Is Islam Violent?

As Americans we are steeped in republican values such as limited government, individual rights, and a separation of church and state.
We traditionally view our neighbor with a live and let live attitude and, while we may not always approve, more often than not we tolerate our differences.
This is why, with all our imperfections, and God knows we have many, we somehow hold together as the most genuinely diverse society ever known to man.

As a result, we seem to have this almost myopic view of the rest of the world.
We assume that all faiths, political as well as religious, are like ours, which tends to involve a personal relationship with a God whom we look to as the creator of our natural sovereign rights.
We have trouble imagining a nation under the direct rule of clerics, or commissars, who interpret the will of God, or science, and use the muscular force of the state to carry out their interpretations.

Our nation was born after a bloody revolution against a tyrannical British monarch, King George III.
This experience imbued our founding generation with a respect for the sovereign rights of nations.
America has often championed the cause of independence from Latin America in the nineteenth century to Europe during the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and Kuwait.
We instinctively loathed European colonialism with its attempt to physically dominate the world.
Likewise, we as a people rejected the maniacal new world order visions of both Nazism and Communism.

While we’ve certainly had our share of imperialists operating in the inner reaches of our government and amongst a small segment of our most wealthy establishment, the American people have been notoriously opposed to world dominating schemes.
It has never been an element of our religious or political faith.
Our idea of utopia has always been to live in peace, under our proverbial fig tree, and leave our neighbor alone to peruse the same.
Jefferson expressed this best when he noted in the Declaration of Independence that the truths we hold to be self-evident are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The vast majority of Muslims who have settled in America have, thank God, adopted the same peaceful American faith that most of the rest of us have regardless of individual means of worshiping God or not worshiping as the case may be.
The same cannot be said of the nations of the world which are presently dominated by religious Muslims.
The religious Muslim movement, like Nazism and left-wing Communism before it, has seized the reigns of power in several sovereign states.
Like the Nazi’s and Communists, they are using that power to spread terror across the planet.

The citizens of these Islamic states chafe under the same type of brutal authoritarianism and one party religious dictatorship as Europeans suffered under Nazism or that Chinese, Cubans or North Koreans suffer under the brutal jackboot of left-wing Communism.
The mobs coursing through the streets of Islamic cities chanting anti-American slogans are the same as the Nazi brown shirts looting Jewish businesses during Kristalnacht or Communists burning and looting American inner cities during the summer of love.

Even though we may be loath to admit it, religious Islam clearly does contain seeds of violence of a type similar to that of its Nazi and Communist counterparts.
Like their counterparts, Islam advocates war, or Jihad, as a means of conquering the non-Islamic world.
Moderate Muslims have westernized the meaning of Jihad to mean peaceful personal struggle and this is a genuinely progressive development.
Like the Nazis and Communists, however, the religious Muslims believe that world peace and happiness will be obtained under what they maintain is the only true faith.
Like the Nazis and Communists, they believe that anything is permissible in the pursuit of this glorious goal including total subjugation of peoples and mass murder.

Chuck Morse Is the author of “Why I’m a Right-Wing Extremist” www.chuckmorse.com

Oh? They both wanted to save Stalin's *ss.

You obviously don't know much about Churchill, at least. He hated Communism only slightly less than Naziism. He recognized the Nazis (accurately) as the greater threat. Not because they were more evil, but because they were more competent. You would prefer a world with Nazis in undisputed control of the manpower and natural and industrial resources of Europe, the Middle East and the old Soviet Union? How long would the US have lasted against such odds?

You may be right about FDR.

BTW, Lincoln lovers need to be skillful duckers.

Well aware of that fact.

I am no Lincolnolator. I just recognize that he accomplished something probably nobody else could have, the preservation (or reconstitution, depending on your point of view) of the US as a single country. I believe the world would be a much worse place today if the US had not been united in facing the challenges of the 20th century. It seems highly unlikely that both Naziism and Communism would have been defeated without a United States to lead the resistance.

Islam had its Renaissance before its Medieval period. There was a great flowering of Islamic civilization during our Medieval era. Like our civilization, it was an heir to the great achievements of Classical and ancient Near Eastern culture. Then, with the rise of the Turks, the coming of Mongols, and the long ascendency of the West, Islam was thrown back upon much sparcer resources.

In a similar fashion the fall of Rome and the Barbarian invasions disrupted the material basis of the Western world knocked much of the energy and drive out of it, and forced the West back to a minimalist idea of culture. One could make a similar argument about Judaism following the destructions of the Temple and dispersions. One can imagine that if our civilization collapsed or were eclipsed by a greater one, we might be forced back upon a few simple texts to make sense of the world -- it has happened to us in the past.

