Muslim Australians - Religion Cultural Diversity Resource Manual

ISLAM AND VIOLENCE
Many people in the West
believe that Islam is a
religion that teaches
violence against non-Muslims and
that, compared to people of other
faiths, Muslims are more likely to be
violent and intolerant.
This belief is largely based on
negative images that existed in
medieval Christian Europe about
Islam and Muslims; for example,
Muslims were falsely thought to
be barbaric, violent and fanatical,
an image that has continued to the
twenty-first century.
A European convert to Islam on images of Islam in the West
And was it any wonder then, I asked myself, that, fortified by such tangible
evidences of Muslim decay, so many erroneous views about Islam itself
were prevalent throughout the West? These popular, Western views could be
summarized thus: The downfall of the Muslims is mainly due to Islam which,
far from being a religious ideology comparable to Christianity or Judaism, is a
rather unholy mixture of desert fanaticism, gross sensuality, superstition and
dumb fatalism that prevents its adherents from participating in mankind’s
advance toward higher social forms; instead of liberating the human
spirit from the shackles of obscurantism, Islam rather tightens them; and,
consequently, the sooner the Muslim peoples are freed from their subservience
to Islamic beliefs and social practices and induced to adopt the Western way of
life, the better for them and for the rest of the world.
My own observations had by now convinced me that the mind of the average
Westerner held an utterly distorted image of Islam. What I saw in the pages of
the Qur’an was not a ‘crudely materialistic’ world-view but, on the contrary, an
intense Godconsciousness that expressed itself in a rational acceptance of all
God-created nature: a harmonious side-by-side of intellect and sensual urge,
spiritual need and social demand. It was obvious to me that the decline of the
Muslims was not due to any shortcomings in Islam but rather to their own
failure to live up to it. 34
33
Muhammad Asad. The Road to Mecca. Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus, p. 190.
Muslim Australians:THEIR BELIEFS, PRACTICES AND INSTITUTIONS 59