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Islam is not a religion of Peace

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Published on Wednesday, 22 June 2011 06:39

Written by John Draper

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Why is it that almost all the terror committed in the world today is by Muslims?  Muslim apologists say that the terror is committed by an extremist minority and further, that these extremists have political motivations.   Both sides of the argument quote passages from the Qur'an - one that Muslims should kill and the other that they should not.  If you read the Bible, although God committed all kinds of atrocities (slavery, genocide, mass murder and more), the new testament has few passages that can be quoted to justify terror or murder of apostates.  So if you are looking for reasons to hate and kill, you are much more likely to do that if you are Muslim than if you are Christian or even less likely if you are Atheist, Hindu or Buddhist.  Fundamentally, it is the religion that is the cause of the terror.  There are few Christian minorities that threaten to kill you if you criticize Christianity.

There have been many debates on this subject and one of the best speakers on the subject is Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  In a debate held by held by Intelligence Squared in New York in October 2010, she participated with Douglas Murray to make the case contrary to the motion that Islam is a Religion of Peace.  The summary they gave of their case is as follows:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali believes the reason the motion for the debate is not 'Is Christianity a religion of peace?' or 'Is Judaism a religion of peace?' is because those would be academic questions. Unfortunately, placing Islam under the microscope is not an academic exercise: it is a pressing and timely issue, precisely because religion continues to inspire Muslims around the world to commit violent deeds.

Faisal Shahzad, who failed to carry out his attack in Times Square earlier this year, was a middle-class professional: he went to business school, had worked as an accountant, and had two children. And yet, due to a combination of political and religious factors, he was prepared to carry out a horrific attack in the centre of New York.

The religious motivation is directly attributable to the founder of Islam, Muhammad, who said that polytheism had to end, that all mankind had to be united under one god. Throughout his life, and in adherence with these principles, Muhammad conducted sixty-five campaigns of war, all of them successful. This militaristic history, combined with feelings of victimhood resulting from the weakened status of the Islamic countries in the world since the end of the 19th century, has lead to an increased preparedness among some Muslims to resort to violence.

Douglas Murray states that Islam is complex and tripartite: there is the Qur'an, its teachings and the life of Mohammad; there is the tradition of Sharia, and then there is what Muslims do now. Thankfully, what Muslims do now offers hope. Most Muslims now exercise their judgement as moral beings, without referring to defunct Holy books. However, the Qur'an itself is bad, really bad. Muhammad himself was also a bad man; he had child brides, multiple wives and beheaded Jews.

The reality of the situation remains; Islam is an unstable component as a religion. 1000 years ago, the Mutazilites tried to reform the religion and they were wiped out. Today, the people who are leading the religion, making decisions for it and promoting it refuse to debate these issues.

Neither is it an accident, or a small detail that the largest Sunni state, Saudi Arabia, the most important in the world, is a closed prison of a society. Facts like these are not small, accidental details of Islam, nor are they 'paradigms'. Claiming Islam is a religion of peace is nonsense. It is turning hope into truth.

Although the Muslims in the audience liked the responses by their apologists, it seemed to me that they did not actually answer the questions asked.

And as Ayaan says, apologists refuse to acknowledge that Islam is the problem - it is Islam that inspires the violence.  You can choose to ignore the "bad bits" but while Islam as a whole is preached, and it's preached using the Qur'an, it's hard to leave out the half of the Qur'an that they disagree with.

You can watch the full debate here.

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