Does religion make Muslims more violent?

[shuntmaster]

The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.

Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.

The context of violent passages is more ambiguous than might be expected of a perfect book from a loving God, however this can work both ways. Most of today's Muslims exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book's call to arms according to their own moral preconceptions about justifiable violence. Apologists cater to their preferences with tenuous arguments that gloss over historical fact and generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology.

Unfortunately, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed. Muhammad's own martial legacy - and that of his companions - along with the remarkable stress on violence found in the Quran have produced a trail of blood and tears across world history.

 

[salarsikander]

Muslim countries have an average of 2.4 murders per annum per 100,000 people: statistics . PHOTO: AFP

Any discussion on terrorism, almost always circles back to the widespread belief that Muslims are more violent because of their religion, Vox reported.

Although these conversations may always circle back to the bigoted question of whether religion makes Muslims more violent, they lack data and evidence to attribute violent behavior to Muslims.

According to UC-Berkeley Professor M Steven Fish, people in Muslim majority countries actually tend to be significantly less violent, judging by murder rates.

Statistics show that Muslim countries have an average of 2.4 murders per annum per 100,000 people in stark contrast to 7.5 murders in non-Muslim countries.

The percentage of Muslims is an extraordinarily good predictor of a country’s murder rate, the professor found.

To provide some concrete evidence, Fish used his findings and re-run the numbers to exclude non-Muslim majority states -such as Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, South Africa and Venezuela-with extraordinarily high murder rates. Those countries with many Muslim inhabitants were still less prone to murders by a large margin.

If Islam was the key factor in the cause of religiously motivated terrorism then it could be expected that ordinary Muslims too would be more violent than ordinary non-Muslims. However, there are over a billion believing Muslims globally and if Islam was intrinsically prone to violence then the data would suggest that. The data however, is quite contrary.

Despite this study, it goes without saying that religiously motivated terrorism is indeed a real phenomenon and a global problem. Fish argued that such terrorism could be a reaction to the Western foreign policy.

The data provided by Fish should be an important reminder that just like other religions, Islam too prohibits violence. Although it is dependent on who is interpreting Islam, it can be said that Islam is not intrinsically violent.
Does religion make Muslims more violent? – The Express Tribune

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