That "seeds of violence" you've found are present in Islam, but also in other religions, particularly monotheisms, and probably in any idea when it comes to be seen as the one, essential, complete truth, from which all deviations or diversions are dangerous and evil.

But for the seed to germinate and grow certain conditions must be present. These conditions are also present in many Muslim nations. These conditions shouldn't simplistically be taken to mean poverty or tyranny. Remove the poverty tomorrow and put a democratic republic in power, and the wound will still remain for generations until it is healed.

Curiously the philosophers and historians of Islam's great epoch recognized this. They understood that the men of the deserts and steppes had courage and vigor, but wouldn't appreciate the concepts and nuances of their thought. Wealth and comfort make civilizations decadent. Nomads reinvigorate societies, but the subtlety and and richness is lost. There was a fear that someday their own tradition would be taken back by the severe and harsh men from the desert.

Is Islam Violent?

Yes it is. Islam actually preaches that the Muslims should invade and take over the world. There are over 40 Islamic countries around the world. Each of which was taken by force and millions of the original inhabitants were killed and millions were converted by force.

"It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land. You desire the lure of this world and Allah desires for you the hereafter and Allah is Mighty, Wise. Now enjoy what you have won as lawful and good and keep your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is forgiving, merciful." (Koran 69:30-37)

"In order that Allah may separate the impure from the pure, Put All the impure ones (Non-Muslim), one on top of the another in a Heap and cast them into Hell. They will be the ones to have lost" (Koran 8:37)

These verses instruct the Muslims to invade, destroy, kill and convert by force, something they have done for the past 1400 years.

Secular Governance: The Central Issue

Remove religion from governance and there would be no war (or far less, if you do not include communism, fascism, deism and socialism as replacement religions). Society goes where the state cannot. Society overbounds the state. Religion is the backbone of society but when the state attempts to use it to enforce regulation, it becomes a tool of oppression. It is why the (U.S. Constitution) framers made religion extra-constitutional. They knew better than to give the sheriff the power of The Church.

It is why extreme Islamic Fundamentalism will fail in the Moslem world. Within the structure of government, they oppress their citizens in the name of their religion. It is why free societies are a threat to Islamic Fundamentalist extremists. The clerics are losing control of their flock.

Religion is an irresistible hammer to a government bureaucrat. Human society holds their religion above all other doctrine and - through faith - follow its edicts. The human who desires to govern over the citizenry will reflexively reach for religious doctrine as a sword and shield to enforce regulation. They do this by interpretation. But because religion is a matter of faith, it can be used by the state to enforce blind obedience, intolerance, and inequity. Religious faith must remain in the larger society and not allowed by men to misuse for their own power ends. In religion, faith usurps the quantitative and the known hence, it is an irresistible tool of the ruler.

When clerics control the judiciary, justice is not blind. The only form of equality that should be sought by the state must be equality before the law. With equality before the law, the goddess of justice is rightly depicted as blind as she holds the scales evenly; blind because she is no respecter of persons. To her all, rich or poor, strong or weak, high or low, come for equal protection. Per contra, the state's use of religion to enforce regulation is poison to justice and freedom. Justice is no longer blind. Regulation under color of religious authority masks prejudice, and inequity is the result. Women, agnostics, caste systems, non-clerics – all less fortunates under a prejudicial judge – suffer when one religion dominates over another in governance.

Western democracies' underlying tenet - equal protection under the law - undermines a male-dominated theocracy. The Muslim clerics will lose control of their flock if they do not act to punish western violations of their edicts. This where faith, and self-interested interpretation of faith, collide to show the vacantness of extremist Islamic Fundamentalism. It is a decaying form of governance. Islamic Fundamentalism will lose this war because they oppress human nature.

Western freedoms and equality among men and women are equated to western decadence and impurity in order to retain control. The so-called Fundamentalists struck the U.S. to retrench their control over their people, not to teach America a lesson. Religion is a weapon to them. You must first believe in the Koran for it to be an effective weapon. The Muslim faith is a great and peaceful religion but a few evil men have curved interpretation to enforce their regulation. "Chi semina vento raccoglie tempesta." Italian Proverb "He that sows the wind reaps the whirlwind."

The clerics can also find themselves prosecuted as war criminals and murderers under international tribunals. Self-preservation is also a motivator.

They will lose this war because their system of governance suppresses human nature. Armed bands of executioners for innocuous infractions (unattended women in public, men shot for trimming their beards, women barred from education, public places, driving, etc) is hideous.

It is why religion should be separate from the state. Extreme Islamic fundamentalism is the most egregious example of this. It is why state-sponsored religious interpretation is a threat to a free and durable society.

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