Foreword to New Edition

If one is looking for the cause of an act of terrorism, one must look for its source in antireligious ideologies. Religion enjoins love, compassion, forgiveness, peace and living according to high moral standards. Terrorism, on the other hand, is on the side of cruelty and violence, causing pain, bloodshed and committing murder.

This book was written right after the 9/11 attacks that were staged in the two big cities of the United States of America in 2001 and it was explained with verses from the Qur'an, the practices of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) and examples from Islamic history that Islam denounces terrorism. However, terrorist attacks continued after 9/11, and spread to other countries including Great Britain, Spain, Turkey and France. This prompted politicians, academicians, religious leaders and writers, in other words, all conscientious people all around the world, to look for solutions to terrorism, to understand its causes and to work out the steps that should be taken.

When this book was first written in 2002, we explained with evidence that terrorists, and most importantly their leaders, are selfish, cruel and merciless people who, as a result of Darwinist and materialist education they received, see life as a constant struggle where only the fittest survive. Such people came to believe that violence and wars were justified means to their ends. Al Qaeda was very active at that time. Especially in recent years, many new terrorist organisations have emerged and they have used similar Islamic symbolism in their attacks against civilians.

These groups are getting stronger with new recruits joining them from all around the world. This forces political, academic, and religious leaders to try to understand real Islam and determine ways to end terrorism with solutions from within the Islamic world. The ideological struggle against terror, particularly after the Charlie Hebdo attack that took place in the capital city of France, has shown once again that radical interpretations, which consist of superstitions that were added to Islam later and justify terrorist actions, were behind many terrorist attacks.

This deeply flawed understanding, which is diametrically opposed to Islam, a religion that favours peace over war, life over death, forgiveness over punishment, reconciliation over conflict, legitimizes violence against non-Muslims, and even against Muslims if they have different views or if they don't practice Islam or if they follow a different sect. Surely, this radical mentality is the biggest problem of the world today.

In this expanded edition of the book, we have included the sources of terrorism that result from this bigoted view of religion and how it needs to be countered intellectually. We hope that it will help those who seek solutions by force come to realize that twisted philosophical and religious interpretations cannot be ended with military means. And hopefully the money currently being squandered on weapons will be spent on education instead and they will join forces with illuminated, modern, loving and sensible Muslims.