Strife Is Worse Than Killing

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

“Strife is worse than killing” — a Quranic verse that Arab rulers and their allies cling to in order to influence Muslims’ opinions and incite them against those who carry out military operations against targets belonging to the regimes, or against dissolute targets. They tell people that military actions (which they call “terrorist”) cause many deaths and injuries, inflict damage on property, negatively affect security, and create tension and rifts among people, and that those who carry them out breed rancor and hatred, tear societies apart, threaten stability, and turn citizens’ peace of mind into fear and terror. They add that God, exalted is He, sent down this verse in order to magnify the harms of strife and make it more grave than killing itself.

How dreadful killing is! Deliberate killing is a great crime, one for which God has commanded that its perpetrator be killed. The Arab rulers say that the actions of the fighters who oppose them amount to “strife,” and if killing is the punishment for the killer, then what is the punishment for the one who causes strife? Surely it must be severe, and there is nothing more severe than killing. Which means they are, in effect, calling for the killing of whoever deliberately causes strife.

The Arabs are the champions of defeat on every front. Israel has inflicted continuous defeats upon the nation, and dragged it through humiliation and disgrace. The rulers squandered the nation’s wealth and spent a great part of it on their own appetites, whims, and desires. They are the ones who proved incapable of achieving the vital, necessary social change required to achieve progress across the various fields of life, and they are the ones who killed people so that their own kingship would endure and rule would continue hereditarily within their own line, and they conscripted the nation’s energies into the service of their own families’ interests. They spread corruption across the land, lavishing money upon those called princes, upon retinues, and upon the custodians of the ruling court, and threw open their treasuries to the hypocrites who guard corrupt rule and who did not hesitate to commit every vice and vile act — corrupt rulers who seek out none but their own kind among the base and the vile, who fear not God and know not the meaning of humanity. The honorable seeks out none but another honorable one like himself, and the vile can only coexist with another vile one like himself.

God, exalted is He, has said: “They had already desired dissension before and had upset matters for you, until the truth came and the ordinance of God appeared, while they were averse.” (At-Tawba, 48) And He said: “And among them is he who says, ‘Permit me [to remain] and do not put me to trial.’ Unquestionably, into trial they have fallen. And indeed, Hell will encompass the disbelievers.” (At-Tawba, 49)

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الفتنة أشد من القتل” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.