A muslim's perspective on the terrorist attack in Nice, France
EDIT 7/15/16:
So it seems many have jumped the gun and assumed that ISIS was behind this attack (including myself based on the original rumors and speculation). However, the latest reported by USA Today is as follows: "French prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday that the driver of a truck that plowed into a crowd of seaside spectators in Nice, killing 84 people, was a Tunisia-born Frenchman who had a petty criminal record but was not known to any intelligence services, local or national, as having links to radicalism."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/07/15/france-nice-attack/87115358/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories
ORIGINAL POST:
It seems that no matter what words come to mind (barbaric, inhumane, animal-like, etc), words have trouble capturing the extent of the the disaster that ISIS is creating in the world. My heart sobs and my stomach churns for the people who experienced a loss due to the terrorist attack in Nice, France. The world needs to address this ISIS catastrophe ASAP!!!
Regarding people who are tying in the entire Islamic faith and global muslim community and holding the Islamic world accountable for this attack, as a Muslim I have to say, these terrorists don't use Islam as the REASON for the terrorism, they use it as the JUSTIFICATION. There is a difference. Reason means that Islam told them to do this. Justification means that they decided to do this and justified it to themselves and the world that its because of Islam. There is no place in Islam for something like this. This is absolutely, unequivocally NOT allowed in Islam. The terrorist killed both Muslims and non-Muslims alike as there were reports of women in scarves lying dead on the streets in the aftermath of the attack. There is no Islamic scholar that teaches or approves of this action. Read this statement that was released after the Orlando attack by dozens of islamic scholars and hundreds of members of the Islamic community that undeniably and unequivocally condemned the attack: http://orlandostatement.com. There are going to be further condemnations coming in from across the globe for this attack from all communities.
Remember that Islam has been in Iraq for many centuries. Yet ISIS did not exist at all anywhere until after the Iraq war. As they say, extremism and violence breed extremism and violence. Instead of blaming ISIS on the entire Islamic world and all Muslims in the world, we need to understand more critically what lead to the creation of ISIS and make sure that once the world is rid of the cancer known as ISIS, no group like ISIS must ever emerge again. Also keep in mind, that the vast majority of the victims of ISIS are in fact Muslims.
War in general never gave back to the people only took away everything worth fighting for.
People don't realize that NATO is the one who created ISIS and continues to fund them. That is the problem and it is causing "islamaphobia". Many need to wake up and realize this.
Why don't we hear more Muslim leaders around the world standing up and condemning this activity? It's hurting Muslims' reputation very badly. Where are the majority Muslim countries around the world stepping up to lead the charge?
I think this is what confuses me. Why don't we see and hear more of this?
Muslims community members, leaders and imams are condemning these acts everywhere. I think there is a vacuum in the media with respect to reporting it. How many times has a mainstream Muslim leader been given a voice on a news channel or in the newspaper to condemn these actions? I included in my write up a link to a joint statement from the Muslim community including scholars and leaders that condemned the Orlando attack (see here: http://orlandostatement.com) - where was this reported in the mainstream media?
I agree
https://steemit.com/nice/@aaseb/most-terrorists-are-islamists-true-most-islamists-are-terrorists-false
Religious belief is irrational. They are muslim just as you are and that is precisely the problem. Your system of belief might not include the murder of people, but the belief system you subscribe to subjugates reason, and in doing so creates the slippery slope that allows this sort of absurdity to happen. In the US, we have anti-abortion and anti-gay fanatics of the christian variety, obviosuly the vast majority of religious people don't think bombing or gunning down gays and abortion providers is right, and yet many churches talk about the sins of homosexuality and abortions. The churches that don't do that are still culpable for relieving people of their duty to think about life rationally. There is no god and the sooner people can let go of these dangerous myths the sooner we can move on as a species. Of the thousands of gods who have existed, why is this one god so hard to put down? Is he not just as absurd as zeus or thor?
A lot of things to respond to, by I'll start with this - there is no historical evidence of zeus or thor existing. There is, however, historical documentation of the Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad existing and actually walking on this earth (along with other people that are alleged to be sent by God and documented in religious scripture). These human beings are not mythology like the Greek gods, they are actually real humans that were on this planet and seen and documented. Once we agree that these people were real people, the next thing to be debated is their message regarding God and whether their message was truthful or false and whether they were actually Prophets. If you believe they were Prophets that came with a true message, then you believe in God. If you believe they were liars or con artists, then you may not believe in their God.
The historical evidence is thin. Jesus like much of the bible seems like a combination of several mythic tropes from other cultures. The magic powers and miracles of christ have neither scientific or credible historical evidence to support them. No one wrote down anything he said, it was all crafted long after the fact. That being the case what good is it if a man named Jesus existed but everything said about him was made up? Moses has similar legendary status and there is no real historical evidence for any of his deeds or that he really existed("Scholarly consensus sees Moses as a legendary figure and not a historical person."wikipedia). There really isn't strong evidence for anything in exodus or that the jews were much more than an unwanted rival warring tribe of people, the slavery myth has zero archelogical support. The old testament reads like an after the fact reckoning of the plight of an ignorant group of nomads who when times were good their god was happy and when times were bad they had done sinful things. It is all nonsense, and since muslims piggy back on this nonsense they too are living in fantasy land. Zeus and Thor could have similiar roots as these legendary christian figures, they could very well have been normal humans deified by the ignorant fearful masses of humanity desperate to understand the chaos around them, historical records from those periods are incomplete so we can never know the true origin. Historical obscurity makes myths, and eventually the bible and all its characters will be seen as purely mythological. We have almost killed off all the gods, just a handful left to put down, and then humans can rise to our full potential.