Islam – The Religion of Peace and Tolerance?

Islam,
The Religion of Peace
and
Tolerance?

© David Burton 2023

     In the three monotheistic religions that originated in the biblical land of Israel – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – there have been and today there still are three types of adherents: the followers who are not devout and who are what is termed “secular”; those who are moderate in the practice of the religion and shun the more extreme aspects of the religion; and those followers who are extremists in their practice of the religion.

     Martyrdom in Judaism and Christianity has always been in defense of these religions and in defense of the lives of the practitioners of their religions. Martyrdom in the Muslim faith, particularly today, has a wholly different meaning for Islamic extremists. Muslim extremists consider suicide acceptable and they even glorify it when it is committed in the act of murdering non-adherents of their form of Islam. Murdering of innocent civilians, forced conversions, enslavement, wanton destruction of historical sites and objects, rape and forced marriages of women and even of female children is abhorrent to Christians and Jews alike – even the extremists in their faiths. Islamic extremists - in contrast - find the acts of murdering innocent civilians, enslavement, wanton destruction of historical sites and objects, the rape and forced marriages of women and even of female children to be perfectly acceptable.

     Judaism today has its ultra-Orthodox sects or “Haredim”. The Jewish Haredim extremists mostly commit acts of intolerance and violence against other Jews because they do not follow their interpretation of the tenets of Judaism. Occasionally there are violent acts committed by Jewish extremists against non-Jews, primarily in modern Israel against Palestinians in retribution for acts against Israelis. Orthodox Jews, non-religious Jews and even most ultra-Orthodox Jews vehemently condemn the actions of these Jewish extremists.

     To a large extent, Christian extremism has gone by the wayside. Forced conversions were once acceptable – no longer. Acts of murder, rape and pillage are no longer tolerated. Still, violent acts in the name of Christianity continue to be committed and tolerated by some, mostly in the form anti-Semitism. Witness some of the acts of anti-Semitism occurring today in in Europe. Christian violence against Muslims also occurs – In 2014, in the Central African Republic, “Tens of thousands of Muslims {fled} to neighboring countries by plane and truck as Christian militias stage{d} brutal attacks, shattering the social fabric of this war-ravaged nation.
     “In towns and villages as well as . . . in the capital, Christian vigilantes wielding machetes . . . killed scores of Muslims, who are a minority . . ., and burned and looted their houses and mosques . . ., according to witnesses, aid agencies and peacekeepers. Tens of thousands of Muslims have fled their homes.” (Ref. 1)

     Muslim extremism today is a violent scourge that plagues the Mid-East and the rest of the world. As practiced by its extremist adherents, It is the one religion where all the atrocities and obscenities alluded to above are not only tolerated but are even encouraged. Muslim extremists carry out their vicious acts not only against non-adherents to their religion but even against their co-religionists, e.g., Sunni vs. Shia vs. Alawite, etc.

     Islam is sometimes called the religion of peace and tolerance. Unfortunately, many adherents of the religion behave in a fashion that is inimical to such concepts. Also unfortunate is the failure of more moderate and liberal Muslims to come forward to rescue their faith from the fanatics that have co-opted their religion and given Islam such a bad name in the non-Muslim world. Until moderate and liberal Muslims come forward to gain control of their religion, we in the non-Muslim world cannot trust Islam or put any faith in their claims that Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance.

     In the next several paragraphs, I examine the so-called myths of Islam. What we are in fact doing is exposing the extremist views of the radical and fundamentalist Muslim zealots that are mired in their concepts of the Islamic religion as it was when it originated in 610 CE. Hopefully, these are not the views of the great majority of modern Muslims. The views of these Islamic fundamentalists are no different than the views of many ultra-orthodox religious extremists in other religions – these extremists believe they are God’s holy messengers; they, and only they, know God’s message; it is their divine mission to impose their view of God’s laws on every other human being on this planet; these laws were delivered at the inception of their religion to their prophet and are rigid, unchangeable and intolerant of any interpretation other than theirs; the only choices available to the “non-believer” are “submission or death!”

     These days, the moderate or modern members of Islam have progressed, as have the more moderate and liberal members of nearly all other faiths, to embrace a more humanistic and tolerant interpretation of the underpinnings and objectives of their religion. The internal struggle within the Muslim religion, as it has been and to a certain degree still is within most other religions, is to liberalize and modernize the religion and bring it into agreement with the norms of the modern-day world without abandoning the basic tenets of the religion. Unfortunately, the voices of these moderate Muslims continue to be drowned out by the ongoing violence of the extremists in their religion.

     Muslims often complain of popular "misconceptions" about their religion in the West. However, the most prevalent myths of Islam are the ones held by Muslims and Western apologists. The only glaring exception to this is the misconception that all Muslims are alike (they aren't, of course). The various contrary Islamic factions all insist that they are the true Muslims, while those who disagree with them are nothing but infidels, hijackers, or hypocrites. “Don't be fooled! Hear the myths, but know the truth,” they bellow.

