The ‘Muslim Youth League UK’ (MYLUK) has declared jihad on Islamic State and its local followers, which it claims have together deviated from the true path of its religion.
Concerned that terrorist groups were using the more violent passages of the Koran to incite Muslims to violence, the league has announced its intention to engage the militaristic Islamic State “ideologically and intellectually”. Speaking at a conference in Glasgow, league president Shaykh Rehan Ahmed Raza said: “The emergence of the terrorists, who would use the name of Islam to justify their atrocious activities, was prophesied by Prophet Muhammad. He declared them as being out of the ambit of Islam”, reports the Independent.
Calling on Muslims to wage jihad against the many British passport holders who took the decision to fight jihad on behalf of the Islamic State and other groups, Raza said: “We ask Muslims from all walks of life, regardless of the school of thought to which they belong, to stand united against extremists who have hijacked the true teachings of Islam.
“We call upon scholars and community leaders to raise a united and unwavering voice against extremism.”
While estimates vary regarding exactly how many British passport holders have travelled to the Islamic State, it is thought some 60 women alone have made hijrah, the migration journey to the Islamic world. Based on the experience of other European countries, the ratio of men-to-women travelling is at least 10-1.
The insistence that Islamic State and other Islamist terror groups have no claim on true Islam may come as a surprise to ISIS themselves, who consciously follow a doctrinally pure version of the faith, following the word of scripture to the letter, and to Islamic scholars.
Breitbart London reported last year on the comments of British historian Tom Holland, who received death threats after he published his history of Islam Under the Shadow of the Sword, on the emergence of two distinct and competing forms of the faith.
Noting the conflict between what he termed traditional, eastern Islam, and the new sanitised western Islam, he said that ISIS members are doing Islam “by the book”.
Holland believes the oft-repeated mantra that ISIS aren’t in some way ‘proper’ Muslims is a “reassuring assertion, and one that almost everyone, including the vast majority of Muslims, would desperately like to believe”. Further, he asserted, for Europe to become free of ritual beheading, enlightened western Muslims must come to terms with the fact that “stories told about Muhammad are fictions bred of a particular context and period”.