If Islamic doctrines are inherently violent, why isn’t every single Muslim in the world—that is, approximately 1.5 billion people—violent?
This question represents one of Islam’s most popular apologetics: because not all Muslims are violent, intolerant, or sponsor terrorism—a true statement—Islam itself must be innocent.
Let’s briefly consider this logic.
First, there are, in fact, many people who identify themselves as Muslims but who do not necessarily adhere to or support Islam’s more supremacist and intolerant doctrines. If you have lived in a Muslim majority nation, you would know this to be true.
The all-important question is, what do such Muslims represent? Are they following a legitimate, “moderate,” version of Islam—one more authentic than the terrorist variety? That’s what the media, politicians, and academics would have us believe.
The best way to answer this question is by analogy:
German Nazism is a widely condemned ideology, due to its (“Aryan/white”) supremacist element. But the fact is, many Germans who were members or supporters of the Nazi party were “good” people. They did not believe in persecuting Jews and other “non-Aryans,” and some even helped such “undesirables” escape, at no small risk to themselves.
Consider Oskar Schindler. An ethnic German and formal member of the Nazi party, he went to great lengths to save Jews from slaughter.
How do we reconcile his good deed with his bad creed?
Was Schindler practicing a legitimate, “moderate,” form of Nazism? Or is it more reasonable to say that he subscribed to some tenets of National Socialism, but when it came to killing fellow humans in the name of racial supremacy, his humanity rose above his allegiance to Nazism?… Keep reading