Sorry but the Qu'ran does contain support for terror

CHURCH TIMES 22 July2005
Professor Peter G. Riddell* in yesterday's Church Times writes:
".... broad array of British Muslim leaders gathered in crisis session at Regent's Park Mosque last Friday and issued a fatwa, or judicial opinion. The fatwa asserted: ''The Qu'ran clearly declared that killing an innocent person was tantamount to killing all mankind, and likewise saving I single life was as if one had saved the life of all mankind (Q5.32). . . This is both a principle and a command. . . [The bombers] should in no sense be regarded as martyrs”
... I've been waiting for this fatwa for a long time (since 11 September 2001)."
Me too; be even better if they were endorsed by people like at Al Azhar.

"... But here's the rub. British Muslim leaders need also to take a step they have avoided thus far. That is, to ask questions of the verses in the Qur'an and Hadith which are continually quoted by radicals, and which provide sustenance to radical ideologues. A perusal of press statements issued by radical groups turns up a finite set of verses that they use to justify confrontation in the present-day: Q2.11, 2.190, 9.14, 9.38, 9.4I, 60.1.
It is not good enough for main-stream leaders to produce verses from early in Muhammad's life which talk of there being no compulsion in religion (Q2.256); or to tear verses' out of their context, such as is now regularly done with Q5.32, cited in the recent fatwa; and then to dismiss those radical Muslims who disagree as ''heretics'. Muslim leaders need to undertake a new, comprehensive hermeneutic of the verses that come from later in Muhammad's life - and which radicals therefore see as having greater authority that talk of fighting and slaying the pagans wherever Muslims find them (Q9.5); not taking Christians and Jews as friends of Muslims (Q3.I18, 5.5I); and so forth. "

As Kenneth Cragg in 'The Secular Experience of God' says, "The significance of naksh, or "abrogation", needs careful exposition both for Islam's sake today and because it is germane to all religious expression. Central to an understanding of the Qur'an, abrogation means that what is later in the revelation abrogates what was earlier, if they do not tally. The effect is to have what obtains to politics override what obtains to preaching- if one wants to see the issues that way. Abrogation is undoubtedly present. How far may it extend? The logic now used by some proposes abrogation in reverse. Let what was earlier abrogate what is later. This has the effect of restoring the essentials of Islam to their pre-Hijrah quality."
Which is a very interesting proposal and seems in actual fact to be what many Muslims actually believe (against -unknowingly I suspect- the official canons of historic Islam), that the Meccan surahs express better the heart of what they hope Islam to be than those after Hijrah.

And it does seem of more than passing interest to note
"... the question asked by Charles Moore in The Daily telegraph immediately after the bombings: ''Where is the Gandhi of Islam?'' "
I hope that will be more than a rhetorical question.

The Church Times has a policy of not making these articles publically available for two weeks. I hope that these extracts are fair use.

*Professor Peter G. Riddell is Director of the Centre for Islamic Studies and Muslim-Christian Relations at London School of theology He is the author of Christians and Muslims: Pressures and potential in a Post- 9/11 world (IVP, 2004).