     The Myth - Islam Means ‘Peace’: Lesser educated Muslims sometimes claim that the root word of Islam is ‘al-Salaam,’ which is “peace” in Arabic.
     The Truth: An Arabic word only has one root. The root word for Islam is ‘al-Silm,’ which means ‘submission’ or ‘surrender.’ There is no disagreement about this among Islamic scholars. al-Silm (submission) does not mean the same thing as al-Salaam (peace), otherwise they would be the same word.
     Submission and peace can be very different concepts, even if a form of peace is often brought about through forcing others into submission.
     In truth, the Quran not only calls Muslims to submit to Allah, it also commands them to subdue people of other religions until they are in a full state of submission to Islamic rule.
     The Myth - Islam Respects Women as Equals: The Quran places men and women on equal foundation before Allah. Women have equal rights under Islamic law.
     The Truth: Merely stating women have equal rights does not mean that they actually have equal rights and roles, or that they are judged by the same standards.
     There is no ambiguity in the Quran, the life of Muhammad, or Islamic law as to the inferiority of women to men despite the efforts of modern-day apologists to falsely claim otherwise.
     After military conquests, Muhammad would dole out captured women as war prizes to his men. In at least one case, he advocated that they be raped in front of their husbands. Captured women were made into sex slaves by the very men who killed their husbands and brothers.
     The Quran gives Muslim men permission to beat their wives for disobedience, but nowhere does it command love in marriage. It plainly says that husbands are “a degree above” wives. The Hadith says that women are intellectually inferior, and that they comprise the majority of Hell’s occupants.
     Muslim women are not free to marry whom they please, as are Muslim men. A woman's testimony in court is considered to be worth only half that of a man’s, according to the Quran. Unlike a man, she must also cover her head - and often her face.
     If a woman wants to prove that she was raped, then there must be four male witnesses to corroborate her account or she can be jailed or stoned to death for confessing to "adultery."
     Claiming that men and women have “equality under Islam” is an entirely new ploy that is designed for modern tastes and disagrees entirely with the reality of Islamic law and history.
     The Myth - Jihad Means 'Inner Struggle': Islam’s Western apologists sometimes claim that since the Arabic word, Jihad, literally means “fight” or “struggle,” it refers to an “inner struggle” rather than holy war.
     The Truth: In Arabic, ‘jihad’ means struggle. In Islam, it means holy war. The Quran specifically exempts the disabled and elderly from Jihad (4:95), which would make no sense if the word is being used merely within the context of spiritual struggle. It is also unclear why Muhammad and his Quran would use graphic language, such as smiting fingers and heads from the hands and necks of unbelievers if he were speaking merely of character development. In the most reliable of all Hadith collections, Jihad is mentioned over 200 times in reference to the words of Muhammad and each one carries a clear connotation to holy war.
     The Myth - Islam is a Religion of Peace: Muhammad was a peaceful man who taught his followers to be the same. Muslims lived peacefully for centuries, fighting only in self-defense - and only when it was necessary. True Muslims would never act aggressively.
     The Truth: Muhammad organized 65 military campaigns in the last ten years of his life and personally led 27 of them. The more power that he attained, the smaller the excuse he needed to go to battle, until finally he began attacking tribes merely because they were not yet part of his growing empire.
     After Muhammad’s death, his successor, Abu Bakr, immediately went to war with former allied tribes which wanted to go their own way. He called them "apostates" and slaughtered anyone who did not want to remain Muslim.
     Muslim apologists, who like to say that is impossible for today's terrorists to be Muslim when they kill fellow Muslims, would have a very tough time explaining the wars among Muslims following Mohammad’s death.
     Muhammad left his men with instructions to continue the battle against Christians, Persians, Jews and polytheists (which came to include millions of unfortunate Hindus). For the next four centuries, Muslim armies steamrolled over unsuspecting neighbors, plundering them of loot and slaves, and forcing the survivors to either convert or pay tribute at the point of a sword.
     The Companions of Muhammad lived to see Islam declare war on every major religion in the world in just the first few decades following his death - pressing the Jihad against Hindus, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Buddhists.
     By the time of the Crusades (when the Europeans began fighting back), Muslims had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world by sword, from Syria to Spain, and across North Africa. To this day, the Muslim world has never apologized for the victims of Jihad and slavery.
     There is not another religion in the world that consistently produces terrorism in the name of God as does Islam. The most dangerous Muslims are the fundamentalists or purists of the faith and who believe in Muhammad’s mandate to spread Islamic rule by the sword, putting to death those who will not submit.
     The holy texts of Islam are saturated with verses of violence and hatred toward those outside the faith, as well as the "hypocrites" (Muslims who don't act like Muslims). In sharp contrast to the Bible, which generally moves from relatively violent episodes to far more peaceful mandates, the Quran travels the exact opposite path (violence is first forbidden, then permitted, then mandatory). The handful of earlier verses that speak of tolerance are overwhelmed by an avalanche of later ones that carry a much different message.
     From the history of the faith to its most sacred writings, those who want to believe in "peaceful Islam" have a lot more to ignore than do the terrorists. By any objective measure, the "Religion of Peace" has been the harshest, bloodiest religion the world has ever known. In Islam there is no peace unless Muslims have power - and even then . . .
     The Myth - Islam is Tolerant of Other Religions: Religious minorities have flourished under Islam. Muslims are commanded to protect Jews and Christians (the People of the Book) and do them no harm. The Quran says in Sura 109, ‘To you, your religion. To me, mine.’
     The Truth: Religious minorities have not "flourished" under Islam. In fact, they have dwindled to mere shadows after centuries of persecution and discrimination. Some were converted from their native religion by brute force, others under the agonizing strain of dhimmitude.
