Does Islam actually promote hatred and violence?
By: Keshwa Badgujar
Tags: Uyghurs, Media Criticism, Religion, Muslim, Islam

Preface

This article is NOT an attack on Islam. It is merely an exploration of the recent reputation it has gained across the world. It was written in 2019, after the controversy surrounding the treatment of Uighurs in China. I urge you to also do your own research as well before you form your own opinions on this issue.

Issue

Islam is the most prominent religion in the world. In 2015, Islam made over 24.1% of the entire global population and is expected to grow 7% within the next 45 years (Michael Lipka & Conard Hackett, 2017). We will explore issues surrounding the controversy of Islam. Is the religion to blame or is the modern-day media?

Possible Causes

There seem to be two possible causes to the issue. The first one is the religion itself. Many people believe that Islam itself is a religion that promotes hatred and violence in their teachings. They argue that this is the reason why many major terrorist organizations around the world are Islamic (Why Islam, 2017).

However, to counteract this argument, historians now believe that the Quran has been mistranslated and misunderstood. New translations and research show that the Quran only condones fighting in self-defense and it never explicitly says that a man is allowed to beat his wife (Qasim Rashid, 2017).

The second possible and more plausible reason is the amplification of Islamic terrorism in modern media. Many news companies have been accused of unfairly amplifying Islamic terrorism over other types of terrorism. They have been accused of not using the term “terrorist” when covering other forms of terrorism committed by non-Islamic people despite the offence being the same. According to the FBI, 94% of all terror attacks in the US have been by non-Muslims from the years 1980–2005, and that number is only 2% in Europe (Omar Alnatour, 2015). Yet we rarely ever hear about terrorists that are not Muslims in the media.

Consequences: Global

The global consequences of spreading this misinformation are severe. Some politicians have been using Islamophobia to their advantage to win voters. For example, in 2017, Trump attempted to ban Muslim refugees fleeing from their war ridden countries. Fortunately, the travel ban was lifted when Congress repelled it (Amnesty, 2018). Trump has now put a cap on refugees in 2019 to 30,000 (Jessica Donati, 2018).

Similarly, in Europe, Muslim refugees still face discrimination in housing and employment due to Islamophobia. Poland and Hungary have denied accepting any more refugees when there were supposed to be 160,000 refugees that were initially to be allocated in the two countries in 2015 (Jan Cienski, 2017). Jarosław Kaczyński, former Prime Minister of Poland said that if he accepted anymore refugees into Poland, he would have to drastically lower the country’s security when in reality a study led by Robert Adelman, sociologist at the University of New York at Buffalo, concluded that crime rates and refugee rates in a country have no correlation (Anna Flagg, 2018).

This means that around the world, people who are desperately fleeing from their war-torn homes to seek asylum are not being granted the basic help they deserve. While countries which can clearly support a large influx of refugees are unwilling to accept them, there are smaller and weaker countries that are open and friendly towards refugees such as Rwanda, which ranks 8.16/9 in the Gallup’s Migrant acceptance index and Mali ranks at 8.03/9. On the contrary, capable countries such as the UK only rank 6.6/9 (Samuel Osborne, 2017).

Consequences: National

China has an incredibly controversial relationship with Islam. Uighurs are Muslim Turks and are an ethnic minority in China. They mostly reside in the Chinese province of Xinjiang and make about half the population there. The Chinese government has been accused of taking harsh, cruel and inhumane action against these Uighurs (Ronald Hughes, 2018). There’s plausible evidence that the government has set up “re-education” camps in the region, where Uighurs are sent. The government says that criminals exclusively, are sent there to be re-educated in order to be re-introduced to society. However, evidence shows that Uighurs are rounded up and sent to the camps despite their criminal history. Escapees say that at the camp they are tortured and beaten until they renounce Islam and swear their loyalty to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Additionally, some reports say that they are forced to memorize a book full of Chinese propaganda within two weeks to be released. If they fail, they can in extreme cases, be beaten to death (South China Morning Post, Dec 2018).

The government claims that all this security is necessary as Muslims from neighboring countries are attempting to cause chaos and unrest in China. However, this is completely unwarranted. Recently, the Chinese government has started encouraging Han Chinese to the region of Xinjiang which had previously been dominated by Uighurs. This meant that jobs were taken from the Muslims and were given to the Hans which resulted in tensions between the Government and the Uighurs to escalate. (Facing History and Finding Ourselves, n.d.).

This has resulted in massive out lash from the West. The US has even considered more sanctions against China for their treatment of the Uighurs (Lily Kuo, 2018).

Possible Course of Action

A possible course of action would be to suppress Islam. We could do this by closing down Mosques, banning burqas, hijabs etc. Although this will be a periodic process, it is worth exploring.

Advantages

Religious hate crimes rose 40% in England and Wales in 2017 and 2018, more than half of which had been against Muslims (Lizzy Dearden, 2018). If we were to hypothetically suppress Islam, it could reduce this number largely.

