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.

The real answer to this question requires a further definition of which version of Islam we are talking about.

Shia vs. Sunni would be a good place to start, but even answering that would be incomplete.

Within each there are a range of sub-groups. For example, within Sunni Islam, there are several mainline schools of thought like the Hanafi and Maliki schools. Within Shiism you could find Twelvers, Druze and other groups.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims I know are peaceful, loving, good people who just want to raise their families, work and provide for themselves, and live in peace.

As in most religions, you then find "fundamentalists," people who are convinced that anyone and everyone who does not believe exactly as they do are not only wrong, but a threat that must be stopped somehow.

A subset of the fundamentalists are the violent. Those are the ones to be concerned about, and who generally constitute a minority in the world, whether discussing Islam or any other faith.

That said, there are Islamic groups (some of the Wahabis come to mind) that preach a violent overthrow of those in power, both where they live as well as around the world. They are atypical, but they are also vocal, violent, and intimidating.

yes, you said things more eloquently (and with more knowledge) than I could. There are violent sects of every religion really. Every western religion at least. Whether that's PHYSICALLY violent is another question altogether.

Everything stated by matthew and yourself falls in line with my beliefs.

Islam isn't any more violent than Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism or Christianity; some people just get the wrong ideas in their head and take things too far.

Islam, in general, isn't violent. They're just like any other religious culture.

Most of the people in countries like Iraq and Pakistan would be Muslim. Now when people from distant nations order their population to go and invade a country unprovoked, there will be more than violence. Thousands, if not millions, of innocent people being killed, just to get a handful of "bad guys"?
Forget about religion; If people came to your country and started killing your friends, family, and communities all around you, wouldn't you want revenge, or at the least attempt to protect your people?

It's not about the religion, really. Most cultures would react the same.

The question's a bit ambiguous. Are you talking about the violence inherent in the religion, or the culture that's sprung up around it?
The former can basically be answered by looking at the Koran; the latter is much harder to answer and will get you different answers based on your location.

For the former, Islam is actually somewhat less violent than Judaism (number of times "stoning" is mentioned in the Koran: 0) and about the same as Christianity in the NT only.

I don't disagree with anything that's been said so far.
Of course Islam is not a violent religion. Indeed, it goes out of its way to advocate harmony with other religions.
Rather, it is we humans who are violent beings. That's the way we evolved. Those who weren't violent just didn't get to reproduce as much as the violent people who were able to dispose of their rivals much more efficiently.

Obviously this point was brought up because of the preponderance of terrorism and suicide bombings associated with dealings in the middle eastat present.
But given that peoples of arab origin justifiably feel oppressed after a millenium of abuse from the Christian world, isn't it reasonable to believe that the frustration being vented now would have happened irrespective of what was their religious persuasion. After all, isn't this the way humans react to incessant oppression and humiliation?

To clarify on this, it doesn't advocate harmony with all other religions, just "religions of the Book"- read here Judaism and Christianity.
Not quite- their religion binds them together and gets followers for the extremists they would otherwise not have.

Can I take it then that you, largely at any rate, agree with me on this point? Certainly, as far as I am aware, welcoming of peoples of other religious persuasions was a central tenet in the teachings of Mahomed.

Certainly something is binding them together, but I am not at all convinced it is specifically the teachings of their religion. A tribal instinct is a very strong motivating force in our species. People can be bound together for very many reasons such as being from the same country, working for the same enterprise or followers of the same sports team.
I am more inclined to believe that the cultural traits associated with their religion is the real binding force rather than the proclamations of the religion itself.
A similar situation exists (or at least existed) in Northern Ireland. The conflicts there had virtually nothing to do with religion per se, but rather with the fact that two separate cultures who just happened to follow different religions had been locking horns for over three hundred years.

No, just those specific religions. If you actually read a bit of the Koran (go ahead and start at the beginning) it reads almost like it assumes you already know the contents of Genesis. Sura 2 is a good example of this.


If it weren't for the religion tying them together, extremists in Egypt and in Iran wouldn't both be calling for the same thing.

Do you really believe that their religion is the only common feature in the cultural environment of the people from the two countries you mentioned? Don't they both speak (more or less) the same language? Isn't there a great ethnic similarity between the peoples from these countries?
I am forced to come back to the example of Northern Ireland again to illustrate that, although the international media insisted on describing the conflict there as a religious war, adherence to a particular religion may indeed be only a minor part of a vast and complicated array of commonalities that constitute a cultural entity.

Egypt's issue with Israel comes about due to the shared border. Iran doesn't share that border, and the Egyptian cultural background is quite different from the Persian one. Were it not for the shared religion causing Iranians to identify with Egyptians (ie: "They're Muslims too, and the Jews in Israel are causing problems with Muslims, so they're also causing trouble for us"- this is obviously oversimplified but you get my point) it is quite likely that Iranian extremists wouldn't have the same focus on Israel and Judaism.


Trying to separate religion from language is a hard thing to do, as they're pretty well tied together, anthropologically speaking.

Certainly, there is a connection but I don't hear anybody saying that Arabic is a violent language.
I think we've run into a stalemate situation here where I don't either of us is going to convince the other although it has been fun trying.
Nevertheless, as you seem to have a more intimate knowledge of the Koran than I do, it would be interesting to hear from you what precise (or even paraphrased) comment in the Koran makes you believe that this book incites its adherents to violence.
Given the animosity towards the Muslim religion in certain parts of the world, I believe that if these violence-encouraging passages really existed, they would have been flaunted and exaggerated in the media of those parts of the world.

Well, anthropologically speaking, language and religion rarely differ. Christianity is primarily an English religion today, though historically it would be best classified as the Romance language religion. Taoism and Confucianism are tied to Chinese. Islam is tied to Arabic. Shinto is tied to Japanese. And so forth.
My "more intimate knowledge" comes from Sura 1 and 2. That's it. I haven't had the time to rad the rest of it.
But basically, there are quotes in the Koran that advocate violence (especially against "unbelievers"/"disbelievers"- I don't know how accurate this word is translation-wise, however), much as there are quotes in the Bible that advocate violence. ('sell your robe and buy a sword')

Some quotes from Sura 2:

2:65 And ye know of those of you who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated!

2:190 Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors.
2:191 And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.
2:192 But if they desist, then lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
2:193 And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against wrong-doers.

2:216 Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not.

2:244 Fight in the way of Allah, and know that Allah is Hearer, Knower.

499 instances of Cruelty in the Quran

Thanks, JoshJ, for these quotations and to Jentsu for that interesting summary.
However, I'm not sure that any of this information is sufficient to induce somebody to fly a 747 into the twin towers.

No, for that, you need idiots (to do the flying) and manipulative bastards with a political agenda to take the holy book out of context.

It can happen with any religion.

Here's 858 examples of Cruelty and Violence in the Bible.

Ah, I think you may have hit the nail on the head here. Problem is, there are manipulative bastards everywhere and not just in Islam.

I never said that wasn't the case.

Saturday afternoon, which means I do not have time to do this right (I've a sermon to finish.).

Islamic history is complex. The movement of Islam into Africa, Asia and Europe was certainly violent. The question is: was it a religious invasion or empire building cloaked with religious trappings? I suspect just as the European Crusades were driven by politics and economics so also was the Islamic invasion.

NTP