In February 2021, the International Union of Muslim Scholars’ (IUMS) Da’wah (calling for Islam) Committee issued a press statement saying it had organized the first so-called international conference, in cooperation with the Muslim World League (MWL) and the Arab Maghreb Scholars League (AMSL), to discuss the “Islamic Ummah’s (Muslims worldwide) position on the Abrahamic religion.”
It pointed out that distinguished elites of the nation’s scholars from 19 countries participated in the event, none of which was mentioned in its statement.
The statement did not seem to have the aspired effect at the time by its authors, so they have recently taken the initiative to promote it through various social media platforms. Many circulated it via Whatsapp, urging its receivers to resend it to their contacts to ensure the message is read by the largest number of people possible.
Some writers and journalists were assigned to mention the alleged “Abrahamic religion” and to create an intellectual and jurisprudential argument based on the committee’s statement. It considered that some general humanitarian principles, such as tolerance, coexistence, and dialogue that several Arab countries have adopted as a motto for their foreign policy, were used only as slogans to pass on the propagation of the delusional religion.
The circulated statement includes an introduction and 10 points, the content of some of which cannot be disputed. For instance, the second point underlines the efforts of those who have given themselves the status of scholars of the nation to contribute to human cooperation and coexistence based on love, tolerance, freedom, justice, constructive dialogue, and not undermining other religions and their symbols.
These principles and values are not restricted to a human group but rather are values shared by all human societies, regardless of their ethnic, religious and other affiliations.
Also, no one can oppose the eighth point, which calls for Arab and Islamic official bodies in charge of education and the media to work on consolidating the constants of faith and the tolerant Sharia and immunizing the younger generations from whatever would deviate them from sound Islamic education.
Certainly, most Islamic countries have been striving to confront all attempts by extremist and terrorist groups to attract their youth and convince them to destroy their local communities under the pretext of alleged jihad against Western societies.
Although the statement included several religious and jurisprudential terms and many verses of the Holy Quran to ensure it is received by wide circles of Arab and Islamic public, if we exclude the two points mentioned above, we will find that it has clear political motives. It slammed the political stances of a group of Arab countries that have recently normalized ties with Israel and charged them with infidelity.
The authors of the statement definitely acknowledged that an entire Arab country, with all the institutions and segments of its society, has adopted this so-called religion without a valid jurisprudential basis as they have claimed.
The writers and journalists assigned were keen to intimidate people from following this religion by pointing out that it is part of what they called “spiritual diplomacy.”
They further ignored the fact that charging people with infidelity is a hateful heresy that was introduced by the takfiri terrorist groups a long time ago, in an attempt to liquidate those who oppose their destructive ideologies.
The political motive of the statement seemed more evident in its fourth point, which asserted, and without providing any evidence, that this “religion” was created to support the peace agreements concluded between a number of Arab countries and Israel. It stressed that the Islamic Ummah has rejected normalizing ties with the Hebrew state since the late 1970s while intentionally disregarding to mention that one of the largest Muslim countries has had diplomatic ties with Israel since 1949. This indicates that the statement is politically biased.
In an attempt to emotionally affect the recipients, the sixth point of the statement stressed that Jews had dispelled “illusions of peace” by deliberately confusing Judaism as a monotheistic religion, with the State of Israel, as an existing political entity recognized by the United Nations, the highest international body, revealing the political motive.
It also tried to hide the fact that regional peace efforts and the international and regional interactions in this regard are taking place with the institutions of the State of Israel not with its religion.
Everyone has the absolute right to criticize the foreign policy of a country and search for the motives behind some of its decisions, whether they are strategic, political, economic, social, cultural or scientific. They can even analyze the human and emotional relationships of leaders based on the studies of the sociologist, Herbert Simon, about the existence of what he calls the “Bounded Rationality” (La Rationalité limitée).
However, the criticism should be objective and within an epistemological framework. Critics should not use religious terms to serve their purpose.
It is not acceptable for a person to consider himself a scholar while being prejudiced and slandering, not to mention using hypocrisy and lying.
