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The use of Islam to justify killing is "an innovation" in the religion, a Muslim scholar told a Baltimore conference Saturday, and warned: "Most innovations lead to hellfire."
"The Satan always has people that he will be able to deceive," Dr. Waleed Basyouni said during a presentation he called "Reclaiming Islam from the Jihadists."
Hundreds of Muslims went to the Baltimore Convention Center on Saturday to hear Basyouni and others promote what organizers described as a moderate, modern interpretation of Islam for the United States and the West. It was the opening day of Ilm Fest, an annual education conference previously staged in New York, Chicago and Toronto.
On the agenda for this year's event, which concludes today, are talks on reconciling Muslim practice with U.S. citizenship, Islam and social justice, and domestic violence in the Muslim community.
"One of our main focuses is to try to tackle different challenges that Muslims face today, particularly youth growing up here," organizer Mobeen Vaid said. "It's really to give people a way to maintain their Muslim identity in America and telling them how to positively contribute to society."
For the Saudi-educated Basyouni, that meant speaking openly about terrorism.
Basyouni said he did "not want to be among" his brothers who "still insist" that violent extremism is not a problem, or has been exaggerated by the CIA, the Israeli intelligence service or autocratic Islamic regimes, or is justified by injustices perpetrated by those groups.
He began his talk by describing "a very difficult image to forget:" the devout young man, wearing an explosive vest or wielding a machine gun, preparing to carry out an attack that he believes is righteous.
What saddens Basyouni, he said, is that the young man is wasting the one life he has been given on a false interpretation of Islam spread by "certain groups and certain individuals who ... know how to quote a verse from here and a hadith from there" - referring to the two major sources of Islamic teaching, the Quran and accounts of the life of Muhammad - "to deceive those who are still not fully aware and fully educated" in the faith.
He described killing as one of the worst sins in Islam.
"The good news is that the nature of the Muslim community is to fight terrorism," he said. "The nature of the Muslim community is to reject extremism."
This year's Ilm Fest has drawn Muslims from Virginia to New York. The event culminates a year's worth of teaching by the AlMaghrib Institute, which was founded in College Park eight years ago and now presents one- and two-weekend seminars in 25 cities throughout the United States, Canada and Britain.
"When we do our weekend seminars, usually it's students who are serious about Islamic knowledge, and we get a lot of them," said Muhammad Alshareef, founder and president of the institute. "We do events like Ilm Fest to reach out to the broader Muslim community and others who want to basically get a glimpse of the scholarship of our teachers, get a glimpse of the atmosphere, make it more of a community effort."
"The Satan always has people that he will be able to deceive," Dr. Waleed Basyouni said during a presentation he called "Reclaiming Islam from the Jihadists."
Hundreds of Muslims went to the Baltimore Convention Center on Saturday to hear Basyouni and others promote what organizers described as a moderate, modern interpretation of Islam for the United States and the West. It was the opening day of Ilm Fest, an annual education conference previously staged in New York, Chicago and Toronto.
On the agenda for this year's event, which concludes today, are talks on reconciling Muslim practice with U.S. citizenship, Islam and social justice, and domestic violence in the Muslim community.
"One of our main focuses is to try to tackle different challenges that Muslims face today, particularly youth growing up here," organizer Mobeen Vaid said. "It's really to give people a way to maintain their Muslim identity in America and telling them how to positively contribute to society."
For the Saudi-educated Basyouni, that meant speaking openly about terrorism.
Basyouni said he did "not want to be among" his brothers who "still insist" that violent extremism is not a problem, or has been exaggerated by the CIA, the Israeli intelligence service or autocratic Islamic regimes, or is justified by injustices perpetrated by those groups.
He began his talk by describing "a very difficult image to forget:" the devout young man, wearing an explosive vest or wielding a machine gun, preparing to carry out an attack that he believes is righteous.
What saddens Basyouni, he said, is that the young man is wasting the one life he has been given on a false interpretation of Islam spread by "certain groups and certain individuals who ... know how to quote a verse from here and a hadith from there" - referring to the two major sources of Islamic teaching, the Quran and accounts of the life of Muhammad - "to deceive those who are still not fully aware and fully educated" in the faith.
He described killing as one of the worst sins in Islam.
"The good news is that the nature of the Muslim community is to fight terrorism," he said. "The nature of the Muslim community is to reject extremism."
This year's Ilm Fest has drawn Muslims from Virginia to New York. The event culminates a year's worth of teaching by the AlMaghrib Institute, which was founded in College Park eight years ago and now presents one- and two-weekend seminars in 25 cities throughout the United States, Canada and Britain.
"When we do our weekend seminars, usually it's students who are serious about Islamic knowledge, and we get a lot of them," said Muhammad Alshareef, founder and president of the institute. "We do events like Ilm Fest to reach out to the broader Muslim community and others who want to basically get a glimpse of the scholarship of our teachers, get a glimpse of the atmosphere, make it more of a community effort."
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