     “What Muslims call ‘tolerance,’ others correctly identify as institutionalized discrimination. The consignment of Jews and Christians to dhimmis under Islamic rule means that they are not allowed the same religious rights and freedoms as Muslims. They cannot share their faith, for example, or build houses of worship without permission.
     “Historically, dhimmis have often had to wear distinguishing clothing or cut their hair in a particular manner that indicates their position of inferiority and humiliation. They do not share the same legal rights as Muslims, and must even pay a poll tax (the jizya). They are to be killed or have their children taken from them if they cannot satisfy the tax collector’s requirements.
     “For hundreds of years, the Christian population in occupied Europe had their sons taken away and forcibly converted into Muslim warriors (known as Jannisaries) by the Ottoman Turks.
     “It is under this burden of discrimination and third-class status that so many religious minorities converted to Islam over the centuries. Those who didn’t, often faced economic and social hardships that persist to this day and are appalling by Western standards of true religious tolerance and pluralism.
     “For those who are not ‘the People of the Book,’ such as Hindus and atheists, there is very little tolerance to be found once Islam establishes political superiority. The Quran tells Muslims to ‘fight in the way of Allah' until ‘religion is only for Allah.’ The conquered populations face death if they do not establish regular prayer and charity in the Islamic tradition (i.e., the pillars of Islam).
     “Tamerlane and other Muslim warriors slaughtered tens of millions of Hindus and Buddhists, and displaced or forcibly converted millions more over the last thousand years. Islamists in Somalia behead Christians. In Iran, they are jailed.
     “One of the great ironies of Islam is that non-Muslims are to be treated according to the very standards by which Muslims themselves would claim the right to violent self-defense were the shoe on the other foot. Islam is its own justification. Most Muslims therefore feel no need to explain the ingrained arrogance and double standard.
     “There are about 500 verses in the Quran that speak of Allah’s hatred for non-Muslims and the punishment that he has prepared for their unbelief. There is also a tiny handful that says otherwise, but these are mostly earlier verses that many scholars consider to be abrogated by the later, more violent ones.
     “As for Sura 109, any true Quran scholar will point out that the purpose of the verse was to distinguish Islam from the gods of the Quraysh (one of which was named 'Allah') rather than to advocate religious tolerance for non-Muslims. At the time that he narrated this very early verse, Muhammad did not have any power, and thus no choice but to be 'tolerant' of others. By contrast, there was no true tolerance shown when he returned to Mecca with power many years later and demanded the eviction or death of anyone who would not convert to Islam. In fact, he physically destroyed the cherished idols of the people to whom he had previously addressed in Sura 109.
     “If tolerance simply means discouraging the mass slaughter of those of a different faith, then today's Islam generally meets this standard more often than not. But, if tolerance means allowing people of other faiths the same religious liberties that Muslims enjoy, then Islam is fundamentally the most intolerant religion under the sun.
     "- - - -
     “In the dusty alleyways of Lahore in Pakistan or in the choked streets of northern Nigeria’s cities, Christians lead a fragile, endangered existence, never quite certain that their next visit to church isn’t going to end in the carnage of a bomb, never quite confident that their homes won’t be targeted by baying, angry mobs as night falls.
     "- - - -
     “- - - the sheer variety of countries where expressing Christian faith can be, literally, life-threatening {is astonishing}. These include Turkey, which is commonly, if erroneously, regarded as a Western-style democracy, . . . and Muslim countries such as Egypt and Iran. Islamists {and} ultra-nationals . . . have declared themselves enemies of the Christ religion.
     "- - - -
     “- - - Christians can no longer {if ever} expect to lead peaceful lives under Islamic rule. - - -
     “In Pakistan, the Christian inhabitants of the Joseph Colony neighborhood in Lahore experienced what can only be described as a pogrom. . . . In Iran, Muslim converts to Christianity are being incarcerated, and could very likely face execution. In Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Iraq, Christian communities that are thousands of years old are slowly being extinguished because of Islamist fanaticism.” (Ref. 2)
     The Myth - Islam is Opposed to Slavery: Islam is intolerant of enslaving human beings. The religion eradicated the institution of slavery thanks to the principles set in motion by Muhammad, who was an abolitionist.
     The Truth: There is not the least bit of intolerance for slavery anywhere in the Quran. In fact, the "holy" book of Islam explicitly gives slave-owners the freedom to sexually exploit their slaves – not just in one place, but in at least four separate Suras. Islamic law is littered with rules concerning the treatment of slaves, some of which are relatively humane, but none that prohibit the actual practice by any stretch.
     The very presence of these rules condones and legitimizes the institution of slavery. Adding to this is the fact that Muhammad was an avid slave trader. After providing ample evidence of his activities according to the most reliable Muslim biographers, the Center of the Study of Political Islam summarizes its findings as follows:
     “Muhammad captured slaves, sold slaves, bought slaves as gifts of pleasure, received slaves as gifts, and used slaves for work. The Sira is exquisitely clear on the issue of slavery.” (Muhammad and the Unbelievers: a Political Life)
     91 verses in the Quran tell Muslims to emulate the example of Muhammad. As such, the deeply dehumanizing horror of slavery has been a ubiquitous tradition of Islam for 14 centuries, including the modern plight of non-Muslim slaves in the Sudan, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and other parts of the Muslim world.
     There has never been an abolitionary movement within Islam (just as the religion produces no organized resistance to present-day enslavement).
     Today, in Sudan and Mauritania, racist Arab societies enslave blacks. Most of the slaves are African Muslims. Mauritania is the West African country with the largest population of black slaves in the world – estimates range from 100,000 to more than a half-million. Slavery has existed in Mauritania since the 12th century, when Arab tribes from the Arabian Peninsula invaded and conquered North Africa. Raiders then stormed African villages to the south, pillaging, enslaving and converting the indigenous peoples to Islam.[3]

