1. What is Jihad? Under what conditions does Islam sanction the use of violence? What would you tell suicide bombers who invoke Islam to justify their actions?

There is a miracle and a puzzle in Muslim history which cannot be rationally explained. The miracle is the speed and scope of the early Seventh Century spread of Islam from a poor Arab-Bedouin perspective, into the two great civilizations of the time – the Persian and the Byzantine. And the puzzle is the rapid decline of the Islamic civilization by the eighteenth century, after it had proved its unprecedented vitality and capability. By that time, the Muslims had lost the geographical, cultural, economic and political impact on world affairs to the point of their being put to the margin of the so-called modern history. This state of affairs made the Muslims for the last two centuries struggle for their come-back to the main stream of the modern or global history. Consequently, the Muslims have been busy with two main movements aimed at regaining their place in history: the movement of secularization and the movement of re-Islamization.

We are now at the peak of the movement of “re-Islamization” of the Muslim mind because the “movement” of secularization or modernization of the Muslim mind has failed to bring to the Muslim societies the social justice, democracy, the rule of law, political accountability and economic prosperity. The rate of Muslim illiteracy today is very high, the GDP in many Muslim societies is very low, 70% percent of the world refugees are Muslims and today’s wars are conducted in the Muslim lands.

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