Does the Koran Condone Killing?
By David Van Biema Sep. 13, 2004 On the very videotape with which he advertised his beheading of American communications-tower repairman Nick Berg in May, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted al-Qaeda terrorist in Iraq, appended a theological message. Berg’s murder, the masked man intoned, was sanctioned by Islam’s holiest texts. “Has the time not come for you to lift the sword, which the master of the Messengers [Muhammad] was sent with?” al-Zarqawi asked. “The Prophet … has ordered to cut off the heads of some of the prisoners of Badr … He is our example.” Al-Zarqawi’s letter was a clear sign of the extent to which religious zealotry has come to drive, or at least to rationalize, the actions of the insurgents in Iraq. Since April, the rebels have executed 23 hostages there. Eight of the victims have been decapitated, including at least one of the 12 Nepalese laborers whose slain bodies were shown on a website last week. Like al-Zarqawi, the killers have often claimed religious
