Islam A Religion of Peace and Love

I apologize to any Muslims who read this blog because I do not know the proper way to write Muhammad’s name and the accompanying salutation (Peace Be Upon Him). I used it once at the end of my Blog to show respect for the Prophet and to Islam. I was concerned that overuse would lead you to believe that I was making light of the practice.
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There has been a flurry of emails coming across the NET that condemn the Islam religion and its Muslim members. As with other emails and articles of this type, much of what is written is a generalization that takes the commission of unacceptable and mostly inhuman actions and applies them in a broad brush attack aimed at presenting such actions as common place and pervasive throughout Islam itself. The fact that there is less truth than embellishment makes the result of the email much more important and frightening than what is the reality of the situation. I would like to present my understanding of Islam and the reason I feel it is misunderstood in America and the world.

Islam began in the seventh century. It is rooted in the Qur’an, which contains God’s revelations to His Prophet Muhammad, that were transcribed by Muhammad and his closest followers, along with the teachings and actions of the Prophet himself. Muslims do not consider Islam to be a new religion but a re-establishment of the monotheistic religion of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets. Islamic tradition holds that Jews and Christians distorted the revelations that God gave to these prophets (Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet and was not divine) by altering the text, introducing a false interpretation or both.

Shortly after Muhammad died in 632AD, there was a schism dividing Islam into two major sects, the Sunni (85%) and the Shiite (15%). The schism was a result of a disagreement among Muslims pertaining to the religious and political leadership of Islam. The radical members of Islam keep this schism open and actively contested resulting in ongoing violence between warring sects.

The Islamic Nations have a system of government whose laws and system of governing, called Sharia, are based on the interpretation of the Qur’an and the teachings and actions of the Prophet. This is unlike other nations that attempt to maintain a strict separation of church and state. It is partly because of this Theocratic form of government that anger runs high among religious/political radicals in the Islamic countries. Sharia law introduces a more personal attention to and acceptance of this system of lawmaking, by those being governed, because laws are based on personal beliefs rather than on a system where they would apply to all peoples equally – free from religious biases.

The violence promulgated by one Islamic sect against the other is mostly the work of Islamic radicals and zealots who are driven by a need to have their way, and are willing to impose their way by any means available, which, unfortunately, more often than not, includes warring with the opposing sect. Although the war mongers are far less in number than the peacemakers, the violence that results is alarming and unheard of in Western society. It also gains a lot of press that leads one to believe that Islam promotes hatred and violence over love and peace.

The teachings of Islam are indeed those of love and peace. The interpretation of those teachings by radical malcontents bent on using the religion as a springboard to their imposing their will and way of life on all of Islam makes it seem otherwise. The radicals in Islam have their counterparts in most other religious belief systems – Christianity, Judaism, Buddhists. Unfortunately for Islam, their radicals exhibit more violence against its members and non-believers than their counterparts (except, for example, some radical Jewish extremists who are also no strangers to violence, and Protestant and Catholic combatants in Northern Ireland, who have in modern times begun to lay down their arms. There are many other examples of violence inflicted by extremists, worldwide, but I’ll let you, dear reader, call them out as errors in my blog)

It is wrong to attribute hate and violence as the major teachings and practices of Islam. It has always been, and continues to be, as beautiful a religion as the other great Religions of the world. The problem for Islam is the same as the problem for other religions. That is the hateful, cruel, self-serving actions of the radical members who have the unbridled desire to have their own way at the expense of any and all other beliefs. Add to that the infantile, and in many cases, inhumane actions of those radicals to impose their beliefs on others, make it appear that the major religions advocate violence, hate and intolerance when they do not.

Let us follow the teachings of Muhhamad (PBUH), Jesus, Buddha and other leaders of the major religions as we know, in our hearts, they were meant to be followed, this time extolling peace, love, tolerance and charity and once and for all denouncing the radical, self serving and ridiculous interpretations of those leader’s teachings by the radical fringe. We might just find that over all of these centuries, our religious founders had the right idea and the correct formula for attaining peace on earth and that we would be much closer to that peace had we not allowed the radicals to get in the way.