     Is Islam a tolerant religion? A Pakistani couple accused of killing their 15-year-old daughter by pouring acid on her carried out the attack because she sullied the family's honor by looking at a boy.
     The girl's death underlines the problem of so-called “honor killings” in Islamic Pakistan where women are often killed for marrying or having relationships not approved by their families or because they are perceived to have somehow dishonored their family.
     The father of the girl said she had turned to look at a boy who drove by on a motorcycle, and he told her it was wrong. She said “I didn't do it on purpose. I won't look again.” By then, he had already thrown the acid.
     According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 943 women were killed in the name of honor in 2011. Only 20 of the women were reported to have been given medical care before they died, the report said. The real toll is believed to be higher because many of the crimes go unreported.[4]

     The Pakistani Taliban aroused the ire of civilized people round the world in 2012 with an attempted assassination of a teenage girl for promoting the education of girls. Around the same time, they beheaded a 7-year-old girl and nobody noticed.[5]

     When, on that fateful day, 9/11/2001, President Bush was asked why those Islamists hated us, his answer was: “They hate us for our freedoms,” which was greeted with derision by so-called intellectuals. They found this comment far too simplistic. But the president’s comment bears much in the way of truth. Remember the pitch of the Islamists that turned modernizing Iran into a smothering Islamic Republic. It is indeed those very freedoms that alarm Islamists. They obfuscate by going after the “sexual looseness” of Western Women when their real target is western culture altogether.
     Many assume that these fanatics are just misogynists, insisting that women be invisible in the street (under burqas), wear rubber soles so that they cannot be heard walking, and never laughing or (horror) singing in public. If these men could figure out how to produce babies without women, they would gladly do so. But this is only part of the story.
     Women asserting themselves, after centuries of fierce suppression, is a threat to their entire system, religious and cultural. Women are the sharp edge of the wedge in the most divisive of all issues: tradition vs. modernization. This struggle is going on in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and in every Muslim-majority country. The attack on the Pakistani teen reflected the utter terror of Islamists that they could be overrun by the seductive Western culture of movies and television, individuality, gender equality, participatory government, and replacement of a medieval religion by science and education. So much for Islam being a tolerant religion. Its extremists continue to keep it the most intolerant religion in the world!
     Apologists for Islam blame all this loathing of women on culture, not religion. This is not so. The nastiest of Muslim practices (honor killing, enforced marriages of underage girls, and the decapitation of apostates or enemies) can be justified somewhere in the traditional Muslim texts. And it is not just an Arab practice. If it were just Arab custom, why are these practices also in non-Arab Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia? Bad practices are contagious, and when supposedly "moderate" Indonesian fanatics bomb a nightclub full of young Australians, they defend their actions in court as justified by Islam and Allah.
     How does one deal with an enemy that car-bombs a marketplace in Afghanistan and the next day bombs the funeral for the dead civilians? Even the Mafia sends wreaths to the funerals that they caused, but not Islamists.
     When a young girl defies Islamists by insisting on the right for girls to be educated, she is taking on a number of institutions of long tenure: keeping girls ignorant and obedient, marrying them off before their first menstruation (this model is in the Koran itself), and keeping them producing stupid and hapless boys who will sacrifice themselves as suicide bombers. What would the Taliban do without these baby factories?
     The fundamentalist Muslims hate us for the very freedoms they most need but reject. Their religion and culture are keeping the Muslim masses in virtual slavery.[6]

     Islamists do not fight only against non-Muslims – they just as easily fight among themselves, and no less fiercely than against “infidels”. The major internal conflict arises between the Sunnis and Shias. While the internal war has significant ramifications for all of Islam, it also has important meaning for the West and all and for non-Muslims.

     More than a decade ago, Arab nationalism ruled the Middle East. Its doctrine saw Arab identity as the key to political success. Some regarded Islam as important; others were secular. Yet there was no doubt that national identity was in charge.
     The radical nationalists, who ruled in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, said that all Arabs should unite to destroy Israel, expel Western influence, and create a utopian single state in the region.
     This period in time was characterized by battles among the radical Arab states for leadership. The less extreme ones sought survival through a combination of giving lip service to the more radical slogans, paying off the stronger regimes, and getting Western help.
     That era is now largely over. We are currently in the era of Sunni Arab identity and especially of Sunni Arab Islamism. With the liberals so weak, except possibly in Tunisia, the three main choices are between the Muslim Brotherhood; the Salafists; and conservative-traditional forces (as in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan) that will have some Islamic flavor but not seek to be destabilizing and aggressive in the region.
     Sunni Arab Islamist primacy has important implications for both national and regional politics. First, tolerance for other groups is low to zero. The future of Christians in the Middle East is dim. Already, most have been driven out of Iraq and the Gaza Strip. If Christians in Syria and Egypt – comprising more than 10 percent of the population in each country – could find somewhere to go, it is quite possible that hundreds of thousands will be leaving in the coming years. Were the rebels to come to power in Syria, the Alawite minority – which has largely ruled the country for the past four decades – also faces serious threats to its existence.
     Second, the regional ambitions of Turkey’s Islamist regime will come to nothing. There is a deep resentment against Turks among many Arabs and especially the Islamists.
     Third, this situation is a severe setback for Iran. A few years ago, it was possible to believe that Tehran had a shot at achieving regional hegemony. But the Sunni Arab Islamists generally despise Shias, and the new Arab leaders don’t feel warmly inclined toward the Shia Persians. In Iraq, circumstances – including a military defeat and minority status – have forced the Sunnis to accept a Shia-dominated government. That won’t happen anywhere else.
     Within the Sunni Arab Islamist world, the groups that we call Salafist for convenience – smaller organizations that demand full revolution now – compete with the Muslim Brotherhood, but the two can also work together. Their goals are the same.
     The Brotherhood leadership, in Egypt and potentially in Syria, will have an important decision to make. They will definitely not become moderate. There is no doubt that they will continue to institute repressive regimes at home, harass Christians, and reduce the status of women. They will also daily trumpet their hatred of the United States and Israel.
     We are not just talking here about theological differences but a battle between individual leaders, organizations, and states for power and primacy. Of course, they will compete in proving that they are the true leaders in the anti-Israel struggle. And the same point applies regarding opposition to the United States. [6]

     Fundamental Islam is neither a religion of peace nor of tolerance. It is an anachronism that remains mired in the brutal philosophy of its founder, Mohammed, and in beliefs and attitudes of the 1st century CE. Mark Twain recognized these facts nearly 150 years ago in his book The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrim’s Progress.[Ref. 7; pages 89-91] Paraphrasing his remarks to bring them into our 21st century context, we have: “These are a people by nature and training brutish, ignorant, unprogressive and superstitious. The Three Graces of the leaders of radical Islam are Tyranny, Rapacity, and Blood. As a result, the first century greets the twenty first! In other words, they have not progressed beyond the first century. These leaders of radical Islam are the geniuses of Ignorance, Bigotry, and indolence. ”

     Even a century and a half ago, Twain noticed and railed against Muslim intolerance toward Christians and all other “non-believers”. Upon reaching Damascus which was at that time under the control of the Ottoman Turks, he wrote: “I never disliked a Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is ready to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find it good breeding or good judgment to interfere.” (Ref. 7; page 353) Nothing has changed since Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote these words in the late 1860’s and, realistically, nothing has changed since the time of Mohammed around 600 CE.

