Discuss.

Normally I'd wait before giving my own opinion so as not to load the dice, so to speak, but just to make sure you know this isn't an inflammatory question, here's my take.

I think that it's pretty obvious from listening to discussions among prominent Muslim scholars in the US as well as reading, that it's merely a misinterpretation of the religion because of the environment we're in now. I'd say a LOT of people in the US "know" that Islam is inherently violent but have never really bothered to learn anything about it. I'll be the first to admit, I don't know much about it. But from what I DO know, it's merely the extremists that are violent. By the same argument, you could say Catholicism is violent because of the inquisition, and that it's a sexual religion because of the child abuse scandals.

Basically, I think that in both cases, it's not a problem with the religion, but problems with the individuals people see.