Muslim youth fight 9/11 biases with ‘jihad by heart’
PATERNO ESMAQUEL II, GMA News

A decade after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States by Islamic extremists, young Muslim Filipinos are coping with the backlash against their religion by promoting peace instead of waging war on other faiths.

“Kumbaga una mong kakalabanin ‘yung sarili mo na hindi ka gagawa ng mali,” said Shahanee Lao Balindong, who is taking up a master’s degree course in Islamic Studies at the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman.

She explained that jihad, the Islamic concept that extremists used to justify the 9/11 attacks, can be understood on three levels – “by heart, by tongue, and by the sword.” Jihad by the heart, which involves an internal struggle to live by Islamic teachings, is the “greater” type of jihad compared to jihad by the sword, which involves the use of brute force, she added.

Balindong is a member of the UP Muslim Students’ Association (UP-MSA), which was established in the 1960s and whose younger generation is more focused on academics and socio-cultural activities in an effort to erase negative perceptions about Islam.

GMA News Online interviewed some UP-MSA members a few days before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 people, triggering reprisals by Western allies against various targets in the Islamic community. The threats against the west have continued despite the assassination of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden this year.

At the UP-MSA tambayan, which also serves as their prayer room in the secular state university of mostly non-Muslims, the students said jihad is not equivalent to the violent “holy war” that terrorists waged against America. Rather, it is more appropriate to understand jihad as a struggle to remain faithful to Islam.

Read full article @ www.gmanews.tv

Related articles

• Welcome to the Counter-Jihad (3quarksdaily.com)
• Ten years on – Jihad is not, and was not new (xercised.wordpress.com)
• Abdullah Azzam: The 9/11 Attacks’ Spiritual Father (ukbasedforeignaffairs.wordpress.com)
• Remembering The 9/11 Attack and Bin Laden’s Fanaticism (socyberty.com)
• 911 Dichotomy (insidetheatheistsstudio.com)
• The 9/11 Attacks’ Spiritual Father (thedailybeast.com)
• High Expectations for Muslims (evolvingtaqwa.wordpress.com)
• Review of Islam: A Short History (Karen Armstrong) (brothersjudd.com)
• Islam and Jihad in The Modern Context (socyberty.com)
• 9/11 and the Formation of a Quranist Identity (quranistvoices.wordpress.com)