The Roots of Terrorism in the Quran and the Myth of True Islam (article)

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The Roots of Terrorism in the Quran and the Myth of True Islam

Introduction to the Problem of the Text and Blood

The phenomenon of contemporary terrorism in the Arab and Islamic world cannot be understood without returning to the text that over a billion people hold sacred, the text they call the word of God revealed to His Prophet Muhammad. For decades, the debate has revolved around whether Islam is a religion of peace or a religion of violence, and whether extremist groups misunderstand the true Islam or are capturing something authentic and inherently violent within it. However, the most important question that many reformers and Arab intellectuals avoid is this: how can we decide which Islam is the correct one in the absence of any objective standard by which to judge? The uncomfortable answer is that the idea of "true Islam" is a myth, because there is no single, correct Islam. Instead, there are multiple, contradictory Islams, each deriving its legitimacy from the same ambiguous, malleable Quranic text that is suitable for any interpretation and any hermeneutic.

The Characteristics of the Quran that Make It Fertile Ground for Violence

The Quran is not a clear-cut book as preachers like to portray it. It is an obscure and ambiguous text in most of its rulings, stories, and legislations. The Arabic language in which it was written is no longer understood by the average Muslim today; in fact, it requires translation and interpretation by human beings who disagree radically with one another over the meaning of its words and structures. This ambiguity is not an incidental flaw but is part of the very nature of the text itself. The Quran is full of allegorical verses that allow a wide field for interpretation, and it lacks a clear historical context for many of its verses. Where was this verse revealed, under what circumstances, and to whom was it specifically addressed? These details are not found in the Quran itself but in the books of the Sirah and Hadith, which the Quranists reject as fabricated lies. And here begins the real tragedy: how can a Muslim know their religion if the Quran alone is insufficient to understand it? If they must turn to external sources, how can they trust them when they have no criterion to distinguish the sound from the unsound?

Contradiction is another prominent feature of the Quranic text. There are verses calling for tolerance and forgiveness, and others commanding the fighting of idolaters until there is no more fitnah and all religion is for God. There are verses stating "there is no compulsion in religion," and verses fighting the People of the Book until they pay the jizyah with willing submission and feel themselves subdued. There are verses commanding justice and benevolence, and others that curse disbelievers and hypocrites, describe them in the worst terms, and call on believers not to ally with them and to fight them. This contradiction is not a flaw in the text from a religious perspective; it is a feature because it allows for enormous interpretive flexibility. But this very flexibility is precisely what turns the Quran into a weapon in the hands of its interpreter. If you are a radical Muslim, you will find in the Quran everything you need to justify killing opponents, excommunicating them, and deeming their blood and property lawful. If you are a moderate Muslim, you will find in it what you need to justify tolerance and peaceful coexistence. But the question that has no answer is: which of the two groups is right?

The Myth of True Islam as a Defensive Mechanism

When extremists commit a crime in the name of Islam, preachers and moderate intellectuals rush to say that these people did not understand the true Islam, that their religion knows no such violence, and that the Prophet Muhammad was a mercy to the worlds, not a sword hanging over the necks of creation. This statement may seem reassuring, but it is, in fact, meaningless. The person who says it cannot offer a single piece of evidence that their understanding of Islam is correct while the understanding of others is wrong. All they can do is recite the verses of mercy and ignore the verses of the sword, or interpret the sword verses as specific to particular historical circumstances while the mercy verses are general for all time. But their opponents do the exact opposite: they consider the sword verses to be general and the mercy verses to be abrogated or specific to a period of Muslim weakness. Who has the argument here? No one, because the text itself does not settle the matter.

This myth called "true Islam" functions as a psychological and intellectual defense mechanism, allowing Muslims to disavow crimes committed in the name of their religion without having to undertake a radical revision of their sacred texts. It soothes the collective conscience and eases consciences. But it does not stand up to rational analysis. If true Islam is the Islam of peace and tolerance, why has it, for fourteen centuries, continued to produce violent groups, jihadist movements, and excommunicating states? Is it conceivable that all those who killed, slaughtered, bombed, and assassinated were all simply misunderstanding? Or is the problem not in their understanding but in the text itself, which provides them with cover and justification?

The Absence of a Unified Religious Authority as a Multiplying Factor

The problem is compounded by the absence of any centralized or universally recognized religious authority in Islam. Catholics have the Pope and the Vatican, but Sunni Muslims have no such institution. There is Al-Azhar, there is the Islamic University of Medina, there is the Senior Scholars Council in Saudi Arabia, and there are thousands of sheikhs and preachers on social media, each issuing fatwas according to what they see as correct and claiming to represent the true Islam. This chaotic multiplicity is not just a praiseworthy cultural diversity; it is an intellectual disaster. The lack of a unified reference means that any individual can issue fatwas and judgments, opening the door wide to religious chaos and violence in the name of religion.

The Quranists are a perfect example of this chaos. They claim to follow only the Quran and reject the Hadith and Sunnah entirely, considering them fabricated lies. This position in itself may be acceptable or not, but the problem appears when the reader finds one of them, like Ahmed Subhy Mansour, citing the Prophet's biography, his morals, and his actions in Medina to criticize radical Islamist groups. This is the very same fallacy: how can you cite something whose existence you deny? How can you use as evidence Hadiths and a Sirah that you claim are fabricated lies? This double standard reveals the true face of the defensive Quranist discourse, which cannot dispense with the very heritage it attacks. It is a game of cherry-picking, picking from the Sunnah what suits the argument and ignoring the rest under the pretext of purification.

