Hirsi Ali om islam og vold

Ayaan Hirsi Ali har utgitt en ny bok - Heretic, og er i den forbindelse aktiv i spaltene verden over. Her gjengir jeg litt fra hennes artikkel i Salon om behovet for reformasjon innen islam, og går i rette med påstanden om at islam er en fredelig religion. Hun gjennomgår først en rekke av de islamistiske terroraksjonene de senere år, og forsøkene på å stoppe henne, med vold eller andre metoder.

"Now, when I assert that Islam is not a religion of peace I do not mean that Islamic belief makes Muslims naturally violent. This is manifestly not the case: there are many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. What I do say is that the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam. Moreover, this theologically sanctioned violence is there to be activated by any number of offenses, including but not limited to apostasy, adultery, blasphemy, and even something as vague as threats to family honor or to the honor of Islam itself. (...)

We have now had almost a decade and a half of policies and pronouncements based on the assumption that terrorism or extremism can and must be differentiated from Islam. Again and again in the wake of terrorist attacks around the globe, Western leaders have hastened to declare that the problem has nothing to do with Islam itself. For Islam is a religion of peace.