God is without a place, direction, form, shape, colour and any other created matter. We don’t believe that God is a gaint body dwelling above us. Rather, we say that God is as He eternally was, that is, without being contained in a place or direction. We believe that He is attributed with the attributes of Absolute Perfection, that is, clear from all the attributes of the creation. One rule is: Whatever you imagine in your mind, God is different from it. This is because what you imagine is a creation as your mind itself is a creation.
Belief of the Wahhabis
The Wahhabi creed is very different to the above mentioned. Their belief in God is that God is a body with a face, a shin, two arms, a foot and sits on the Throne (or some say hovers above it) in the direction of above. They believe that God created everything, and then went into what He created and adopted some of the attributes that He Created. They believe that God descends down every last third of the night to the first Heaven.
Their belief in God is that He is similar to the creations in many aspects, such a being a body with limbs, eyes, face, hands, arms, shin, feet.
According to the Islamic rules, the creed of the Wahhabis that I briefly outlined means that they are not Muslims, as it contradicts one of the essentials of belief stated in numerous explicit Qur’anic verses, which is God’s non-resemblance to His creations in any way.
Origin of Extremism
So a question you might ask is, how do they have a belief so different to the Muslims?
The answer lies with their interpretation of the Qur’anic verses (and sayings of the Prophet, peace be upon him).
Firstly, there are two types of Qur’anic verses in the Qur’an. One is called the Muhkam (explicit) verse and the other is called the Mutashaabih (ambiguous) verse. This is also the same with the sayings of the Prophet, known in Arabic as Hadith. The explicit verses are those that, according to the Arabic language, can only have one meaning or an explicit meaning. The ambiguous verses are those that, according to the Arabic language, can have more than one meaning, so assigning a meaning to these verses requires proper knowledge of the original Arabic language spoken over 1,000 years ago. Mind you, Arabic is a very rich language to the extent that one word can have 22 meanings, or a word can mean one thing, and also mean the direct opposite of that first meaning depending on the context. At the time the Qur’aan was revealed, the people spoke the Arabic language with great eloquence and a natural disposition. This was considered the golden era of the Arabic language. Some of the Scholars living at that time explained the meaning of some of these verses so that people coming after them would not misinterpret them. As the years went by, century after century, people started losing this knowledge of the Arabic language. In seeing that, the Scholars started documenting the actual meanings of these verses for us to understand.
In the 18th century, over 1,000 years after the Qur’an was revealed, this man named Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab started interpreting the verses of the Qur’an in his own way without referring back to the Scholars. He interpreted the second type of Qur’anic verses by taking their literal meaning (like the first type of verses). So if a word has 15 meanings, he would take the literal and physical meaning, as he understood it with his level of Arabic. By doing so, he deviated from the method used by all the reliable Scholars and Companions of the Prophet, peace be upon him. So in short, he and his followers started killing innocent Muslims one by one, and sometimes they massacred groups. After this movement spread within the area of an-Najd (the east of current day Saudi Arabia, including the capital Riyadh), they went to takeover Makkah and Madinah, the two most important cities in the Religion. Their methodology was for the Muslims to either join them, or be killed, and they stuck to their word. Many, many Muslims were killed within those regions until they took over those lands. Ibn Abdul Wahhab had ties with what is currently known as the Saud family, who currently pass the ‘kingdom’ within the brothers as you have seen recently. Bolded because it is important to know that this is not the Islamic way of ruling. Anyways after the wealth they have received from the oil, they had enough money to distribute many of their misinterpreted and deviant teachings throughout the world. The copy of the so-called English/German/French translation of the Qur’an is using their methodology and is full of mistakes. What is written in Arabic is not the same as the English, so it is often not reliable.
It is also through this method of interpretation (and the practices of killing innocent people of the early Wahhabis) that the current day extremists came about. What they are doing really has absolutely no basis within the Religion. Like the early followers of Ibn Wahhab, they also kill Muslims. In fact, they have killed more Muslims than any other group and it is not even close. Just this month, they’ve killed a reported 51 people in Yemen in one bombing.
Solution
So you might ask, what is the best way of getting rid of them?
The best way of tackling extremism is through education. Educating the general Muslim population about the true belief of the Muslims, the true history of Islam and the true methodology of the Prophet, peace be upon him, is the way to prevent, if not, reduce extremism. Through this methodology, they are starting to be exposed all around the Muslim world, both in teachings and as individuals. The biggest warning sign is their belief and their method of interpreting the Qur’an. Those with knowledge can identify them even by the way they speak or what they say. That being said, many of the extremists also have political motives for their extremism.
This is a very brief summary outlining some key aspects that differs the Muslims from the extremists. Like I’ve mentioned before, many of them are not Muslims to begin with because of their belief in God, yet these are the people that use our name to commit these atrocities. Unlike what some people believe, Islam is NOT the cause of them committing these actions, nor is the Qur’an the reason. Rather, it is their ignorance in the Rules of the Religion and the Arabic Grammar that is to blame.
First, I have to start with the basics of Islam, and that is the belief. The belief is a key difference between the mainstream Muslims (also known as Sunni Muslims), which are the majority of the Muslim nation, and the extremists who have what is known as the Wahhaabi creed, which is named so after Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab who emerged from Najd in Saudi Arabia approximately 270 years ago. He is the founder of the Wahhaabi movement. So I will refer to this movement throughout the thread as the extremists follow this ideology. The amount of people following this sect would amount to probably about 3 million people in the world out of the 1.6 billion people who identify themselves as Muslims. The problem with this sect is that they go under many different names (so you hear al-Qaeda, Daesh, ISIS etc). Also, some say they are Sunni Muslims, but they follow the Wahhaabi creed, thus making them a part of this sect as opposed to a mainstream Muslim.