Anti-Muslim radicals believe that there will also be many social benefits to women if Islam were suppressed. Some include the right to obtain education, right to accept or reject marriage, right to obtain divorce and right to dress. If this happened, women would not been seen as “men’s property” in countries where Islam is prominent (Shantanau Chakravarty, 2018). It could be argued that suppressing the teachings of Islam will overall create better social conditions for everyone as well as promote equality.

The suppression of Islam may also reduce the number of terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. As Mosques are shut down, it will limit the places where these Islamic ideologies are spread. Similarly, banning burqas and niqabs, like they have done in France (Rob Picheta, 2018) will help these Islamic people adapt to the western world. Therefore, everyone will be treated as equals and discrimination will fall. Furthermore, we could do what the Austrian Government is doing; in June 2018, the Austrian Government shut down seven mosques and expelled dozens of foreign funded imams (Siobhán O’Grady, 2018). Thomas Quiggin, co-author of “Lovers of Death,” says “many mosques and Islamic schools in Canada are placing young people at risk by espousing-or at least not condemning-extremist teachings,” (Jim Bronskill, 2016).

What the Chinese government is doing may help as well. They are rounding up Uighurs, sending them to camps and teaching them Chinese propaganda until they are ready to be re-introduced to back to society as Chinese people (The Washington Post, 2018). This again, could help them be re-introduced to the mainstream Chinese society. Once integrated they would be on par with the rest of the Chinese population and therefore receive equal rights and benefits as the Chinese.

However, I personally feel quite uncomfortable with some these ideas, and will now discuss why.

Disadvantages

Firstly, the study done by Thomas Quiggin has been massively criticized. It has been criticized for their method of research. His research apparently only consisted of creeping into mosques and taking pictures of their libraries and books without understanding them. They hadn’t talked to any Muslims or experts during the “research” of their study (Davide Mastracci, 2016). Therefore, this study is extremely unreliable, and it goes to show how misinformed the public is about Islam.

Thirdly, Mosques do lots much for the community they are in. Mosques often have soup kitchens open in almost every major city they are in. A Mosque in Ontario recently celebrated their 10,000th meal served (Shanifa Nasser, 2017). There is even more evidence which shows this.

Fourth, in Mosques, we can at least see and potentially control what is being taught despite the controversy. However, if Mosques are banned, young adults will be exposed to the internet where there is ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda. They will have no filter to show them the line between their religion and these extremists which would have been provided by safe centers like Mosques. This may mean that more people will become extremists which will only make the problem worse (Antonia Ward, 2018).

The most obvious and probably the biggest disadvantage to this course of action would be the fact that this method would be counter-productive. Banning Islam would cause public outrage. This will potentially encourage an even bigger radical movement as people will fight for what they believe in. Suppressing Islam would not make people not want to practice it, instead it will make people angry and fight for what they believe in. People will stand for what they believe in, not what their leaders think they should believe in.

Conclusion & Reflection

I do not think that this is a smart course of action. It doesn’t acknowledge the real problem which doesn’t lie in Islam as the religion, but rather how it’s portrayed. The extremism is not the main problem as extremism exists in all religions. Rather, the misrepresentation of Islam is the problem in this case. Before researching this article, my perspective was almost entirely shaped by modern media. My mind used to subconsciously use to jump to violence whenever anything to do with Islam came up. But now I know that we only misrepresented the Islamic religion. The Quran does not promote hatred and violence. We have been blaming Islam throughout history for unjustified reasons.

We possess a responsibility to understand each other before making judgements. I urge you to do to the same. Research the topic, talk to people and form your own opinions, no matter what they are. You can start off by working through my bibliographies below.

Bibliographies

Michael Lipka & Conard Hackett, 2017, “Why Muslims are the World’s fastest growing Religious Group” in Pew Research Center, available at: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group, accessed on: 12/2/2019

“Explainer: Why China is keeping a tight Grip on Xinjiang”, 2018, in South China Morning Post, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUg-w0tdyBs, accessed on: 12/2/2019

“Uygur woman describes torture in China’s Xinjiang ‘vocational training’ camps”, 2018, in South China Morning Post, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hCoh2snUgw, accessed on: 12/2/2019

Roland Hughes, 2018, “China Uighurs: All you need to know on Muslim ‘crackdown’”, in the BBC, available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45474279accessed on: 12/2/2019

“Muslim Population by country: how big will each Muslim Population be by 2030?”, n.d., in The Guardian, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/28/muslim-population-country-projection-2030, accessed on: 12/2/2019

Victor Kiporp, 2018, “Countries That Follow Sharia Law”, in Word Atlas, available at: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-that-follow-sharia-law.html, accessed on: 12/2/2019

Kelly Weill, 2018, “Hate Crimes Spiked After Trump’s Anti-Muslim Tweets, Study Finds”, in The Daily Beast, available at: https://www.thedailybeast.com/hate-crimes-spiked-after-trumps-anti-muslim-tweets-study-finds, accessed on: 12/2/2019

