Violence in Islam

It is a common misconception in the West that Islam promotes violence. On this basis, false accusations are repeated ad nauseum as if they became truer the more they are repeated. I would like to try and help set the record straight, having spent some time studying the Islamic teachings and history with much interest. Since the Koran was revealed little by little over the course of many years, in response to specific situations as they arose, it is important give the background for any quotes from the Koran, in order to avoid taking them out of their historical context. For example:

Most references to punishments in the Koran have to do with the Time of the End, and are similar to the Jewish and Christian teachings about Hell in the afterlife. Others refer to actual physical punishments that Muhammad, as the Governor of Medina, was obliged to inflict upon people for various crimes like causing the death of many inhabitants (especially the majority Jews and Christians) through acts of outright betrayal. Not to punish those crimes would have been an invitation to anarchy and chaos, and they have also been punished in Christian countries by Christian rulers for 2000 years.

Other references to violence are summons to protect Medina against attack, especially by the unbelievers of Mecca (all of the believers had moved to Medina and elsewhere because they had been persecuted to the death in Mecca). Muhammad’s followers were peace-loving, kind and benevolent, so there are quotes in the Koran saying that despite this they had a duty to defend the city. However, a strict code of conduct was established, which included prohibitions against fighting without being attacked, harming civilians or their possessions, etc.

This code was later followed by the most part during Islam’s campaigns of liberating the surrounding city-states from the oppressive governments that ruled them, and replacing these tyrants with a just, peaceful, progressive form of government. They invented the siege as a peaceful alternative for forcing these tyrants to step down --a sort of coup-de-etat from the outside-- used where diplomatic measures were unsuccessful. Only when attacks were launched from these cities did they defend themselves.

Their peoples were not obliged to change religions, but protected and their religions honored. This is what serious historical studies have determined. The rest, the lies told about Islam since Christian leaders began to rally support for the Crusades, actually describe contemporary Europe, not the Islam of that time. It was only after seeing the horrors of the Crusades that some Muslims unfortunately began overstepping the bounds of the strict Koranic rules of engagement and seeking retribution in their anger.

Before seeing the mote in the eye of Muslims, let us not forget the nightmarish horrors that also committed throughout Christian history and wrongly justified through the use of Biblical quotations: its imposition throughout the Roman Empire by the sword and fire; the bloody Crusades and Inquisition; the conquest, forced conversion and exploitation by Christian Europe of most of the world; slave trade and slave use and abuse; the blessing of weapons and soldiers through countless battles; more recently, unqualified support for an economic system that allows billions around the world and at home to die of hunger and disease while others amass such fortunes as allow them to single-handedly determine the fate of those hapless masses; and now an upwelling of hatred against the followers of Islam (present reader excepted, I trust).

My point is that these things are no more Christian than terrorism is Muslim. In both cases, they are merely the outcome of man's ability to proudly distort and twist God’s teachings into compliance with our petty wills, instead of humbly molding and disciplining our individual and collective lives into compliance with His will.