In a world where fear is used as a political weapon and terrorists run rampant, people need to have a place to vent their anger. Now, in the wake of Al Qaeda, a new force, an extremist Islamic caliphate that calls itself ISIS has appeared on the international scene. These groups have made it very easy for everyone else to blame the religion of Islam for all of the horrible things that have happened.
Still, those organizations have no connection to a truly devout Muslim. Islam is a religion of peace. The Holy Book of Islam says that murder is strictly forbidden and that the killing of innocent civilians is even worse than murder. Qur’an 6:151 states, “do not kill a soul that God has made sacrosanct.”’ 5:53 says, “… whoso kills a soul, unless it be for murder or for wreaking corruption in the land, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind.”
Extremist Muslims aren’t really even Muslims at all. They don’t follow the Qur’an and many of the victims of their attacks are Muslims praying at mosques. These people are really just claiming that they are Muslims so that they can associate themselves with a large body of people. This is the way that ISIS drafts followers, by picking up those who are being treated unfairly.
Even if we consider that every single terrorist attack since 1970 was carried out by a different member of the Muslim population, they would still only make up 0.00009% of the Muslims in the world. That would be 140,000 terrorists out of the 1.6 billion followers of Islam. But according to the Huffington Post, “94% of terrorist attacks carried out in the United States from 1980 to 2005 have been by non-Muslims.”
In Europe, less than 2% of all terrorist attacks were carried out by these so-called Muslims. Many American Muslims have written articles about the injustice done to the rest of the Muslim population due to the actions of one. Why are these people doing such horrible things? And why is an entire religion of peace and brotherhood blamed for such terrible incidents? These are the questions that the world faces today.
All over the world, in every religion, there are people who do terrible things. I’m sure that all countries in the world have had tragic things happen on their soil but that still doesn’t give people the right to persecute a peaceful religion. Muslims have the same rights as all other religious groups. Every religion has had some extremists do something terrible. Take for example, the Crusades of Christianity and extremist Buddhists monks. In the Crusades, the Pope decided that Christians should conquer Muslim territory so that they could gain control of Jerusalem. This caused a lot of death and anguish for families living near the path of destruction caused by the Crusaders’ advance. Christianity has always been well-respected and its reputation was not damaged by these events.
In conclusion, it is clear that not all Muslims are terrorists. People who truly follow Islam are against terrorism. They would never commit atrocities like the ones that have been happening in the world around us. We should all treat Muslims fairly and see them not as terrorists, but as normal people just like us.