#NotInMyName: ‘Because it’s totally un-Islamic’

We urge the whole world to realize that these people do not represent Islam or Muslims; they only represent themselves and their twisted ideologies. “And I’m pretty sure that none of us want to help these bastards”. Well, they nominally follow Wahhabi teachings, an ultra-conservative brand of Sunni Islam.

And as a Muslim who opposes terrorism, I, like many, am still being targeted by those same people who abhor the act.

“They (ISIS) actually want to see an increase in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime so that that will increase their recruitment pool”, Arsalan Iftikhar, senior editor of the Islamic Monthly, said on CNN Monday.

“This is precisely what Isis was aiming for – to provoke communities to commit actions against Muslims”, The Independent quoted the psychology professor at the University of Maryland as saying. But how do we make sense of the fact that so numerous world’s conflicts involve Islamic armies and terrorist groups? He’s a physician from Chicago who blogs at BeliefNet.

Placing hatred for the violence of extremism on all Muslims only serves to create the division that ISIS is aiming for. He is, of course, entitled to his “Muslim faith”, for your nation was born of a desire to replace the Catholic and then Protestant intolerance of Europe with a more open-minded approach to other people’s faith. They are not those who make deals with the motherland of Wahhabism (from which IS gets inspiration), Saudi Arabia.

The man lashed out at the violent extremists, asking them, “If you don’t like this country, why the f*** did you come?”

Muslims are in the front line of this ideological battle against religious fundamentalists.

A few Islamic scholars have denounced the radicals of ISIS as heretical. That’s a little like excommunication in the Catholic tradition.

It is not clear when or where the video was made. No you can not do that.

Many have criticized the uneven media coverage of both tragedies. “It’s just not that hard for a handful of very committed individuals to gain the capability and the means to carry out an attack like that, and it’s very hard to defend those locations”.

But Afifi stopped short of accusing ISIS of apostasy.

There are good reasons for this, says Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution. He is the author of “Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East”. “We stand in solidarity with the people of France and express our deepest sympathy with the families of those who were killed and pray for the recovery of those injured in these horrific attacks”, Chaudry read from the condemnation. That is their legal and theological reasoning. “These people are not Muslim, we are wondering now are they even human?” Where are the vigorous condemnations of these ISIS atrocities?

Islamists consider Muslims who reject their views as apostates who also deserve to be killed.

My prayers also go out to the 1.7 billion Muslims around the world, including the hundreds of Muslims in our UCI community, who will have to face the toll and the blame of yet another terrorist attack conducted by a terrorist group claiming to act in the name of Islam.

“The Sunni states in the region are either unwilling or incompetent or unable to intervene to stop ISIS”. Did you know that many of these people have seen entire city blocks wiped out with bombs and have watched loved ones die in front of their eyes?

For its part, ISIS seems to take this stuff seriously too.

Many Muslims have argued that “terrorists don’t represent true Islam”.