Posted on 08/31/2014 3:02:32 PM PDT by nickcarraway
You might think that militant Islamists would have a firm grip on at least one thing: Islam. Think again.
(This story is based on a radio interview. Listen to the full interview.)
In 2013, 22-year-old Britons Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed were preparing to leave the UK and join extremist groups in Syria. But first, they bought some reading material from Amazon. One of those books was "The Koran for Dummies."
“Even though they may have ordered it, I don't think they read it,” says Sohaib Nazeer Sultan, who's the author of the book and Princeton University's first campus imam. “My book makes very clear that jihad that the Koran talks about would never allow for the brutality and the type of violent extremism that we find ISIS and other violent groups partaking in."
Sarwar and Ahmed did make it to Syria, but they were arrested in London after they returned in January. Now the pair are facing terrorism charges, to which they pled guilty last month.
Sohaib Nazeer Sultan, the author "The Koran for Dummies." Credit: Courtest of Sohaib Nazeer Sultan Sohaib Nazeer Sultan, the author "The Koran for Dummies."
As for the book, the idea for “The Koran for Dummies” came about in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Sultan had just graduated from college and was working as a reporter in Chicago on the religion beat.
“It was post-9/11 and there were a lot of articles and a lot pieces out there about Islam,” Sultan says. Wiley, the publisher of the Dummies series, approached Sultan to write a book that would help explain and contextualize Islam’s holy text.
“It was intended as an introductory book, mostly for non-Muslims," Sultan says, "but what I found very interesting is that a lot of Muslims, both young and old, found the book to be beneficial and still to this day write to me asking questions and engaging with it."
In the post-9/11 climate, one topic that Sultan felt duty-bound to address was extremism. It’s a topic he still regularly writes about. In a recent article for TIME, Sultan wrote that the Koran "warns its readers to not be swayed by charismatic figures who, in reality, only spread evil in the world."
Still, young people like Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed who ordered Sultan’s book are still heading to fight with extremists. What accounts for this disconnect?
“If you study how people are attracted to cults, you’ll find a lot of benefit in understanding how people are also attracted to violent extremism,” Sultan says.
It begins with vulnerable people, especially young people who are frustrated and disenchanted with the world they live in. Then, Sultan says, they're introduced to a charismatic figure who promises to enlist them in a cause greater than themselves.
“If we study why people join gangs or why people join cults, you know we’ll find a lot of similar reasons,” he explains.
Sultan is currently Princeton’s campus imam, but he has worked with young people at different universities for more than a decade. From his perspective, the way to prevent young people from glomming on to extremist ideology is to give them other opportunities to channel their idealism.
Koran_bookcover Credit: Courtesy of Wiley Publishing The Koran for Dummies.
“Young people have this incredible zeal for doing something really positive and powerful in the world,” Sultan says. “If we don’t give young people, wherever they exist, a positive and a healthy and a productive way of engaging with this zeal that they have, then are going to find really unhealthy and sometimes violent and extremist ways to do that.”
If Sultan could’ve recommended a chapter of his book for those two young men to read, he says it would be the first chapter, which sets up what the Koran is built upon.
“It was to teach people about who God is, and it was meant to give people right guidance in life,” Sultan says, “All of these extremist interpretations will be overcome if people understand the correct premise of the Koran, which was really to bring benefit to humanity.”
This isn’t the 7th century, when only clerics could read, and many couldn’t. Muslims aren’t illiterate - they don’t need an imam to interpret the Koran for them. Word for word, the Koran is the word of Allah. Any imam who deviates from the literal meaning of the Koran is asking for trouble. The guy is lucky he lives in the West.
I’m surprised that book could even be published without the publisher’s homes being bombed. And yes, I mean here in the states.
deception; the islamic word for concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies.
Too ironic a statement, for any sort of reply.
I have read through the Koran for Dummies and it is a whitewash on Islam. It does not fully exaim jihad and ther is no me to on of the jizya tax on infidels. It is pure propaganda for the brain-dead, “Real World” generation and any f**k that gets all of their news from mainstream TV news.
Princeton’s campus imam. Wow. Liberals are so dumb that they’ll take a knife across the throat and while that proceeds be shouting how evil tea partiers are.
“SECRETS OF THE KORAN” Don Richardson
It is obvious that TV commentators and politicians are all intentionally talking in circles, dancing around trying to express themselves while hand wringing and soul searching, as if embarrassed to touch upon the real common denominator of the issue of terrorism — the “I” word.
Say it out loud, dammit – Islam!
Not militant Islam, not radical Islam, not Hezbollah not Boko Haram but just pure and unadulterated Islam.
Why is it still necessary to distinguish between the militants, the extremists, the radicals, the islamists and the (peaceful) Muslims when they all share one life’s philosophy that is based on the contents of the same book, the Koran?
Unless Muslims eradicate the pages from the Koran that openly command the faithful to kill, otherwise harm and treat “infidels” with contempt, and publicly denounce these teachings forever, it is only rational that they all be classified as potential enemies and that non-Muslims be suspicious of their presence. For authorities, charged with safeguarding the nation’s security, to reason otherwise, is naïve and irresponsible.
The Koran is not meant to be a book whose readers can pick and choose the acceptability of its contents and Muslims are very much aware of it.
IMHO, this one is worth reading, as it covers everything in the Koran that Muslims don’t want you to know.
The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran
Available at Amazon.com for around $17.
Christian martyrs are killed for their faith, Muslims kill to become martyrs. The biggest lie ever uttered by a president? “Islam is a religion of peace,” George Bush.
Koran?
Who gives a rat’s *ss.
The good news I suppose is there's not a large pool of American youth to recruit from. Turns out building a bridge to the 12th century and chopping off heads, as it is, is a lot of hard work...
I was about to post something similar.
911 is ALL I need to know about Islam.
Then his book is bull shiite.
And this 5 times a day prayer time cr** is disruptive in our country.
Why do we let them disrupt order everywhere they go. Where's that "separation"???
The Koran for Dummies.
That about sums it up.
That’s redundant. Who else would read it?
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