http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=8&article=3800
Does the Quran Encourage Violence?
| by | Dave Miller, Ph.D. |
Q.
Does the Quran encourage violence?A.
Yes. The Quran—the holy book of Islam that 1.3 billion Muslims believe to be the word of God—is replete with explicit and implicit sanction and promotion of armed conflict, violence, and bloodshed by Muslims. Read Surah 47:4 from the celebrated translation by Muslim scholar Mohammed Pickthall:
Now when ye meet in battle those who disbelieve, then it is smiting of the necks until, when ye have routed them, then making fast of bonds; and afterward either grace or ransom till the war
lay down its burdens. That (is the ordinance). And if Allah willed He
could have punished them (without you) but (thus it is ordained) that He
may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of Allah, He rendereth not their actions vain (Surah 47:4, emp. added).
Many other verses in the Quran forthrightly endorse armed conflict and
war to advance Islam. Muslim historical sources themselves report the
background details of those armed conflicts that have characterized
Islam from its inception—including Muhammad’s own warring tendencies
involving personal participation in and endorsement of military
campaigns (cf. Lings, pp. 86,111). Muslim scholar Pickthall’s own
summary of Muhammad’s war record is an eye-opener: “The number of the
campaigns which he led in person during the last ten years of his life
is twenty-seven, in nine of which there was hard fighting. The number of
the expeditions which he planned and sent out under other leaders is
thirty-eight” (n.d., p. xxvi).REFERENCES
Lings, Martin (1983), Muhammad (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International).Pickthall, Mohammed M. (no date), The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (New York: Mentor).