I live in metro-Phoenix, USA. The two young Muslim men who were shot and killed in Garland, Texas, Sunday evening were from Phoenix. They shared an apartment here. Texans are known for protecting their liberty and independence. I know; I lived in metro-Houston for nearly 40 years. But I think hosting such an exhibit was foolish and just invited trouble. And it caused two even more foolish men to forfeit their lives.
Nadir Sooti (34) and Elton Simpson (30) drove a car into theMuhammed Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, a suburb of Dallas, and started firing their weapons. They shot a security officer in the leg, but they didn’t kill anyone. An alert policeman acted quickly, shooting and killing both Sooti and Simpson. He no doubt saved lives and prevented further injuries. These two Muslim men were upset because the art exhibit was a contest about drawing the best cartoon of the Prophet Muhammed.
This Texas exhibit is reminiscent of the killings on January 7 this year at the headquarters of the satrical, weekly, newspaper named Charlie Hebdo located in Paris, France. Two Muslim brothers were incensed at cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed published in that newspaper. So, they broke into the newspaper building and opened fire with assault weapons, killing 11 people and injuring 11 more. See my post about it on 1/16/15 (The Pope Is Right About Freedom of Expression). There is a difference between freedom of expression and responsibility of expression.
Elton Simpson had been on the FBI’s watch list for years as a potential jihadist. In 2005, the FBI hired an informant named Dabla Deng to go to Phoenix and befriend Simpson. He did, and he was paid a total of $132,000 for his efforts. With Deng’s taped conversations, the FBI brought charges in federal court against Simpson as an alleged jihadist. Simpson told Deng they needed to go to Somalia and get in the battle, literally, for the sake of Islam. Simpson spoke multiple times to Deng about wanting to be a martyr for Islam. But the federal government lost its case, and Simpson was put on probation for three years.
Simpson’s lawyer, Ms. Sitton, claims the FBI’s actions further radicalized Simpson. Sooti owned a small pizza parlor that was in financial trouble. Simpson, Sooti, and Deng regularly attended a mosque in Phoenix named Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. Its president, Usami Shami, knew all three men. He said Simpson was the strongest Muslim of the three. Shami also says he had doubts about the sincerity of Deng’s Islamic convictions. Shami claims Simpson read the Qu’ran constantly. Shami thinks the FBI would be better off communicating with mosque leaders about suspected Muslim jihadists rather than hiring informants whom he also thinks can have the negative effect Ms. Sitton claims.
I have posted more than once on this blog about several verses in the Qu’ran that exhort Muslims to “fight for the cause of God.” The context of these verses obviously refers to physical violence. The Qu’ran directs such violence against those it repeatedly calls “infidels.” The Qu’ran sometimes seems to define “infidels” as anyone who rejects Islam. Some of these verses name Christians and/or Jews at enemies of Islam and therefore targets of such violence.
I think Muslims need to have an open conversation with the world about these incendiary exhortations in the Qu’ran. These young Muslim men are becoming radicalized mostly due to reading the Qu’ran and secondarily in attending certain mosques that have extremist imans that highlight these texts advocating violence. Egyptian President Al-Sissi, a Muslim, gave an important speech on this subject a few months ago in which he seemed to call for an examination of these Qu’ran texts which he says the world is getting alarmed about. See my post about this on 1/8/15 (Did Al-Sissi Say Revise the Qu’ran?).
The thing that is most causing these young Muslim men to forfeit their lives as jihadists for Islam is the religious instruction they are getting about the afterlife. Imans are telling them that if they fight for the cause of God against infidels and become martyrs doing so, they will immediately go to heaven to enjoy peace and prosperity. (Sometimes, they are told they will be given many beatiful virgin ladies with whom to have sex.) I maintain this teaching about immediate intrance into heaven at death comes mostly from what Jews and Christians believed about the afterlife during the time of Muhammed. See my post on 4/4/14 (Are We Doing Enough About Islamic Suicide Bombers?)
I have been an Evangelical Christian for nearly sixty years. I was taught, as almost all Christians are, that when Christians die their souls, which are immortal, immediately go to heaven to enjoy conscious bliss. During the late 1980s, I attended a conference on this subject and became convinced that that is not the teaching of the Bible; rather, it came from Greek philosophy. The word Sheol appears 67 times in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) as the the name of the place where the souls of all humans beings go when they die. This “place of the dead” is the same as what the Greeks called “Hades,” which appears about ten times in the Greek New Testament. The teaching of the Bible is that upon death all human souls go to Sheol/Hades to await the resurrection and judgment. Incidentally, the Qu’ran teaches even more strongly than the Bible on the future existence of the resurrection and judgment.
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