Islam a religion of peace.

Every religion has its dissidents, those who do not hold to the fundamentals of the faith. These people are readily labeled "cultural _____". We really should not judge a religion by its cultural following yet that is exactly what we are doing with Islam. We go to cultural Muslims to get sound bites and they will give firm testimony that Islam is a religion of peace.

Let us examine this "religion of peace". First challenge is to come up with more than two hot spots in the world that do not involve Muslims. (other than Taiwan and Korea: note that no actual fighting has been conducted in these "hot spots" for a couple of decades) Kashmir... Muslims, Bosnia... Muslims, Israel.... Muslims, Sudan.... Muslims, Iraq... Muslims, Acha before the Tsunami was an Islamic insurgency in Indonesia, Ivory Coast... Muslims, Balkins... Muslims, we could go on and on.

Then there is the discussion of religious persecution. 200,000 Christians killed in East Timor by Muslims, 60,000 killed in the Philippines, and 2.3 million Christians exterminated in Sudan in the past 10 years. Peaceful huh?

Even in moderate countries such as Jordan nearly 1,000 people are executed a year for converting to a foreign religion. If such a religion is so drenched in blood I find it hard to call it a religion of peace. The Koran does not read like a book about peace but one of war.

Now I am not advocating that we discourage cultural Muslims from practicing a peaceful version of Islam!! I would much rather cultural Islam to supplant violent Islam but let us realistically face the fact that wherever Islam is not tempered by worldliness it is violent. It tries to conquer new lands and forceably convert people to Islam and those who refuse will die.

Let us fight terrorism but lets not be so ignorant as to wonder why terrorists are all Muslims.