Assalamu alaykum everyone, here are some facts about Islam a lot of people says that Islam is a violent religion and Muslims identified with terrorism. Before we jump into the conclusion let us know what is true.
Here are the facts about this:
Within every religion, there exists a spectrum of attitudes and behavior and extremism is not unique to one particular belief system. There are people who sincerely view themselves as Muslims who have committed horrible acts in the name of Islam. These people, and their interpretation of Islam, is rightly called “extremist;” they are a minority within Islam and the vast majority of Muslims reject their violence and consider their interpretation a distortion of the Muslim faith. Extremism is not unique to Islam.
According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study collected in 11 countries with significant Muslim populations, people overwhelmingly expressed negative views of ISIS. It is important to keep in mind that Islam, like other Abrahamic religions, includes a large pool of opinions and different ways to understand the traditional holy text that was written in a different era. Terrorists use radical interpretations of Islam, which take a small number of texts that were meant to regulate warfare in the early days of Islam. Terrorists then apply these interpretations to contemporary times.
There is also a perception—even among many Muslims—that Muslim groups and leaders do not sufficiently denounce acts of terrorism. A 2011 Pew survey found that about half of all U.S. Muslims said their own religious leaders have not done enough to speak out against terrorism and extremists. However, it is useful to note that there are many Muslim heads of state, politicians, organizational leaders and individuals who regularly condemn these acts. For example, after the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt led condemnations of the attacks. A coalition of leading national and local American Muslim groups also held a press conference to condemn the attacks. Further, thousands of Muslim clerics worldwide passed a “fatwa” (i.e. Islamic legal opinion) against terrorist organizations such as ISIS, the Taliban and al-Qaeda and requested that these terrorist groups not be branded as “Muslim organizations.”
Muslims are also subject to increased incidents of hate crimes. In 2014, there was an overall decrease in hate crimes in the United States, but the number of hate crimes targeting Muslims grew from 135 in 2013 to 154 in 2014. And this is most likely an underrepresentation of the number of Muslims targeted because the numbers reflect only those crimes reported to police.
It is important to remember that terrorist attacks in the United States have been committed by extremists who have adhered to a wide range of ideological beliefs including the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacy, anti-government, Islamic extremism and others. No one ideology is responsible for terrorism in the United States.