The Absence of Freedom of Belief and Expression in the Quranic Text

One of the most dangerous aspects of the Quran is that it does not affirm freedom of belief, conscience, and expression as an absolute human right. The word "freedom" in its modern sense does not exist in the Quran. There are verses stating no compulsion in religion, but ancient and modern exegetes have disagreed over the scope of this verse and whether it was abrogated by the sword verses. There is a verse saying "let him who wills believe, and let him who wills disbelieve," but the general context of the Quran places this verse within the framework of threatening eternal torment for those who choose disbelief, so it is not a neutral freedom of choice befitting a rational adult human, but a freedom coupled with divine threats and punishment in the afterlife and, in many interpretations, in this world as well.

The Quran is full of verses that belittle opponents, excommunicate them, accuse them of immorality, and incite against them in direct and indirect ways. The opponent is not just a person who sees things differently; they are a disbeliever, unjust, immoral, misguided, blind, deaf, mute, the worst of creatures in God's sight, devoid of reason, understanding, hearing, and sight. This polarizing discourse, which creates an unbridgeable gap between the believer and the disbeliever, prepares the psychological and cultural groundwork for violence. If the opponent has all these reprehensible negative qualities, why should we not treat them as they deserve? Why should we not fight them, humiliate them, and deem their blood lawful if they are spreaders of corruption on earth?

And here emerges the most dangerous tool in the Quranic text for blackmailing freedoms: the concept of spreading corruption on earth, or fasad. The Quran does not provide a clear definition of who the mufsid is. Instead, it leaves the phrase loose and flexible, allowing it to encompass any behavior that the interpreter or judge considers a threat to the religious or political order. Under the umbrella of fasad can be placed insulting the Prophet, ridiculing the Quran, calling for atheism, spreading obscenity, highway robbery, waging war against God and His messenger, rebelling against the Muslim ruler, preventing people from God's path, and anything else that crosses the mind of the interpreter or judge. This flexibility in defining the crime inevitably means flexibility in determining the punishment, which ranges from execution and crucifixion to the amputation of hands and feet from opposite sides and exile from the land.

When the Text Itself Becomes the Killer

All of this leads us to an inescapable conclusion: those who killed Faraj Fouda, stabbed Naguib Mahfouz, persecuted Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, issued the fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie, killed the French teacher Samuel Paty, committed the Charlie Hebdo massacre, assassinated Anwar Sadat, and incited against Taha Hussein – none of these people fabricated anything against Islam. They simply applied their own version of it, derived from its own texts. They did not invent anything new; they drew from the same wells as the moderates, but they preferred the violent verses over the peaceful ones, favored a rigid interpretation over a moderate one, and took the Hadiths that supported their position while discarding those that contradicted it. This is also Islam, and this is the natural product of a sacred text that can justify anything.

The tragedy is that every attempt to absolve Islam of what these people do presupposes that there is a correct Islam to be followed and an incorrect Islam to be rejected, but there is no objective criterion to distinguish between them. True Islam is what the moderate Al-Azhar scholar says, but why one Azhar scholar over another? And why is the moderate Al-Azhar scholar better than the ISIS fighter who has memorized the entire Quran, prays, fasts, and sincerely believes he is applying God's commands? Is it because he has not studied modern sciences? But that does not change the fact that the Quranic texts can accommodate his understanding as well. Is it because he misunderstood the meaning of jihad? But the Quran itself did not define jihad precisely, leaving the door open for anyone who wishes to fill the vacuum with whatever suits their inclinations and political goals.

An Inescapable Conclusion

The Quran is not an ordinary book that can be placed on a shelf next to other holy books, because it is equipped with a hegemonic, supremacist discursive structure that rejects criticism and considers any opposition to be enmity towards God and His messenger. Nor is it merely a book of peace tampered with by terrorist hands. It is a book containing clear, explicit texts calling for violence, fighting, and harshness towards disbelievers, just as it contains other texts calling for forgiveness and tolerance. The contradiction is not a weakness in the text from a religious perspective; it is a strength that allows the text to endure across different historical eras. But this point of strength turns into a human catastrophe when human beings decide that it is time to apply the text with complete literalism in contemporary societies.

We will not be able to confront religiously motivated terrorism as long as we cling to the myth that there is a true Islam that must be rescued from the clutches of extremists. The extremists are not less Islamic than the moderates; rather, they are more Islamic in their extremism. The problem is not in misunderstanding, but in the text that allows for both this understanding and this abuse simultaneously. Until Muslims acknowledge this, they will remain prisoners of a religion they cannot reform because it is sacred, and which they cannot leave because it represents their identity. They will remain stuck between the fire of fanaticism that burns and the enlightenment of critique that they reject. And the dead will continue to fall, one after another, each a victim not only of the killers' hands but also of texts still immunized by sanctity against any serious attempt to defuse the bombs hidden between their lines.

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