     The so-called “religion of peace and tolerance” showed its true face in Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood took power under Mohamed Morsi who replaced ousted president, Hosni Mubarak. After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like "prisoners of war" before a Muslim woman offered them refuge. Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.
     In the four days since security forces cleared two sit-in camps by supporters of Egypt's ousted president, Islamists attacked dozens of Coptic churches along with homes and businesses owned by the Christian minority.
     Christians had long suffered from discrimination and violence in Muslim majority Egypt, where they made up 10 percent of the population of 90 million. Attacks increased after the Islamists rose to power in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that drove Hosni Mubarak from power, emboldening extremists. But Christians have come further under fire since President Mohammed Morsi was ousted, sparking a wave of Islamist anger led by Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.
     Nearly 40 churches were looted and torched, while 23 others were attacked and heavily damaged, when chaos erupted after Egypt's military-backed interim administration moved in to clear two camps packed with protesters calling for Morsi's reinstatement, killing scores of protesters and sparking deadly clashes nationwide.
     The principal of the Franciscan school in Bani Suef was having breakfast with two visiting nuns when news broke of the clearance of the two sit-in camps by police, killing hundreds. In an ordeal that lasted about six hours, she, sisters Abeer and Demiana and a handful of school employees saw a mob break into the school through the wall and windows, loot its contents, knock off the cross on the street gate and replace it with a black banner resembling the flag of al-Qaida.
     By the time the Islamists ordered them out, fire was raging at every corner of the 115-year-old main building and two recent additions. Money saved for a new school was gone and every computer, projector, desk and chair was hauled away. Frantic SOS calls to the police, including senior officers with children at the school, produced promises of quick response but no one came.
     “The incident at the Franciscan school was repeated at Minya where a Catholic school was razed to the ground by an arson attack and a Christian orphanage was also torched.
     In Fayoum, an oasis province southwest of Cairo, Islamists looted and torched five churches, according to the local head of the Coptic Orthodox church, by far the largest of Egypt's Christian denominations. [8]

     Back in 2014, two Arab (“Palestinian”) terrorists murdered four rabbis and a Druze policeman at a Synagogue in Jerusalem while professing that their act was carried out in the name of Allah and their Islamic religion. In response, Arabs handed out candy in the streets of Gaza in celebration of the atrocity. Such “public celebration of murder is a medieval moment.”(Ref. 9) Actually it is an occurrence that harks back to totally uncivilized times. “Behind these celebrations are decades of Jew-hatred that has marinated Palestinian society.” (Ref. 9) So-called moderate leaders like Mahmoud Abbas routinely glorify murderers of Jews. So why should we be surprised when so many of his people rejoice at the atrocity of four rabbis being slaughtered while they were praying? Is the religion in whose name these barbaric murders were carried out a religion of peace and tolerance? Is the religion which condones these barbaric murders by handing out candy to children on the streets of Gaza a religion of peace and tolerance?

     In November 2014, a Palestinian terrorist from Hebron murdered a 26-year old Israeli woman named Dalia Lemkos. Commenting upon the murder, Palestinian leaders said that it was “normal and natural to run over a young woman and then stab her to death.”(Ref. 10) Is the religion in whose name this murder was carried out a religion of peace and tolerance? Is the religion that says it is normal and natural to run over a young woman and then stab her to death a religion of peace and tolerance? “When Palestinian leaders call for their people to take a knife and find Jews to murder, and call it natural and normal, we have entered the realm of unadulterated evil.” (Ref. 10)

     Muslim fanatics in Sub-Saharan Africa murder and rape in the name Islam, again giving lie to the claim that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. In 2014, Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, attacked a bus in northern Kenya at dawn, singling out and killing 28 passengers who could not recite an Islamic creed and were assumed to be non-Muslims, Kenyan police said.
     Those who could not say the Shahada, a tenet of the Muslim faith, were shot at close range. Nineteen men and nine women were killed in the bus attack. The gunmen took control of the vehicle and forced it off the road where they ordered all the passengers out of the vehicle and separated those who appeared to be non-Muslims — mostly non-Somalis — from the rest.
     At the time, Kenya was struggling to contain growing extremism in the country. The authorities had shut down four mosques at the Kenyan coast after police alleged they found explosives and a gun when they raided the places of worship. [11]

     The slaughter of Christians in Iraq drew the attention of Ray Flynn, former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. In a mid-2014 article he wrote the following: “The worst . . . betrayal is the reported slaughter of Christians in Iraq by radical Islamic terrorists, who are determined to kill all Christians and Jews in the world. . . I have been speaking out about the killing and torture of Christians in Iraq, as have other concerned people. But not enough has been done. . . This is genocide . . .” (Ref. 12)

     In March of 2015, “Saudi Arabia’s top Muslim cleric called for the destruction of all churches in the Arabian Peninsula after legislators in the Gulf state of Kuwait moved to pass laws banning the construction of religious sites associated with Christianity.
     Speaking to a delegation in Kuwait, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, who serves as the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, said “the destruction of churches was absolutely necessary and is required by Islamic law.”
     In the same year, Osama Al-Munawer, a Kuwaiti member of parliament, announced his plans to submit a draft law calling for the removal of all churches in the country. He later clarified that the law would only apply to new churches, while old ones would be allowed to stay erect.[13]

     In April 2015, a Lebanese Christian related her experience with Islam, the so-called religion of peace. Here is what she had to tell the United Nations.

