It Requires a Literary Bomb

Another verse in the Quran says: ‘Idilu. This means, ‘Follow the principle of justice [in your life].’ (5:8) But a misinterpretation of this verse has taken it in the transitive sense instead of the original intransitive sense in which it was used in the Quran. That is, the verb used in the above verse does not have any direct object of action, but because it has been wrongly interpreted, it comes to have an object of action, which in this case is the outside world. Thus, the verse has been taken to mean that justice should be imposed on people by force. As a result of this misinterpretation, the concept of justice has been politicized, although this notion cannot truly be inferred from the text. Any interpretation of the above kind is false. And this falsehood must be made manifest so that people may understand with certainty that the present militancy has no sanction in Islam and so that extremists will give it up, in the knowledge that their actions are un-Islamic. The terrorist phenomenon is based on misinterpretation of the scriptures. It can be eradicated only by a right interpretation of the text being universally publicized. In a speech on July 19, 2015, the British Prime Minister David Cameron expressing his anxiety about youngsters travelling to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), said, ‘We must de-glamourise the extremist cause, especially ISIL. This isn’t a pioneering movement – it is vicious, brutal, fundamentally abhorrent.’3