Crisis of Faith by Malik Kadir

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Assalamualaikum wr. wb.,

I am probably not the ideal person to bring up this topic, nonetheless, I feel it is vital that someone brings up this very significant and very evident issue. At Friday prayer today, the lack of cohesiveness among Muslims was brought up by the imam, and it is significant for several reasons.

The very unfortunate attacks at the Fort Hood military post was directly caused by one man who was HIGHLY mislead about his religion and way of life if he thought killing 13 people that were not attacking him would be pleasing to God. More importantly, though the details are not yet totally coherent, he was in contact with an extremist imam from Virginia, now living in Yemen, who has since praised the attacks as a positive act of worship. Not only is this evidence that we as Muslims cannot be basing our actions on the opinions of one scholar or another, but rather on a general consensus that, if we cannot agree with, then we can turn to God and the original message in the Qur'an and try to find the answers we are looking for. Searching for knowledge is a key tenet of our faith and we have to familiarize ourselves enough that someone's extremist, and very misguided beliefs do not become our own.
 

Moreover, another issue that again refutes the idea that these actions would possibly be what Allah SWT could want for his believers to strive for is that, in a time when we are such a minority in a nation that, at large, does not understand us, how do we begin to spread our beliefs if we are thinking such actions fairly represent us? Actions like this, on top of the already negative connotations of Islam based on the often inflamed and ignorant media, only pushes people away from ever expressing interest in learning what our religion really is. And if we allow ourselves to be degraded constantly, thinking "Well, the extremists did this so let them be dehumanized," we are missing the bigger picture. Sooner or later, it will be us, the moderate and peaceful believers, who are dehumanized as the Jews were during the period of the Nazi regime. Years and years of abasement and characterizations of the Jews as evil people allowed Hitler to eventually carry out the Holocaust. Are we going to allow ourselves to be subjected to the same fate? Do we feel THAT secure that we can sit around waiting for someone else to fight the good fight for us? Any time I read an article relating to Islam or Muslims, the negative feedback is always refuted by Muslims parroting what they have been raised to say: "Islam is peace. Islam is the right path." PROVE IT. LIVE IT. Acquaint yourselves with the issues so you can intelligently refute them. This is America; stating your beliefs is not enough, you have to be able to justify them or face ridicule and continual ignorance. Attend interfaith conferences. Get involved in activities that illustrate the charitable nature of Islam. Refute uncultured comments not with anger, but with knowledge that will, hopefully, continue to increase with time.

Wassalamualaikum wr. wb.
*Br Malik Kadir is a recent graduate of Rockville High School and currently attending Montgomery College. An active volunteer for IMAAM Youth, he is also a notable graduate of IMAAM’s Madrasah having successfully completed its Qur’an Khatam program.