Imam Rashied Omar on Religious Violence > IslamAmerica

Current Articles | Categories | Search | Syndication

Category: Perspectives
Posted: Sunday, January 27, 2008

Imam Omar's recent article, "Overcoming Religiously Motivated Violence," examines the relationship between religion and contemporary conflicts around the world. A more nuanced understanding of religion and violence is needed, where religion may be "implicated in violence," but is the not the primary cause. On the other hand, none of the major religious traditions can be said to have been explicitly pacifist. The author provides some guidelines for interfaith dialogue aimed at preventing religious violence. Imam Omar resides in South Africa and is a program director for the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Close Move

1. According to the Sunan of Abu Dawud, the Prophet said, “I prohibit killing four creatures in this earth: ants, bees, hoopoes and sparrow-hawks.”

Close Move

2. See Nora Belfedal, “Honey: the Antibiotic of the Future, part 3: Healing ‘Bee Venom.’” Islamonline, November 15, 2001.

Close Move

3. See Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: the Veneration of the Prophet is Islamic Piety (UNC Press, 1985), p. 285.

Close Move

4. Ibid., p. 102-104. The latter idea is attributed to the twentieth-century Indian poet Nabibakhsh Baloch.

Close Move

5. See, for example, the section on medicine in Sahih Bukhari. Among other things, the Prophet Muhammad prescribed honey for abdominal trouble.

Close Move

6. See Belfedal, “Healing Bee Venom.”