Jihadist doesn't equal psychopath
What does a historical commemoration in Lyon, France, have in common with an essay contest in Elkader, Iowa? Answer: Emir Abd el-Kader.
Name doesn't ring a bell? Perhaps that's because he has been dead for 130 years. Nevertheless, the emir's story shouldn't be forgotten, especially on 9/11. His legacy of heroic — and honorable — resistance to Western interference in Islamic lands is a model for how Muslim nationalists today can put their region's interests first without becoming monsters who would slaughter thousands of innocents to make a political point. More than ever, young Muslims need good role models to rebut false religious teaching of those who cherry-pick the Quran to justify evil.
For 40 years, beginning in the 1830s, el-Kader was a world figure admired from Missouri to Moscow to Mecca. Born into a Sufi religious order in 1808 near Oran, a remote province of the Ottoman empire, the emir's life of study, teaching and prayer took an unexpected turn when he was elected chief of a "tribal confederation" to lead resistance against French occupiers of what is now Algeria.
The next 15 years bore witness to his efforts to fight according to Islamically correct rules: not killing women, children or the wounded; not mistreating prisoners, mutilating dead bodies or shooting priests or monks unless armed. El-Kader's respectful treatment of French prisoners was one weapon the French command had no answer to, other than keep it secret. He was a unifier who believed that no religion owned absolute truth. He lived the Quranic teaching that there should be no compulsion in matters of faith.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/09/10/emir-abdelkader-jihad-islam-column/2795857/