Belief of the Sunni Muslims
The Muslims believe that God is One, not in the context of numbers, but in the context that He does not have a partner with him in Godhood. The essential belief in God for the Muslims is to clear God from resembling any of the creations. We believe that God is not like the creations in any way and that He is the Creator of everything. The Muslims also believe that God does not need any of the creations as He existed before creating the creations. We believe that the existence of God is without a beginning and without an end since He created time and His existence does not have any relation to the passage of time (so time – a creation – does not lapse on Him). So anything with a beginning means that time lapses on it and therefore, is a creation. Everything other than God, be it the universe, the stars, the sun, etc., is created. Since the existence of God is without a beginning, it follows that His attributes are also without a beginning.
So, the Muslims believe that the existence of God is without a place, direction, form, shape, colour and any other created matter. We don’t believe that God is a gaint body dwelling above us. Rather, we say that God is as He eternally was, that is, without being contained in a place or direction. We believe that He is attributed with the attributes of Absolute Perfection, that is, clear from all the attributes of the creation. One rule is: Whatever you imagine in your mind, God is different from it. This is because what you imagine is a creation as your mind itself is a creation.
Belief of the Wahhabis
The Wahhabi creed is very different to the above mentioned. Their belief in God is that God is a body with a face, a shin, two arms, a foot and sits on the Throne (or some say hovers above it) in the direction of above. They believe that God created everything, and then went into what He created and adopted some of the attributes that He Created. They believe that God descends down every last third of the night to the first Heaven.
Their belief in God is that He is similar to the creations in many aspects, such a being a body with limbs, eyes, face, hands, arms, shin, feet.
According to the Islamic rules, the creed of the Wahhabis that I briefly outlined means that they are not Muslims, as it contradicts one of the essentials of belief stated in numerous explicit Qur’anic verses, which is God’s non-resemblance to His creations in any way.
Origin of Extremism
So a question you might ask is, how do they have a belief so different to the Muslims?
The answer lies with their interpretation of the Qur’anic verses (and sayings of the Prophet, peace be upon him).
Firstly, there are two types of Qur’anic verses in the Qur’an. One is called the Muhkam (explicit) verse and the other is called the Mutashaabih (ambiguous) verse. This is also the same with the sayings of the Prophet, known in Arabic as Hadith. The explicit verses are those that, according to the Arabic language, can only have one meaning or an explicit meaning. The ambiguous verses are those that, according to the Arabic language, can have more than one meaning, so assigning a meaning to these verses requires proper knowledge of the original Arabic language spoken over 1,000 years ago. Mind you, Arabic is a very rich language to the extent that one word can have 22 meanings, or a word can mean one thing, and also mean the direct opposite of that first meaning depending on the context. At the time the Qur’aan was revealed, the people spoke the Arabic language with great eloquence and a natural disposition. This was considered the golden era of the Arabic language. Some of the Scholars living at that time explained the meaning of some of these verses so that people coming after them would not misinterpret them. As the years went by, century after century, people started losing this knowledge of the Arabic language. In seeing that, the Scholars started documenting the actual meanings of these verses for us to understand.
In the 18th century, over 1,000 years after the Qur’an was revealed, this man named Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab started interpreting the verses of the Qur’an in his own way without referring back to the Scholars. He interpreted the second type of Qur’anic verses by taking their literal meaning (like the first type of verses). So if a word has 15 meanings, he would take the literal and physical meaning, as he understood it with his level of Arabic. By doing so, he deviated from the method used by all the reliable Scholars and Companions of the Prophet, peace be upon him. So in short, he and his followers started killing innocent Muslims one by one, and sometimes they massacred groups. After this movement spread within the area of an-Najd (the east of current day Saudi Arabia, including the capital Riyadh), they went to takeover Makkah and Madinah, the two most important cities in the Religion. Their methodology was for the Muslims to either join them, or be killed, and they stuck to their word. Many, many Muslims were killed within those regions until they took over those lands. Ibn Abdul Wahhab had ties with what is currently known as the Saud family, who currently pass the ‘kingdom’ within the brothers as you have seen recently. Bolded because it is important to know that this is not the Islamic way of ruling. Anyways after the wealth they have received from the oil, they had enough money to distribute many of their misinterpreted and deviant teachings throughout the world. The copy of the so-called English/German/French translation of the Qur’an is using their methodology and is full of mistakes. What is written in Arabic is not the same as the English, so it is often not reliable.
It is also through this method of interpretation (and the practices of killing innocent people of the early Wahhabis) that the current day extremists came about. What they are doing really has absolutely no basis within the Religion. Like the early followers of Ibn Wahhab, they also kill Muslims. In fact, they have killed more Muslims than any other group and it is not even close. Just this month, they’ve killed a reported 51 people in Yemen in one bombing.
Solution
So you might ask, what is the best way of getting rid of them?
The best way of tackling extremism is through education. Educating the general Muslim population about the true belief of the Muslims, the true history of Islam and the true methodology of the Prophet, peace be upon him, is the way to prevent, if not, reduce extremism. Through this methodology, they are starting to be exposed all around the Muslim world, both in teachings and as individuals. The biggest warning sign is their belief and their method of interpreting the Qur’an. Those with knowledge can identify them even by the way they speak or what they say. That being said, many of the extremists also have political motives for their extremism.
This is a very brief summary outlining some key aspects that differs the Muslims from the extremists. Like I’ve mentioned before, many of them are not Muslims to begin with because of their belief in God, yet these are the people that use our name to commit these atrocities. Unlike what some people believe, Islam is NOT the cause of them committing these actions, nor is the Qur’an the reason. Rather, it is their ignorance in the Rules of the Religion and the Arabic Grammar that is to blame.