     “Ladies and gentleman, I come before you here today as a survivor of Islamic terrorism.
     “I was ten years old when Islamists blew up my home, burying me under the rubble wounded. My only crime was that I was a Christian. At 10 years old, I learned the meaning of the word ‘infidel.’
     “I had a crash course in survival, living in a dark cold bomb shelter drinking stale water and having grass and dandelions for food. At the age of 13 I dressed in my burial clothes waiting to be slaughtered and by the age of 20 I had buried most of my friends – killed by Muslims.
     “- - - -
     “Today, throughout the world, more Christians are persecuted for their religion than any other religious or ethnic group. Approximately two hundred million Christians in 60 countries are oppressed, abused, or murdered solely because they are Christian.
     “But it is in the Muslim world where the genocide has begun. Fourteen of the world’s fifteen most repressive countries for Christians are Muslim countries: Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen, and Uzbekistan. Thirty-six of the worst fifty are Muslim countries, including Qatar, Egypt, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Malaysia, Turkey, and Indonesia. [Emphasis mine]
     “In many of these countries, churches are bombed or burned, while worshipers are inside. Christians are kidnapped, brutalized, raped, sold into sex slavery, mutilated, shot, beheaded or burned alive. These are not isolated occurrences.
     “I read a story about a mother searching for her kidnapped son. ISIS fighters gave her some meat to eat and water to drink. When she asked about her son, they answered laughing: ‘you’ve just eaten him.’
     “I could cite hundreds of examples, each more stomach - churning than the one before, but I’ll provide one example, horrific but also inspiring. In Iraq, four Christian children, all of them under 15, were abducted by ISIS and given a choice: conversion to Islam or decapitation. The children replied, ‘No, we love Yesua [the Iraqi name for Jesus], we have always followed Yesua.’ The choice was put to them again, and the children again chose Jesus. All four were immediately beheaded.
     “I don’t cite this example just for its shock value. I cite it to illustrate a mind-set. It is not just a mind-set of murder. It is a mindset of extermination. Especially in parts of Syria and Iraq, Christian communities that predate the arrival of Islam by centuries, are being eradicated. Radical Muslims, whether Sunni or Shiite, are not only killing or driving out Christians. They are systematically erasing every trace of Christian presence. That’s genocide.
     “- - - -
     “Almost exactly 100 years ago, on April 24, 1915, the first genocide of the 20th Century began. On that date, the Islamic Turks commenced their campaign of deportation, murder and starvation against Christian Armenians. . .
     “- - - -
     “Radical Islamists seeks to subjugate everyone who does not adhere to its version of ‘religion.’ [Emphasis mine] Just because we are not at war with radical Islam does not mean that radical Islam is not at war with us. . .
     “The United Nations’ Security Council is, as usual, impotent. And while The Human Rights Council ceaselessly foams at the mouth about perceived Israeli violations of Palestinians’ rights, it doesn’t seem to notice documented massacres of Christians by Muslims all over the world. It’s ironic that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has an increasing Christian population. [Emphasis mine]
     “Since 1948, the Christian population of Israel has increased 400%. But outside of Israel, Christians are disappearing. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Christians represented 20% of the Middle East population. In 2015, they are only approximately 4%.
     “It’s time to call evil by its name: Islamic jihadists killing in the name of their religion. [Emphasis mine]
     “Today, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place at the United Nations to shape a turning point in a world standing on the cliff of the abyss of intolerance, barbarism and a new age of darkness.
     “Today the world is witnessing the mobilization of a barbaric hateful army more deadly than the Nazis.” (Ref. 14)

     It doesn’t pay to criticize the monarchy in Muslim countries. Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court sentenced government critic Mohammed al-Ghamdi to death for posts he made on social media that criticized the Saudi monarchy, according to his brother Saeed al-Ghamdi and human rights groups. The charges against Ghamdi included conspiracy against the Saudi leadership, undermining state institutions, and supporting terrorist ideology.
     “Saudi courts are escalating their repression,” said a member of the human rights group. In 2022, the Muslim kingdom executed 147 people. Through August of 2023, 94 executions were reported in Arabia.
     The case garnered international attention, particularly as Saudi Arabia continued to face criticism for its poor human rights record, including the use of the death penalty and lengthy prison sentences for social media dissent.[15]

     There are many well-meaning eternal optimists in the world that simply accept at face value the claim that Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance and the “myth” that the religious and murdering Islamic fanatics practicing global jihad constitute a miniscule Muslim minority. On the other hand, there is clear evidence that that both claims are untrue. One sceptic writes that, “It is simply false to declare that jihadists represent the ‘tiny few extremists’ who sully the reputation of an otherwise peace-loving and tolerant Muslim faith. In reality, the truth is far more troubling — that radical Islamists represent the natural and inevitable outgrowth of a faith that is given over to hate on a massive scale, with hundreds of millions of believers holding views that Americans would rightly find revolting. Not all Muslims are hateful, of course, but so many are that it’s not remotely surprising that the world is wracked by wave after wave of jihadist violence.
     To understand the Muslim edifice of hate, imagine it as a pyramid — with broadly-shared bigotry at the bottom, followed by stair steps of escalating radicalism — culminating in jihadist armies that in some instances represent a greater share of their respective populations than does the active-duty military in the United States.
     The base of the pyramid, the most broadly held hatred in the Islamic world, is anti-Semitism, with staggering numbers of Muslims expressing anti-Jewish views. In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League released the results of polling 53,100 people in 102 countries for evidence of anti-Semitic attitudes and beliefs. The numbers from the majority-Muslim world are difficult to believe for those steeped in politically correct rhetoric about Islam. A full 74 percent of North African and Middle Eastern residents registered anti-Semitic beliefs, including 92 percent of Iraqis, a whopping 69 percent of relatively secular Turks, and 74 percent of Saudis.
     The next level of the pyramid is Muslim commitment to deadly Islamic supremacy.
     Moving beyond Islamic supremacy to the next step of the pyramid, enormous numbers of Muslims are terrorist sympathizers. It is still stunning to see how popular Osama bin Laden was, and even as his popularity plunged (as he grew weaker and more isolated), his public approval remained disturbingly high.
     But what about ISIS — the world’s most savage and deadly terror organization? Polling data showed that while a majority of Muslims reject ISIS, extrapolating from the populations of polled countries alone shows that roughly 50 million people expressed sympathy for a terrorist army that burns prisoners alive, throws gay men from buildings, and beheads political opponents.
     It is from this fertile soil that jihadists grow.
     Militaristic Muslims, i.e., Jihadists, have low life expectancies, second-rate military gear, low salaries, and often have to break domestic laws and journey across battlefields to join terrorist insurgencies, but still they join. In Britain, for example, more Muslims join ISIS than join the British army.
     Islam has a problem - extremism. It is the responsibility of moderate Muslims to reform their own faith and turn it into a true religion of peace and tolerance. [16]

