9-11 was not a Muslim happy-hour

Ste93 provided an alternative definition. .. to which there was absolutely no outcome. But that is besides the point. The reason I have an "observation" section is to point out how quickly abusive this debate has become. What started as the claim "It was celebrated by many Muslims as a great victory because they believe that the terrorists are going to paradise and they will be joining them too. " [1] (currently page 3 of the comments) When asked to defend this claim, he threw random verses of the Qura'an out in the comments section without having a clue as to their context, but then accepted the debate. I was reluctant to challenge him expecting to have to respond to 8000 characters' worth of mistranslated and contextually-skewed verses. Instead, I got something worse. Ste93 has chosen to limit the scope of the debate ONLY to the extremist interpretations of the Qura'an that are condemned by every Muslim scholar on the planet. To quote Ste93 from this debate in particular: "Firstly, I do not claim that all Muslims celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but some undoubtedly did. " "Now, of course not all Muslims take a literal interpretation of the Koran (for which we should be grateful), but you can't deny that some people do. Even if it is a minority, some people read passages like these and can then justify terrorism. " "I do not think the 9/11 terrorists were inherently evil people (like Hitler and Stalin were); they genuinely believed that they were doing good in the name of Allah. " What I now have to defend is the terrorist ideology as a result of my opponent, which I refuse to do. Instead, we will respond to the claims made to prove that the verses demonstrated are NOT violent, and that all terrorist interpretations are simply misunderstandings of an otherwise perfect revelation. o Arguments Faith is supposedly the inspiration for Muslim terrorism. When we look to the quotes my opponent has brought, we can analyze them one at a time and see how fallacious it is to simply quote the most complex book in the world. "And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the Cause of Allah, and for those weak, illtreated and oppressed among men, women, and children, whose cry is: "Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from You one who will protect, and raise for us from You one who will help. "" I'm guessing my opponent didn't even read this verse? It says, in other words, "You all must defend the oppressed people who ask for God's mercy. " Literally; look at the verse. ". .. what is WRONG with you that you FIGHT NOT. .. FOR THOSE WEAK, ILLTREATED AND OPPRESSED. .. whose cry is: "Our Lord! Rescue us from. .. OPPRESSORS" (capitalization for emphasis, as I cannot bold). Next, my opponent cites hadith. "I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, none has the right to be worshipped but Allah. " I have now learned that even Hadith is taken out of context; I thought it was just the Qura'an people defame in contextually skewed grounds. Here is the whole Hadith my opponent cited. "Narrated Abu Huraira: When the Prophet died and Abu Bakr became his successor and some of the Arabs reverted to disbelief, 'Umar said, "O Abu Bakr! How can you fight these people although Allah's Apostle said, 'I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah, 'and whoever said, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah', Allah will save his property and his life from me, unless (he does something for which he receives legal punishment) justly, and his account will be with Allah? ' "Abu Bakr said, "By Allah! I will fight whoever differentiates between prayers and Zakat as Zakat is the right to be taken from property (according to Allah's Orders). By Allah! If they refused to pay me even a kid they used to pay to Allah's Apostle, I would fight with them for withholding it. " 'Umar said, "By Allah: It was nothing, but I noticed that Allah opened Abu Bakr's chest towards the decision to fight, therefore I realized that his decision was right. "" [2] This situation is referring to (as stated in the first line) after the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) died, a number of people became apostates and left Islam. The conversation between Abu Bakr and Umar, both Caliphs, referred to how they should be dealt with. To those who do not know, back in the day the government was not separate from religion. So, leaving the religion is equivalent to leaving the government; in other words, treason. Treason, I hope my opponent would agree, is punishable. The problem is that this Hadith is not longer temporally relevant because we don't have a government that is connected with the religion. The final quote my opponent provides is "Lo! Allah loveth them who battle for His cause in ranks, as if they were a solid structure. " It is well explained here [3] Basically, it is one of the many ways in which we can fight for Allah's cause through "jihad". I'm reluctant to use this term, but I will explain it. Jihad means struggle, if I say (in Arabic) "ana am ijtahid" it means "I am struggling". There are several types of jihad, which are sometimes used in English literature to describe the plot type. Man vs. himself, Man vs. Man, etc. In this case, what we see Allah asking us to do is to unite as one in our jihad; to struggle for him, and to defend Islam as the "umma" we are all united under. I hope I have explained this well enough; if not, I will try to do so more extensively in the next round. As regarding everything else my opponent refers to; let me define martyrdom. It is "death that is imposed because of the person's adherence of a religious faith or cause". [4] Let us not confuse this; in Islam, those who are "sha'hed" are martyrs, and they are people who died in DEFENSE of Islam or their nation. Succinctly, to be a praised martyr in Islam is to die in defense of your nation, not in an offensive terrorist plot. o Conclusion What we are left with is really little hope at a con ballot, pro being the only way to go for the following reasons. 1) The terrorist ideology is a false interpretation. 2) Martyrdom is not equivalent to terrorism. 3) Contextual skew and misinterpretation does not justify extremism. My opponent has failed to uphold the burden of proof initially placed upon him, so we're left with one more round in which we can hope that this is done. With that, I'll hand the debate over to con and remind him that, as many verses as he cites, I can justify. Quoting the Qura'an hundreds of times fallaciously does not amount to an argument. Also, I thank the readers for their time. o Sources [1] . http://www.debate.org... [2] . http://www.muslimway.org... [3] . http://www.islamonline.net... [4] . http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu...