Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology

Here again is Prager University:

Is radical Islam our generation’s most dangerous ideology? Is it comparable to what Nazism and Communism were in the 20th century? Or are Islamists no more dangerous than extremist Christians, Jews, and Buddhists? Raymond Ibrahim, author of “The Al Qaeda Reader,” explains what radical Islam is, and shows how Muslims and non-Muslims alike can help defeat it.

What is the world’s most dangerous ideology?

In the first part of the 20th century, the answer was Fascism; first manifest in Italy in the 1920’s, and then in Nazi Germany and in Imperial Japan. It took a world war and 50 million dead to stamp it out.

In the second half of the 20th century, the answer was Communism. Between the Soviet Union, Mao’s China and their client states, at least 100 million people were killed in its wake.

Today, the answer is Islamism, a radical, and often violent, form of Islam.

Like Fascism and Communism, Islamism is totalitarian in nature: the state controls everything. Also like Fascism and Communism, Islamism is inherently expansionist. It always seeks to get bigger, cross borders, and bring as many peoples as possible under its control. And, like Fascism and communism, many of Islamism’s adherents are prepared to kill to achieve its aims.

Those aims are antithetical to everything Western and other free societies stand for: free speech, free enterprise, freedom to practice, or not to practice, any religion, freedom of assembly, a free press and, of course, fundamental human and civil rights for all their citizens.

Islamism completely rejects the Western principle of separating religion from government. In its view, governments are legitimate only if they rule according to religious law — in Islamism’s case, Sharia, Islam’s extensive body of sacred laws.

Sharia is based on the teachings of the Quran and the Sunnah. The Quran is believed to be the literal words of Allah, as revealed to his prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. And the Sunna consists of the words and deeds attributed to Muhammad.

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