     The brutality and intolerance of Islamic fundamentalism is nowhere more evident than in Afghanistan where the Taliban rules that bleeding nation with an intolerant iron fist. Women, in particular are suffering from the Taliban’s form of Muslim extremism.

     Reports indicate that the Taliban continues to persecute religious minorities and punish residents in areas under their control in accordance with their extreme interpretation of Islamic law, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said in a report.
     There are widespread concerns about systemic and targeted attacks by the Islamic State’s Suni Muslim majority on the few Shias, Sikhs, Hindus, and Afghan Christians remaining in that country. A number of Christian families have been hiding from the Taliban. “Some are in quite a serious situation, with the Taliban conducting sweeps of entire neighborhoods or districts,” according to the International Christian Concern’s (ICC) Middle East program manager. The Taliban, who now control Afghanistan, claim that there are no longer any Christians in the country. The only known Afghan Jew, Zebulon Simentov, left his native country in September of 2022. Around the same time, hundreds of fearful Afghan Sikhs and Hindus also left the country. A once thriving community of about 250,000 individuals, now fewer than 300 Sikhs and Hindus are reportedly left in Afghanistan.
     There is no official data available about Christianity in Afghanistan, but USCIRF, quoting ICC, has reported 10,000 to 12,000 Christian converts in the Muslim country.
     “They are deeply afraid and heavily targeted by the Taliban. If they are caught, their lives and that of their loved ones are at immediate risk,”
     While the Taliban do not say what will do if they find Afghans who have converted to Christianity, quitting Islam has always been considered apostasy and punishable by law in Afghanistan. In 2006, an Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, who had converted to Christianity was sentenced to death by a court in Kabul. He was eventually flown to Italy after intense diplomatic pressure from the U.S. government.[17]

     Not being a man and not being a practicing suni Muslim makes for a very unpleasant life - and sometimes a very short life - in Afghanistan where all aspects of daily life are under the control of the extremist adherents of “the Religion of Peace And Tolerance”.

     In 2015, two terrorist atrocities were committed in Western Europe in the name of ”The religion of Peace and Tolerance”. In France in January 2015, a series of terrorist attacks and mass shootings shook France, claiming the lives of 17 people, including 11 journalists and security personnel at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satiric magazine. The deadly violence focused attention on the threat posed by militant Islam.[18]

     On 9 January 2015, a Muslim terrorist, armed with a submachine gun, an assault rifle, and two Tokarev pistols, entered and attacked a Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes in Paris, France. There, he murdered four Jewish hostages and held fifteen other hostages during a siege. The siege ended when police stormed the supermarket, killing the terrorist. The attack and hostage crisis occurred in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shooting two days earlier.[19]

     With regard to these two events, an article appeared in the Jerusalem Post later that month. Here are some extracts/conclusions – modified by me - from that article.

     One out of six people all over the world is a Muslim. Trying to say anything in general about this huge community – 1.5 billion people – is wrong. The vast majority of these populations are not involved with violence and terror all over the world. Still, the records show that there were over 3,000 Muslim-related terrorist attacks in over 50 countries – and resultant 30,000 plus resultant fatalities – perpetrated in a relatively short span of time during the second decade of the twenty-first century.
     It has been charged that Islam is to terrorism as rain is to flooding. Of course, there is much truth in the counter-claim that most Muslims are not actively involved in terrorism. However, while this latter claim is factually correct, substantively, it is meaningless.
     Indeed, for anyone, with a reasonably informed grasp of world affairs and an iota of intellectual integrity, the answer to whether Islam and violence/terrorism are causally connected should be unequivocally clear. To ask whether Islam is associated with terrorism is a little like asking if rainfall is associated with flooding. Of course it is.
     After all, if one in six people in the world is Muslim, then five out of six are not – right? Accordingly, if there were no inordinate Islamic affinity for violence/terrorism, the number of Muslim acts of terrorism should be one-fifth that of non-Muslim terrorism – i.e., if Islam had no greater propensity for terrorism, one should expect non-Muslim acts of terrorism to be five times (!) those perpetrated by Muslims.
     This is not the case. Terrorist attacks committed by adherents of Islam far outstrip those carried out by non-Muslims.
     So, in stark contradiction to the dubious precepts of political correctness, there clearly is a wildly disproportionate causal connection between Islam on the one hand, and acts of ideo-politically motivated violence against civilian populations, i.e., terrorism, on the other. There simply is no way that, in the modern world, any other faith/creed can be associated with such violence/ terrorism – in scope, size, frequency or ubiquity of occurrence.
     The carnage at Charlie Hebdo along with the other butchery and bloodbaths could hardly be deemed unexpected. Quite the contrary, for decades the ominous writing has been on the wall. Tragically it has been studiously ignored, sacrificing lives on the altar of the false deity of political correctness. These despicable acts of terror were another link in a gory chain of violence, committed by the followers of the prophet, in his name, across the European continent and beyond.
     But as appalling as Muslim violence against non-Muslims might be, it pales into insignificance when compared to violence between Muslims. It would be impossible to give a comprehensive survey of the intra-Muslim carnage that has raged – and still rages – across vast swaths of the globe, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the islands of Asia-Pacific.
     Regular bombings of markets and mosques across countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have produced massive loss of Muslim life at the hands of belligerent brethren. The intra-Muslim conflict seems so intense and complicated that even a reasonably informed layman would find it almost impossible to figure out who is killing whom, and why. The pervasive violence in the Muslim world inevitably raises the question of the general character of Islam, and the kind of behavioral patterns it seems to generate.
     Here is a warning (March 21, 2009) from the Somalian-born former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali who was forced to flee to the US because of threats from Muslims who objected to her caustic criticism of Islam: “Islam is not a religion of peace. It’s a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can. Every accommodation of Muslim demands leads to a sense of euphoria and a conviction that Allah is on their side. They see every act of appeasement as an invitation to make fresh demands.”[20]

