Why Radical Islam Breeds Murder

Here is an interesting article by a former Islamist radical.

The author, a former member of the British Jihadi Network, writes that he left the organization in February 2006 because he realized "that its members had simply become mindless killers".

In the article, he claims that the cause of Islamic violence is not poverty, or political oppression, etc, but rather because of a radical offshoot of the basic Islamic paradigm. He says the basic paradigm has been developed over the years that there are two types of nations in the world: The Land of Islam, and The Land of Unbelief.

However, Islamic radicals have gone two steps beyond that:
1) They claim there is no pure Land of Islam, and therefore the whole world must be the Land of Unbelief, and
2) since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they've declared war on the whole world.

The author goes on to write:

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.
In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.

He charges that this state of affairs, at least in Britain, is because no one is willing to discuss theology, and thus a vacuum has been created in which radicalism has flourished.

He argues that the solution is for both Muslims and non-Muslims to open up discussions about theology.

And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.

I am in agreement with this Muslim that open discussion can lead to solutions. Life is filled with examples of damage done because someone is unwilling to deal with the issues and get the issues out in the open, whether it's a secret addiction to sleeping pills, or a teenager's angst over not being accepted by the popular kids, or an entire culture's angst at discussing religious issues. As the Creator of the universe once said, "The Truth shall set you Free".