Islam is not a religion of peace.

Christianity is also not a religion of peace.

But, most people in both religions are generally peaceful.

More specifically, bringing up the doctrine of Christianity is a terrible rebuttal to justify the doctrine of Islam.

That is like saying, "Fascism is not a good political ideology. Well, Communism isn't any good either. So, Fascism is not that bad after all."


One evil does not justify another evil. Christianity's sins do not justify Islam's.
The reason why this article is focused on Islam and not Christianity is the modern prevalence of religious violence in the Islamic world. Christianity is not without its evil but there is far less international terrorist attacks and mass killing perpetrated by Christians today than by those of Islam.

First, let's define "religious killings," which is much more specific than a practicer of a religion committing a murder.
A religious killing is directly correlated with the doctrines of faith. That is different a human acting on some type of natural impulse killing someone.

For example, an Islamic father honor killing his daughter who was raped is a religious killing. But an Islamic man who catches his wife cheating and kills her on the spot is a murder, not a religious killing. The second man may be Islamic but the doctrine of Islam cannot be rationally held at fault for that killing.

Many men with many different religions or experiences would make the same heinous mistake of taking a life.

Second, criticizing a doctrine or a religion is not a criticism of everyone that practices the religion.
It is not even a criticism of everyone who make mistake while inspired by the religions. Humans are willing to do heinous things when governed by a bad cause. Not every German soldier in WWII was a homicidal maniac but human nature tells them to act this way in order to survive in their environment. It is hard to fault a person from traits that comes from evolutionary biology and natural selection.

However, commenting on a philosophy, ideology or a religion is not off limits. Every doctrine that inspires human action should be open for review. The religion may be part of a person's identity and it holds a special place in his or her heart but that does not mean it should be immune to criticism.


Finally, before going into a deconstruction of the myth that Islam is a religion of peace, I need to mention how often people are silenced when they start talking about Islam.
There is a notion in Western Society that if a person criticizes Islam, then that person hates all Muslims and the person suffers from Islamophobia.

In Western Society criticizing fundamental Christians is never seen as an attack on all Christians because there is a lot of bad ideas in the Bible that Christians act on. Therefore, criticizing Islam should have the same benefit of the doubt because the Quran has many bad ideas in it.

The Quran advocates for war on unbelievers a multitude of times. No, these verses are not a misreading or bad interpretation the text. Here are two explicit verses from the Quran that directly tell followers to engage in violence:

Quran 2: 191-193:
"And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah (disbelief or unrest) is worse than killing... but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah) and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists and wrong-doers)."


Quran 2: 216:
"Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not."

There is no rational way to interrupt these passages in a peaceful way. The whole premise of both passages is to inspire followers that war against the unbeliever is justified.

The first verse advocates for genocide against non-believers for the mere transgression that a society worships a different god or worships another god along with Allah.

The second passage is arguably more dangerous because the first passage just advocates that fighting may be a necessity, while the second passage encourages it. The second passage claims that war on the unbeliever is a good thing under the eyes of Allah.


The reason these passages are dangerous is that they directly incite violence in the name of the religion itself. For most followers of Allah, these passages are ignored or they convince themselves the passages means something they do not. But for large numbers of followers that view the text of the Quran as the unedited words of Allah, these texts become extremely dangerous. These passages become all the rationale they need to wage war on non-believers.

This is dangerous because there are millions of followers of Islam worldwide that believe every statement in the Quran is true.
The Quran becomes a direct motivation and cause for its followers to attack non-followers. Rationally, one can understand where the Islam follower comes from.

If a person truly believes that Allah or God himself wrote these words then why would you not comply?

Especially when there are verses in the Quran that say the follower who does not fight the infidel is not as worthy of a follower that does wage war against the non-believer (Quran 4:95).


Finally, when male followers are told that their martyrdom fighting for the faith will be rewarded with an eternity in paradise with 72 virgins for personal pleasure. If a follower truly believes all of this is the spoken word of Allah then it makes sense that a person would commit these atrocities.

Men and women are radicalized by these passages on a daily basis.
No, it is not just the poor kid in Iraq that lost his family to an American bombing run, but also the middle-class Saudi Arabian child or some Western white kid that can find the Quran appealing.

If radicalization were just a feature of poor people, then society would not have much to be worried about. But when Heads of States, college-educated people, and wealthy Islamic followers are all being radicalized, the common dominator is the doctrine of Islam.


Osama Bin Laden, one of the most infamous terrorists in history, was not a poor lad that was screwed by the United States military-industrial complex.

Bin Laden was the son of a billionaire, that received an education through college from great schools. There is no other just cause for Bin Laden to orchestrate such grievous attacks on humanity other than through religious inspiration. A person can rationally tie Islamic followers' gravitation toward terrorism to a specific verse.

Quran 3: 51 tells readers, "Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers."
It is not complicated. The holy book of Islam directly encourages the followers of Islam to inflict terror on non-believers.

So why do some many people deny these obvious truths about Islam and violence?
Political correctness –– our preference to be viewed as just instead of bigoted.

The correlations here are as direct as the terrors of the Spanish Inquisitions and Catholicism and no one is afraid to say, "Yes Christianity directly influenced the murder of thousands of people." A person would not even be controversial if one stated that both World Wars had significant religious undertones.

But if anyone states that terrorism and violence has a direct link to Islam, then there is an outcry.
Even President Obama refused to use the terms Islam and Muslim when publicly talking about the War on Terrorism. I am even a hypocrite because I used the term Islamic follower instead of Muslim in an attempt to sound more politically correct.

That is a problem when society refuse to use terms that are correct in an attempt to not offend anyone. Imagine if scientist could not report their findings because the underlying politics.

Society needs to be able to have open dialogue about this problem or else it will never heal. Society needs to throw away the worrisome about being politically correct and focus on identifying the problems and solving them.

The world of Islam needs to open themselves up to this criticism.
There can no longer be a closing of dialogue where the West cannot speak on the doctrines of Islam because they are not partakers (That applies to all organized religion too, especially the Catholic Church). People who draw Muhammed must no longer be threatened with attacks on their life.

When Islamic women and men speak up about the sins of Islam, they must stop being silenced. If humanity is going to take steps into the future with better technology and more dangerous weaponry, then we need to solve this problem with Islam and gradually to organized religion at all.

If not it will doom us way before we get there…

Thank you for reading and if you enjoyed this article follow my podcast on Twitter @MccrayMassMedia for more likewise discussions.

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