Recently you considered the question of whether or not Muslim terrorists represent Islam. In light of the many incitements to anti-Semitism, genocide, rape, and slavery found throughout Islam's foundational texts -- Qur'an, ahadith, and sira -- and the centuries of obedience to those mandates, it is clear that though there may be moderate Muslims, Islam itself is not moderate.
Islam's great exegete Ibn Kathir explains in his authoritative tafsir that even "disbelief" is considered "waging war" against Allah, a crime punishable by dismemberment and crucifixion (Qur'an 5:33).
Of course, there are those who self-identify as Muslim who do not support the harming of non-Muslims, but the vast majority of the faithful -- even in the West -- support the goals of the jihadists, even if they are unwilling to engage in violence themselves.
All major schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shiite (nearly all of official Islam), uphold the commands to war against all who refuse the "invitation" to convert. In fact, Ahmadiyya Muslims -- who reject offensive warfare against non-Muslims -- are persecuted as apostates by their coreligionists, even in "modern" and "moderate" Islamic states like Indonesia.
This is because Islam's "Ideal Man" Muhammad -- its "beautiful pattern of conduct" for those who want to please Allah -- preached and practiced offensive warfare to make the world Islam. He commanded:
"Say to the Unbelievers, if (now) they desist (from Unbelief), their past would be forgiven them; but if they persist, the punishment of those before them is already (a matter of warning for them). And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone (in the whole of the world)" (Qur'an 8:38-39).Muhammad's command and example have inspired his followers to war against the non-Muslim world -- as knowledge, zeal, and resources have allowed -- for nearly one and one-half millennia.
This is why Islam conquered pagan Arabia. This is why it exploded (pun intended) out of Arabia after Muhammad's too-late demise and swept through the Holy Land, North Africa, western and eastern Europe, Persia, greater India, western China, and southeast Asia. This is why the Rome of the East, Constantinople, and the greatest church in Christendom, the Hagia Sofia, were conquered, desecrated, and Islamized.
This is why Maimonides observed that no one was as much a scourge to Jews as were Muslims (so much for the "Golden Age of Islam"). This is why Queen Isabella warred to complete the liberation of her nation from eight hundred years of Islamic rule (a feat accomplished very early in the same year she funded a little trip by an Italian navigator named Columbus. Not coincidentally, Islam's hatred of Christians is one reason she was willing to pay for the opening of a western ocean route to the rest of Asia.)
This is why the first Crusade was called in defense of eastern Christianity, under attack for centuries by the spiritual ancestors of ISIL, Al Qaeda, the rest of the Islamic alphabet.
(And from where do you think that at least nominally Christian rulers got the idea to use the force of government in matters of conscience? How might centuries of "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Bukhari Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57) and "kill the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5) have warped those languishing under Islamic oppression?)
This is why Vlad Dracula -- yes, Dracula ("Dracul" meaning "Dragon"; Vlad's father was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a group founded to defend Christianity from Islam) -- fought to repel the Ottoman Empire's invasion of the Balkans. This is why John Smith -- yes, Pocahontas' John Smith -- warred for Europe against Islam before arriving in the New World; his successes there earning him a family crest depicting the heads of the three Muslims he defeated in one-on-one combat.
This is why Thomas Jefferson and John Adams reported to Congress the Libyan ambassador's admission that the reason the Barbary States warred against nascent America was not because of imperialism, racism, or George W. Bush but because we were unbelievers who refused to submit to Muhammad and so all that we had and were belonged to Islam. This is why John Quincy Adams forcefully and eloquently contrasted Christianity and Islam as the difference between Heaven and hell. And this is why Winston Churchill observed that the world would never experience the end of slavery as long as anyone held Muhammad to be the prophet of a deity.
This is the reason for the Armenian Genocide. This is why it was not Hitler's pope but Hitler's mufti -- the grand mufti of Jerusalem -- who raised volunteers for a special Muslim SS division in the Balkans, advised Hitler on his handling of the Jews, and exhorted Nazis manning the concentration camps to do their "work" there diligently.
This is why 9/11, 7/7, and 3/11 were carried out by Muslims in Islam's name. This is why Christian schoolgirls are kidnapped, raped, enslaved, and beheaded in places as divergent as Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, and the UK. This is why modern Israel was attacked repeatedly by its Muslim neighbors as soon as it was founded and why it -- and Jews in general -- will never experience peace with the Islamic world.
No one can defeat an enemy they're afraid to name. The non-Muslim world needs the truth to be told about its ancient and existential enemy.
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