An Islamic scholar who has spent close to 5,000 hours challenging the views of terrorists in British prisons says a “radical and new interpretation” of the Koran is required to confront extremism.
Mamadou Bocoum, a prison chaplain who has provided Islamic guidance to inmates for a decade, says new editions of the Koran should be introduced to mosques, schools and jails with footnotes for verses discussing jihad and martyrdom.
In his first newspaper interview Mr Bocoum said: “I am not asking for a new Koran, I am asking for interpretations, mainly regarding those verses that can be difficult and have a different meaning when taken out of context.”
Bocoum, 42, who is understood to have delivered one-to-one tuition on the interpretation of scripture to at least 10 of Britain’s most notorious terrorists, said the three Muslim men who carried out the attack at London Bridge, in which eight people were killed, wanted to be perceived as justified by scripture.
“All the verses that deal with jihad, war, Jews and Christians need to be accompanied by a footnote,” he said. For example, a verse in the Koran that says “do not take Jews and Christians as your allies” and another urging “kill them wherever you find them” should be read in the context of a third verse: “God does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes”, meaning that those who do not attack you should be left alone.
He said extremists also drew on scripture to amplify their grievances against British foreign policy, although a clear interpretation could deal with that. “We should feel confident enough that we can reinterpret the text to reflect universal values of human rights. Equality among men and women and respect of other religions and free choice — whether it be respecting people’s choices which relate to sexual orientation or inter-religious marriages.”
Bocoum said it was not enough for scholars to be “reactive” when dealing with the terrorist threat. “Let’s have a committee of a variety of Muslim scholars in the West, not any from the East, to reinterpret the scriptures. Christianity was born in the East but rehabilitated in the West. And so was Judaism. It’s time to rehabilitate Islam in the West.”
