Islam has been at war with everyone else since 622 A.D.
It has never been a religion of peace.
It can’t be, that would be against Islam. And we know what happens to those against Islam.
John Quincy Adams:
In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).
Where did that quote come from? That’s very insightful, but not surprisingly so. The founding fathers were much more intelligent than we are.
(source: Remarks by the President to the UN General Assembly | The White House)
in his official capacity as President, to the deliberate blind eye turned by authorities in Yorkshire to the sexual abuse and torture of pubescent girls by Pakistani immigrants (e.g. teenage girls being doused with petrol and threatened with being burned alive if they told others of their sexual abuse)...not to mention the deafening silence from women's rights activists about forced clitorectomies...
or to mention the Islamists in Iran executing homosexuals by hanging, or by throwing them off of buildings. For some reason, the American left prefers to pelt Catholic Bishops with condoms, rather than confront open, explicit, filmed executions of homosexuals.
Or, if you want to control for the variable of *time*...recall that Islam started in the 600s. Prapagandists or know-nothings like to portray the Crusades as wild-eyed fanatical Christians laying waste to peaceful Muslims seeking only to mind their own business-- when in fact the situation was nearly the exact *opposite*: Islam was founded in (roughly) AD 600 in the Middle East: and yet, recall that the Muslims were defeated *militarily* in FRANCE -- quite far away from the Middle East -- in the Battle of Tours in 732. (Thank you Charles Martel !)
In other words, about 300 years after the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, the Muslims were trying to take over France. Long, long before the Crusades.
And recall also, nearly a THOUSAND years later, the Ottoman Empire (again, Muslim) nearly overran VIENNA -- you know, home at one time or another, to Brahms, Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart -- in 1683, being stopped by the Poles (thank you Jan Sobieski !)
Let that sink in, mmm'kay?
732 -- the Muslims have taken Spain and nearly overrun France.
1683 -- the Muslims nearly overrun Vienna. This is AFTER, for instance, Columbus, AFTER Martin Luther, AFTER Shakespeare, AFTER the Pilgrims land a Plymouth Rock.
Aw, Hell, get this. AFTER the founding of Harvard. Yes, the *real* Harvard.
Oh -- you might also want to note. ISIS/ISIL taking captives as ransom, is hardly a new thing in Islam. You may recall -- or not -- the US Marine Corps anthem...
"From the halls of Montezuma
to the shores of Tripoli..."
That latter, the shores of Tripoli -- refers to the Barbary Pirates.
These were pirates of Muslim outposts in Northern Africa, who captured merchant vessels and ransomed or sold the crews as slaves. In 1795, Algeria ransomed 115 captured Americans, for over $1 *million*. Yes, in 1795 dollars. This was about 1/6 of the entire US government budget at the time.
The continuing, hmm, "peskiness" of the Barbary states, was what led to the formation of the US Navy.
One or two more tidbits.
In March 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli's envoy, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). When they enquired "concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury", the ambassador replied:
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.
Ummm. Yeah.
THAT Thomas Jefferson.
You know, The Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self evident..." and all that stuff.
Hardly a Medieval dead-and-gone thing.
NOTE: some of this material was copied from Wikipedia (The details on the Barbary Pirates, for example, tho' I knew of their existence and Jefferson having dealt with them, on my own); some paraphrased, some knowledge of my own.