Friday, July 29, 2016

Three Questions for Moderate Muslims

A story in The Guardian relates how the family of Adel Kermiche, the young man who recently slit the throat of a French priest who was saying mass, had struggled to keep him from jihad. Kermiche had twice been stopped trying to get to Syria to join ISIS and had been placed in prison, but he had persuaded a gullible French judge that he was a moderate Muslim and no threat. The judge, against the recommendation of prosecutors who knew better, released him from jail. Now a priest is horribly murdered and others are seriously injured as a result.

Moderate Muslims insist after these incidents that we must not blame Islam, that Kermiche was psychologically troubled and that, despite the testimony of his schoolmates and others who said he talked religion all the time, it wasn't his religion which drove him to commit his terrible crime.

David Wood is a man who seeks to engage Muslims to examine what the Qu'ran and Hadiths teach about violence. It may seem presumptuous for a non-Muslim to undertake such a mission, but apparently many Muslims, like many Christians, don't really know what their holy books actually say.

In any case, Wood poses three questions in this short video to those who consider themselves moderate Muslims. His questions are intended to highlight the overall question why it is deemed racist or bigoted to be concerned about the spread of a religion that seems to spawn such horrific acts of violence as has Islam.
So, is he missing something?