Suhail Azmin

Rachel Lancaster
ESLL 026.03
March 24, 2015

MUSLIM RADICALS ARE NOT REALLY ISLAMIC AT ALL.

Lately, there have been countless seemingly unstoppable wars that
kept forging on and on between Muslims and their innocent opponents.
Muslims might look like the bad guys here but, to the majority of people in
the United States, there is nothing unusual or wrong about it. Ever since the
tragic 9/11 incident that hit this country really hard, word on the streets have
been saying that Muslims are the ruthless enemies or more known as
terrorists. Although those aggressors claimed that they are Muslims, people
should not believe them directly and make their own bad judgment about
other Muslims. The attackers may be among those radicals that exist in any
religion. In Islam, the infamous radicals today always claim that they are a
part of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a
speech by President Obama, he asserts that ISIL is not Islamic (The
Washington Post). Even a person who is not a Muslim could tell that those
radicals are not what they claim they are. Likewise, anyone could kill a
person and say that he is following his faith. Based on this case, although
dont judge a book by its cover is a pretty lame idiom but, it is very

accurate in terms of its word count to explain what people should try to
follow. There is no telling the level of corruptness this world will have to deal
with if people keep believing every statement that comes across them,
especially from extremists who are the real terrorists here. Therefore,
radicals in Islam are the root cause of people stereotyping Muslims as
terrorists.
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In a foreign place where Muslims could be considered the minorities,
even their radicals actions could represent their religions ethics.
Considering most people in that area may rarely meet a Muslim in person,
they are probably curious of what Muslims do. Halliday said that Islamic
rhetoric matches the West not (110). So, when their behaviors do not match
the casual lifestyles of people around them, even the simplest tasks they
perform are easily noticed. They would see Muslims as weird people who
often do weird praying or wear strange scarfs around their head, but that
only happens when those Muslims are just the normal ones. Unfortunately,
when they accidentally pick radical Muslims to keep a track on, strange
actions may turn to violent actions instead. On account of choosing the
wrong Muslims, it could mislead their interpretations of who Muslims really
are because radical Muslims are completely different from the real Muslims.
Imagine a bad white person going to Africa where no one has ever seen a
white person before and he does something really bad, the Africans would

pretty much hate him and possibly think that all white people are the same.
Hence, it is crucial to confirm the person one picks to figure out if he is the
real deal or not; in this case, the real Muslim or not.
Moreover, people are given shocking information that opposes from
what they generally know about any religion; full of kindness and most
importantly peace. According to Britannica, religion is human beings relation
to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or
worthy of especial reverence. Maybe people are expecting good things from
Muslims as well but sadly, when Muslim radicals voluntarily wants to show
their way of Islam, anything or worse, everything could go very wrong. Every
time a video of Muslim radicals massacring hundreds of innocent children
goes viral on the internet, one should have felt that there must be something
wrong with those people, not the religion. In fact, if Islam is such
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an evil religion, how could Islam [be] one of the fastest growing religious of
the world, with over a billion adherents-representing about one-fifth of the
worlds population (Hussain 23)? As an ordinary human, one should be
scared or hate evil doings not incorporate with them instead. It would also
seem illogical to assume that nearly 20 percent of the people in this world
give up on being nice just because they want to follow a belief that allows
them to kill someone. Nonetheless, one does not need a religion to do

something bad. That person could just do whatever he wants and not bother
having any religion which usually means sticking to morals.
When it comes to radicals, they are likely to engage in all kinds of
extreme actions in order to complete their objective. If assassinating an old
woman could increase the chance of realizing their mission, they would
happily get rid of that obstacle. That is what extremist really are; keen to
execute their ideology of destruction just like a terrorist. On the other hand,
Islam forbids believers to involve theirselves in such madness. Islam forbids
to kill and fight the wounded, it forbids to fight those who have shed their
weapons, it forbids to kill monks and religious dignitaries and to destroy their
cells and churches (qtd. in Islam means peace 92). This generally shows
that Islam strongly demands aversion against bloodshed and killing. As
Islam, or salaam in Arabic, means peace; so, any deal that is against its
meaning is definitely false. Besides, it is easy to take notice of something
bad for a humans nature is the other way around. That is why people hate
radicals because they are actually against their true selves. Since they have
been doing cruel things lately, certainly every good person wants to take
them down; even Muslims have the same idea. They are ruining Islam along
with other Muslims image, creating chaos and breaking unity among good
people of the earth. If only those radicals
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still have a little bit of human in their selves, perhaps they would realize that
there is something wrong with their actions too.
The truth about Muslim radicals is that most of them really do see
other people besides their own community as enemies. They believe they
are obligated to do whatever it costs to install their form of belief in Muslimmajority territories, countries and, eventually, the entire world. However,
people who are not a part of their group would not simply hand over
everything that they request. Anyone would not want a bunch of radicals
dominating the world, even if it means fighting back blood with blood. This
would also be the kind of opportunity that those radicals want so that they
could really make an enemy out of them. That is why an act of war against
non-Muslims is just one way of reaching their goal, but not all Muslims
subscribe to a radical interpretation of Islam (Mauro, Understanding
Islamic Extremism). Muslims never view Christians or Jews as enemies
because they know that there is no such thing as Islam is to be spread by the
swords or guns. The main problem from those radicals is that they somehow
misinterpret Islam which causes them to derive a more outrageous way to
enact Islam. In account of the radicals inaccurate way of portraying Islam,
other people now think Muslims are no different than them. That is why
Muslims are said to be terrorists because people do not really know that their
way of engaging Islam is completely different from Muslim radicals.