     The concept of tolerance in fundamentalist Islam can be seen by their treatment of women as characterized by what has been happening in Afghanistan following the Taliban ascendency to power there.
     "We are going to allow women to study and work within our framework. Women are going to be very active in our society," the Taliban announced in their first press conference shortly after seizing power on 15 August 2021. Two years later, these assurances had been firmly demolished by the Taliban government's actions. The suppression of women's rights under their rule has been the harshest in the world, brought in through a relentless series of religious decrees from the Taliban leadership, and regional rulings that have been steadily imposed across Afghanistan.
     The first indication of the Taliban's attitude to women came only a month after their takeover. Secondary schools opened for boys following a ministry of education statement which made no mention of girls. "Locally, we were told not to attend classes," a 17-year-old female student said in Kabul at the time. "For 11 years, despite the risk of violence, I worked hard so I could become a doctor. I'm devastated," she wept, as she waved goodbye to her brothers heading off to school. In the same week, female employees of the Kabul city administration were told by the mayor to stay at home, with only those who performed jobs which couldn't be done by men, allowed to continue.
     Also, the headquarters of the Taliban's moral police, the Ministry of the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was set up in the same compound where the Ministry of Women's Affairs of the former regime once was - a government department scrapped by the Taliban weeks after taking power.
     When women responded to the restrictions by marching on the streets of Afghan cities, demanding the right to work and study, they were violently stopped by the Taliban government on multiple occasions. "I was lashed with electric cables," one protester reported. In January 2022, at least four female activists were detained - they were held for weeks and beaten in custody. Restrictions were being brought in incrementally. In December 2021, the government's virtue and vice ministry ordered that women travelling distances longer than 45 miles had to be accompanied by a close male relative.
     On 7 May 2022, the government announced a decree endorsed by its supreme leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, mandating head-to-toe clothing for women. It also ordered that male family members should ensure that women and girls comply with the decree, or they would face action.
     While women began to disappear from public life, the number of destitute women, who had been denied the right to work and the ability to feed their families, were increasingly visible on the streets begging for help. Also, more and more girls were forced into early marriages by their families, because they were not able to get an education or a job.
     The Kandahar-based top leadership has continued to harden its stance, significantly shrinking women's freedoms. A vice and virtue ministry spokesman announced that women had been banned from Kabul parks because they were not following Sharia [Islamic law]. Such rulings announced for one city are invariably implemented across the entire country - as was the case with the parks ban. Women were also barred from gyms, swimming pools and public baths.
     "Every day, as girls in Afghanistan, we wake up to new restrictions," one female student said. "I was lucky I finished secondary school before the Taliban came. But I'm scared now that universities might also be closed for women." And she was right. On 20 December 2022, the Taliban higher education minister ordered that all public and private universities immediately suspend all female education until further notice.
     Four days later, came another harsh blow. The Taliban's Ministry of Economy told all local and international NGOs operating in Afghanistan to ask their female employees to stop coming to work or have their permits revoked. The last few spaces where women could gather away from Taliban scrutiny were hair and beauty salons. But the Taliban government's announcement on 4 July 2023 to shut these down didn't come as a surprise to most people.[21]

     Most of you have most likely heard those public declarations that Islam is a peaceful religion. It was said that Osama bin Laden and the Taliban represented an extremely radical Muslim fringe that was not really a representative interpretation of true Islam. However, it is certainly not true that Islam is in any way a peaceful religion, especially toward outsiders.
     First of all, remember that Islam means “submission,” not peace. This does not imply mere voluntary submission but includes a forced submission where subjects will not comply. Historically Islam is not known for its peace movements, but for a uniquely Arab word we all know as “jihad”. The word “jihad” means an offensive war intended to lead to the conversion of the infidel to Islam or his annihilation.
     Today, Islam continues to fight a holy war for control of the world! That war was begun by Mohammed himself in the seventh century and is still carried on today by his faithful followers through terrorism. The terrorists are not radicals or extremists, as the media continually labels them. Instead, these are Islamic fundamentalists who are true to their religion and the teachings of the Koran and who follow faithfully in the footsteps of their great Prophet, Mohammed.
     As one former Muslim and Islamic scholar has said: We must never imagine that such Muslims are being unnecessarily wicked. They are simply being faithful to their religion. The fact is never hidden as to the attitude a good Muslim should have towards Christians and Jews. In fact, much of the incitement to violence and war in the whole of the Quran is directed against the Jews and Christian who rejected what they felt to be the strange religion Mohammed was trying to force on them. Today, the war by fundamentalist Muslims against Jews Christians and other “non-believers” and heretics continues. As this ongoing war shows on a daily basis, Islam is not the religion of peace and tolerance.[22]
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