“What Does Islam Teach About”, n.d., in The Religion of Peace, available at: https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/wife-beating.aspx, accessed on: 12/2/2019

Omar Alnatour, 2016, “Muslims are not Terrorists: A Factual look at Terrorism and Islam”, in Huffington Post, available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/omar-alnatour/muslims-are-not-terrorist_b_8718000.html, accessed on: 12/2/2019

“A license to discriminate: Trump’s Muslim and refugee ban”, 2017, in Amnesty International UK, available at: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/licence-discriminate-trumps-muslim-refugee-ban, accessed on: 13/2/2019

Jan Cienski, 2017, “Why Poland doesn’t want refugees”, in Politico, available at: https://www.politico.eu/article/politics-nationalism-and-religion-explain-why-poland-doesnt-want-refugees/, accessed on: 13/2/2019

Anna Flagg, 2018, “The Myth of Criminal Immigrant”, in The New York Times, available at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/30/upshot/crime-immigration-myth.html, accessed on: 13/2/2019

Jessica Donati, 2017, “U.S. to Cap Refugee Admissions at 30,000 in 2019, Pompeo Says”, in The Wall Street Journal, available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-cap-refugee-admissions-at-30-000-in-2019-pompeo-says-1537222609, accessed on: 14/2/2019

Samuel Osborne, 2017, “World’s most and least welcoming countries for refugees”, in the Independent, available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/world-welcoming-migrant-countries-least-most-uk-refugee-crisis-us-australia-eastern-europe-a7908766.html, accessed on: 14/2/2019

Lily Kuo, 2018, “US considers sanctions on China over treatment of Uighurs”, in The Guardian, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/12/us-considers-sanctions-on-china-over-treatment-of-uighurs, accessed on: 14/2/2019

Lizzie Dearden, 2018, “Religious hate crimes rises 40% in England and Wales-with more than half directed at Muslims”, in the Independent, available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/uk-hate-crime-religious-muslims-islamophobia-police-racism-a8585846.html, accessed on: 14/2/2019

Shantanau Chakravarty, 2018, “What are the benefits of banning Islam from a country?”, in Quora, available at: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-benefits-of-banning-Islam-from-a-country, accessed on: 14/2/2019

Jeff Diamant & Scott Gardner, 2018, “Views of national identity differ less by age in Central, Eastern Europe than in Western Europe”, in Pew Research Center, available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/04/views-of-national-identity-differ-less-by-age-in-central-eastern-europe-than-in-western-europe/, accessed on 14/2/209

“The targeting of Uighur Muslims in China”, n.d., in Facing History and Finding Ourselves, available at: https://www.facinghistory.org/educator-resources/current-events/targeting-uighur-muslims-china, accessed on: 26/3/2019

Qasim Rashid, 2017, “Anyone who says that the Quran advocates terrorism obviously hasn’t read its lessons on violence”, in the Independent, available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/islam-muslim-terrorism-islamist-extremism-quran-teaching-violence-meaning-prophet-muhammed-a7676246.html, accessed on: 26/3/2019

Rob Picheta, 2018, “France’s niqab ban violates human rights, UN committee says”, in CNN, available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/23/europe/france-niqab-ban-un-intl/index.html, accessed on 29/3/2019

Siobhán O’Grady, 2018, “Austria shuts down seven mosques in what it says is ‘just the beginning’ of a crackdown”, in The Washington Post, available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/06/08/austria-shuts-down-seven-mosques-in-what-it-says-is-just-the-beginning-of-a-crackdown/?utm_term=.e920ca196ab3, accessed on: 30/3/2019

“Austria”, 2017, in Hate Crime Reporting, available at: http://hatecrime.osce.org/austria, accessed on: 30/3/2019

Jim Bronskill, 2016, “Extremist literature common in Canadian Mosques, Islamic schools: study”, in CTV News, available at: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/extremist-literature-common-in-canadian-mosques-islamic-schools-study-1.3039149, accessed on: 30/3/2019

Davide Mastracci, 2016, “That Study About Extremist Mosques in Canada is Mostly Bullshit”, in Vice, available at: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/dpkjgy/that-study-about-extremist-mosques-in-canada-is-mostly-bullshit, accessed on: 30/3/2019

Shanifa Nasser, 2017, “Mosque-turned-soup kitchen preps 10,000th meal — and helps young Muslims reconnect too”, in CBC News, available at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mosque-toronto-taric-soup-kitchen-meals-1.4420573, accessed on: 30/3/2019

Antonia Ward, 2018, “ISIS’s Use of Social Media Still Poses a Threat to Stability in the Middle East and Africa”, in The Rand Blog, available at: https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/12/isiss-use-of-social-media-still-poses-a-threat-to-stability.html, accessed on: 30/3/2019