Perspective: Murder in the name of Islam | Saddia Ahmad Khan

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Islam is a faith rooted in the preservation and promotion of peace. It categorically rejects all forms of terrorism and extremism.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: San Bernardino Sum
By Saddia Ahmad Khan | December 4, 2015

Another act of terrorism rips through the headlines but this one hits far too close to home. I stand witness as murder and mayhem are committed in Islam’s name against members of my community. Like most of my fellow Americans, I feel deeply pained for the fallen victims and their families. My thoughts and prayers are with them. But as an Ahmadi Muslim mother of two children, I also feel a profound obligation to stand up against those who seek to hijack my faith in promotion of their own nefarious aims.

The brutal and inhumane acts of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Islam is a faith rooted in the preservation and promotion of peace. It categorically rejects all forms of terrorism and extremism. The Qur’an states that to kill even one innocent person is akin to killing all of humanity. Under no circumstances can murder ever be justified within the faith. It is not the religion of Islam that promotes violence but violent individuals who tarnish Islam and defame it in the worst possible way.

As a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, the largest organized Muslim community in the world, and Baitul Hameed Mosque, San Bernardino County’s largest mosque, I know that individuals like Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik espouse a militant perversion of Islam that is antithetical to every aspect of what it means to be Muslim. I refuse to let such people define or abuse my faith. For this reason, I will continue to actively engage in decrying radicalized thinking and rhetoric among a small minority of impressionable and disaffected Muslim millennials. Those who recruit and prey on such people for terrorism in Islam’s name in fact defame Islam and its founder, Prophet Muhammad.

My message to the victims and their families of this unprecedented tragedy is in fact a promise: I will carry the memories of the fallen as I continue to wage a bloodless intellectual jihad of the pen to defeat the ideology of terrorists and revive Islam’s true beauties.


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Saddia Ahmad Khan, an attorney, is a member of the executive board of the Women’s Auxiliary of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Los Angeles East Chapter. She lives in Covina.


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