The mainstream views on Islam are getting, quite frankly, rather tiring. Nearly everyone insists that you have to either be totally blind to the crisis at hand and believe that ISIS only exist because of poverty and american imperialism, or be a loony who thinks that ISIS is the pinnacle of Islamic teaching and that all Muslims are terrorists. Neither is true. Islam is not a religion of peace, but honestly, I’d be hesitant to call any religion a “religion of peace” without first indicating what I meant by peace. There is a longstanding tradition of Holy War in Islam, but there is no major, mainstream tradition of Islamic terrorism, and the distinction between this needs to be made. Saladin’s conquests were in line with traditional Islamic thought, ISIS or Al-Qaeda committed random acts of terror against unarmed civilians is most certainly not. Modern Islamic Terrorism is rooted almost entirely in Wahhabism, an eighteen-century revanchist aberration of the traditional Islamic teaching on (lesser) Jihad. The traditional Islamic rulings on how warfare is to be conducted are generally fairy civil, with the exception of their rulings on slavery, the issue there is less in ruling than it is on lack of practice. But let’s be honest, how many times did medieval Christians follow the Peace and Truce of God?
We need to be able to have honest conversations about Islam, without the fear of being demonized as an “Islamaphobe”, if we want to find a solution to the problems of modern Islam. I think Islam could be reformed to be a reasonably peaceful religion. But so long as we have this insistence that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic Terrorism, we will be unable to confront the theological issues that lie at the very root of the problem. Just the same, so long as we have a knee-jerk reaction to anything Islamic, we will continue to foster a climate of mutual hostility that will do nothing but prevent any sort of mutual understanding or attempts at peace. Christians would do well to remember the words of Christ on the cross; “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”
The Imperial Traditionalist 
Reblogged this on The War for Christendom and commented:
A perceptive post on modern Islam by my good friend the Imperial Traditionalist
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I disagree with what you say here. Wahhabism, while aberrating the concept of jihad, could be said to be inspired by early Islamic conquests of the Middle East and North Africa, which one could say come from the Quran itself. No major religion other than Islam has explicit verses in which Prophet Mohammed command followers to wage wars on unbelievers. Of course, there is context, but my point is that, when a teaching is written down into words like such, it makes it easy for man to take it out of context, twist it and turn into a commandment of war.
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I don’t necessarily disagree with what you are saying, but my point was primarily that terrorism and murder were not exactly common traditions in Islam up until the rise of Wahhabism. Terrorism and War are two different things entirely.
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I must clarify it here: I believe Islam can indeed be a religion of peace, but only under the right circumstances.
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Reblogged this on Theological Rejuvenation.
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Perhaps what we call terrorism today did not appear until the 18th century or later – frankly, I don’t know enough about the various dissenting sects and their interpretations of Islam to say either way, nor do I have any inclination to learn. I do know, however, from close study of history that Islam is violently antithetical to – and most certainly the enemy of – Christendom. I suppose we should expect nothing less from a “religion” whose central figure was a polygamous Arabian desert warlord. Go figure.
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