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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Koranic duels ease terror

Feb 4, 2005 8:10 am By Robert Spencer

From the Christian Science Monitor, with thanks to Eschwapp:

SANAA, YEMEN — When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen’s Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.
Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland.

“If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle,” Hitar told the militants. “But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence.”

The prisoners eagerly agreed.

Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his “theological dialogues” with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am eager to see this too. After all, no one else seems to be able to do this. British moderate Muslims, to name just one, have been powerless against claims that people like Omar Bakri represent “pure Islam.” Other Islamic moderates have disdained the need for it. But if it’s true that Hitar can convince Muslims to renounce violence using the Qur’an — and I have serious doubts, based on what I know of the Qur’an and other Islamic sources — then he has found what the whole world wants and needs.

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