I want to start with a couple questions relating to the shooter himself, and his reported faith as a Muslim. I want to address the issue of what it is that drives anyone, at the root, to such a depraved act. I also want to talk about what it means for us as we look at our Muslim neighbors and try to understand what they really believe, and how they can live as Muslims and stand opposed to violence like this.
Firstly: What kind of man could do something so horrible to people who have never hurt him? How can someone commit such an unrepentantly evil act, with so little regard for human life? Even without the issue of radical Islamic terrorism, such an inhuman act is repulsive to consider.
The answer to the first ties into my answer for the last. Somewhere in his mind, this man began to see others as less human than himself. Though he laid claim to a religious identity that made him a creature alongside every other man, in his mind and by his actions he set himself up as the true arbiter of morality. The picture we are getting of him is becoming broader and stranger with each passing hour. But the bottom line is that he placed himself above others, he decided that he was fit to carry out judgment against them by his own reckoning, and ended the lives of people who posed no threat to him. Furthermore, he did it in the name of two organizations that preach the radical message of Salafi Islam, or what is called wahhabism in the West.
The shooter claimed to be a Muslim–was he really Muslim? Do all Muslims have to act like the shooter?
A discussion of the divisions within Islam is not a simple one and probably not possible within a blog post like this. I would highly recommend James White’s book What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur’an for an excellent discussion of foundational Muslim beliefs, but most fundamentally: the organizations that the shooter claimed allegiance to both represent, as I mentioned, an ultra-conservative division within the Sunni denomination of Islam. Sunnis are the largest branch of Islam, representing over 90% of Muslims in the world. The Shi’a branch represents the next largest slice, but only at about 5% of Muslims. The rest is made up of smaller sects like the Ahmadiyya, Sufi, and Druze, among many others.
It is hard to make a simple pronouncement like “he wasn’t a Muslim” because of this action, since there is so much divisions within the religion itself on that subject. The differences between a Sunni and a Shi’ite is not like the difference between, say, a Baptist and a Presbyterian. It’s more like the difference between a Baptist and a Roman Catholic: there are fundamental differences that, when you see how deep they run, reveal that they are different religions at their root.
The problem is that the Qur’an is not written with a singular, consistent message. There are major inconsistencies between early and later surahs, or chapters. Muhammad moved from being a minority prophet preaching tawhid, or the oneness of God, in the face of polytheistic paganism, to a majority prophet commanding the Muslim armies. So it’s possible to claim the name of Islam and live at peace in the West (as many do) by resting on certain surahs, while another can claim the name of Islam and march under the ISIS flag. There is simply no consistent message within the Qur’an to point to from the outside for such a thing.
This is not to say that individual Muslims cannot have a consistent way of living. But the problem is simply that it’s difficult to ascertain a consistent definition beyond the basics of belief that Allah is God and is one God alone, and belief that Muhammad is his prophet. So if you want to ask “Was he really a Muslim”, the answer is…it’s not as simple as some want to make it. He claimed to believe the tenets of the faith, yet it is becoming very clear he did not live consistently with them.
As to, do Muslims have to do this to be Muslims? That plays into the question of consistency again, and I would say the answer is clearly no. There are many Muslims in the West who are able to live, work, and thrive alongside non-Muslims not as secret sleeper agents as some of the more fevered among us imagine, but simply as fellow Americans. There are also Muslims here who have fallen into the sway of radicals, and unfortunately we have seen the result of this once again. As Dr. White pointed out on yesterday’s Dividing Line, one can certainly look at the Qur’an and find passages that require the killing of homosexuals, yet those are also intended to be carried out within some sort of system of justice, with a trial and witnesses, not by one assailant carrying out his own brand of justice. So one could certainly hold the belief that what the Qur’an commands regarding homosexuals is true, without believing that the response to this is picking up a gun and murdering others.
I am planning in the next couple of weeks to have a guest on the podcast to discuss Islam from the perspective of missionary work in an Islamic framework. I hope to be able to discuss all this and more in greater detail then. Until then I highly recommend getting Dr. White’s book and reading it.
In the next part we turn to the question of what the Bible says about the subject of homosexuality.
KINGS WAY TALK 
This is a welcome point of view that I haven’t seen in the dialogue surrounding this situation.
I will start by saying that I am Muslim, ‘traditional’ in some ways and not in others. What I can say, as a Muslim, is that it is not for us to decide who is truly, in their heart, Muslim or Christian or Buddhist. I came to this conclusion while debating a fellow Muslim about how we should treat Queer peoples. My argument was that while yes, actions speak louder than words, no one knows truly what is in the heart of another. He might really believe ‘that there is only one God and that Muhammad is his messenger.’ That is, essentially, all the belief you need to be considered a Muslim. What is a ‘good’ Muslim, or religious Muslim, comes after. His practice of his beliefs were not in line with the teachings of Islam however, which leads many Muslims to distance themselves and say ‘he’s not like us’. It’s a human tendency, I think, because it scares us to think that we have something in common with a murderer.
Thank you for not assuming to be an expert on Muslim scripture, or law. It is an attitude I appreciate. I will say though, that the inconsistency you are speaking of relates to how the Qur’an was revealed. The separation you mentioned we refer to as Meccan/Medinan verses (location of revelation). The verses of Qur’an were not originally split into chapters, and those chapters are not necessarily in order of revelation. Each verse was revealed in reaction/anticipation to an event, so very much with real life. Verses were revealed setting out the spiritual terms of the religion during a time where practicing meant death. The practical aspects of the religion were revealed when Muslims no longer lived in fear of their lives, hence, the ‘inconsistency’.
This is turning into a blog post, but all in all I really enjoyed this post. Thank you.
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