Note: I’ve been working on this for some time, but due to the nature of the content have been slow to publish it.

It has become a refrain from the left (and the media) to hear how Islam is a religion of peace and those who engage in violence have are not “real” Muslims.   If one questions this premise the interesting moniker of Islamophobe is tied to the questioner.   However, the question “Is Islam a religion of peace?” is legitimate and should be considered.  However, the more I have looked into the issue, rather than get a simple answer I find it becomes ever more difficult to make simplistic answers.

To be a Muslim, a person simply has to agree there is only one God and Mohammad is his prophet.  Though the mantra does not expressly say so, the assumption is that one accepts the Quran as the literal words of the one and only God and that the Quran supersedes all other older religious texts. All that is beyond question.  The problem is that the Quran is not a book of systematic theology, nor is it a single narrative; but rather it is a book of various styles and subjects and content.  Muslims say this style is because it is divine and its unique style is due to that fact.  Secularist would respond that the lack of clarity is due to the fact that the Quran is nothing more than a mishmash of Persian, Arabic, Jewish and Christian ideas plagiarized by Mohammad and his immediate successors.

The divine or secular nature of the Quran is a matter of faith, but for this discussion the significance of this is that such a non-linier text is infinitely subject to interpretation.   Of course issues of interpretation is true with all religions; but it seems monotheistic religions struggle with variations in interpretation more than most. I would suggest that this is because practitioners tend to be far more dogmatic about the unique rightness of their theology than other religions. In the case of Islam the initial schism in interpretation goes right back to the origins of the religion itself as if to make the point that there is not just one Islam a prima fascia case. Continue reading “Is Islam a Religion of Peace?” →