The President of the Turkish client state known as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Rauf Denktas, “condemned on Friday the bomb attacks that took place in Istanbul, adding that ”those who did that have nothing to do with Islam and God.’
“Issuing a statement about the attack, Denktas said that the bomb attack was a murder against humanity, adding ‘they stain Islam, this beautiful religion of peace and love by their acts and give the opportunity to Christian world to regard Islam as a terrorist organization.'”
I’m glad to hear that these attacks have nothing to do with Islam. But the unpleasant fact is that the attackers themselves contend that they have everything to do with Islam. And there is as yet no large-scale movement — and it would have to be global — by the people who think like Denktas to convince the others that their use of Islam is wrong. This may be becaause of the immense hurdle that moderate Muslims face, as articulated memorably by the great ex-Muslim writer Ibn Warraq: “We must take seriously what the Islamists say to understand their motivation, [that] it is the divinely ordained duty of all Muslims to fight — in the literal sense — until man-made law has been replaced by God’s law, the Sharia, and Islamic law has conquered the entire world. . . . For every text the liberal Muslims produce, the mullahs will use dozens of counter-examples [that are] exegetically, philosophically, historically far more legitimate.”