The other reason why Muslims are called terrorists is because some
people are prone to receive false information. One may say that they are
lucky to live in these modern times for the easy access of free unlimited
knowledge. Truthfully, they should know that as easy it is to acquire
information; it is easier to make sure everyone receives it even if it is totally
false. For
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example, the news feed on social media like Twitter and Facebook are
probably the center of spreading news or rumors. Bello said that although
rumors spread on social media, it was just as easy to use social media such
as Twitter to debunk rumors (3).With a click of a button, anyone could share
the false rumors about Islam to their friends. Luckily, even though Twitter
does not limit its users to add friends, Facebook does; only less than 5001
people could be receiving the invalid messages from a person. One false
report is bad enough on Twitter but, when it goes viral on Facebook as well,
there is no telling how hard it would be to stem out that virus-like info. In
addition, the feeds on social media are usually insufficient because people
might have stripped all the important parts. Muslim radicals impose terrorism
act could be the topic but, important detail like Islam is not the invoker for
such should never be overlooked. Hence, people should always investigate
any news that they receive or just switch to a more reliable resource apart
from social media.

Despite not receiving the genuine intelligence about Muslim radicals,

some people just do not have the incitement to at least know a little bit
about their foundation. They seem to care less about other important
matters or issues rather than themselves. As long as those radicals do not
perform anything that would disarrange their personal life, getting worried
about their friends family being slaughtered is probably the last thing in
their mind. A similar case where this can be seen is during the presidential
elections. The person who is competing must have prepared himself so that
he could win the chief of state title. The only question is whether he is
completely or temporarily ready to lead a nation and whether people even
give any effort of knowing that. If he only aims to seize the power of a
leader, he could get really lucky because of the minimum effort of some
people in knowing his true colors. They leave the get to know part
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when the time comes for his speech in his campaign. The problem for this
decision is that anyone could easily start to acknowledge him as a great
person if his speech suddenly turns entirely inspirational. What they do not
know is that it may have been superficial. Thus, a refine research is most
definitely needed before anyone makes any decisions. Similarly, people
should investigate thoroughly about Islam before accusing them as terrorists
solely by judging those Muslim Radicals activities.

The advent of Muslim radicals could mean that they want to continue
the unfinished fight between non-Muslims. After the conflict between Israelis
and Palestinians started, so many stacks of casualties could be seen and
Arab civilians expectedly, have been the principal victims (Kapitan 2). In
account of the majority Muslim civilians in Palestine, some of them might
have decided to seek revenge. While revenge is probably not the best idea,
the biggest flaw with their actions is that they are showing their hate to the
wrong people, which is worse. Even though the soldiers who invaded
Palestine are not Muslims, it does not mean that they can express their rage
towards all non-Muslims. Anyone can be good even if they are not in the
same religion. One could clearly see that Muslims and non-Muslims can live
in the same democracy peacefully as of today. This shows that Muslims
radicals would willingly kill innocent non-Muslims just so that they could
provoke their real enemies to strike back at them. Besides, their cruel actions
could also be the chance for the enemies of Islam to exaggerate this small
flaw in Muslim communities so that the whole world can know. Everything
that has to do with Muslims radicals are said to be the true face of Islam.
With all the violation of human that they have made, surely people would
think that Islam is the religion of terrorism indeed.
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Last but not least, Muslim radicals are doing a great job growing
interdependently. They keep establishing groups after groups to support their

growth. Currently one of the most prominent Muslim radicals group is the
Muslim Brotherhood. It is reputed to be the Middle Easts largest social
movement, combining religious piety with political advocacy, along with the
provision of a vast array of nonprofit services( Gregorian 77). With such
large members in the group, they may have started to operate long since the
fall of the Ottoman Empire, the last Islamic empire, in order to restore their
glory once again. The news could not have better stories than telling about
their progress and other Muslim radical groups: destroying homes, robbing
innocent lives and desperate to create wars. Furthermore, they always
execute their well-planned strategies in groups to decrease the risk of failing.
Their intelligence for such movement could be the reason for people to pay
attention to them as well. Although there are some other religious radicals
who performed a couple of dreadful crimes too, they are not quite as
extreme as those Muslims radicals. Muslim radicals actually work on bigger
deals with extremely more damaging results; like the destruction of the
World Trade Center building in the United States of America. It would be
almost impossible not to take notice of that because that incident shows how
powerful they are to attack such great country. Who knows, maybe next
time, they would have the guts to break loose in other powerful countries
just because that country is not practicing their way of Islam in its
government.
All in all, the existence of Muslim radicals is affecting both Muslims and
non-Muslims badly. How could people feel safe when they know that there

are some groups of people killing whoever they want just because they made
a mistake in interpreting their religion? If only they
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did not turn out to be militant radicals, the media would not have to
continuously debate about what should the headlines be for todays news on
the worldwide section of the newspaper.

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Works Cited
Obama, Barrack. White House, Washington, D.C. 10 Sep. 2014. Address.
Halliday, Fred. Islam & The Myth Of Confrontation. I.B Tauris: London,1996. Print.
"religion." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition.
Encyclopdia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.

Hossain, Kazi. Understanding Islam In U.S. classrooms. Education Digest January. 2014: 1-9.
Print.
Pal, Amitabh. Islam Means Peace. Praeger, 2013. Print.
Mauro, Ryan Understanding Islamic Terrorism The Clarion Project. Clarion
Project.
26 Jan. 2014. Web. 1 Mar. 2015.
Bello, Marisol Sandy shows darker side of social media USA Today. USA
Today. 31 Oct.
2012. Print. 15 Mar. 2015.
Kapita, Tomis. Violence and self-determination in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Peace &
Change October. 2011: 1-34. Print.
Gregorian, Vartan. Islam a Mosaic, not a Monolith. Brooking Institution Press : Washington,
D.C, 2003. Print.