The tragic incident of September 11 in NY shocked the world. It is unthinkable how anyone could hate so much as to commit such heinous act and kill so many innocent people. The 9/11 however was neither the first nor the last of such acts of terrorism. More bombs were exploded from Bali to Madrid, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia, from Nigeria to Bangladesh and more human lives were claimed. Virtually there is not a day that some lives are not lost to this insane terrorism.

Obviously most Muslims are as much shaken as the rest of the world and yet they find themselves looked upon with suspicion and distrust by their neighbors and fellow citizens. They want to cry out and announce to the world that they are not terrorists, that those who perpetrate such despicable acts are murderers and are not Muslims. But, the reality is harsher than that. Muslims just seem to be unable to erase the stigma of "Islamic Terrorists" from their identity and this distrust is growing day by day.

Most Muslims believe that Islam would never support killing innocent people; that the Quran does not advocate killing; that this is all the work of a few misguided individuals and that the real Islam is not violent and Islam means peace and tolerance.

But is it true? Does Islam really preach peace, tolerance and non-violence? Those Muslims who kill in the name of Allah think differently. They believe that what they do is Jihad (holy war). They believe that killing the unbelievers is the duty of every Muslim. If they consume alcohol or eat pork they know that they are breaking the law and they do that with dirty conscience. However, those who murder people in the name of God do not have dirty conscience. They do not think they are breaking the law. They think this is what a true Muslim should do and they are so sure of what they are doing that they are willing to sacrifice their own lives to prove it. Those who blow up their own bodies to kill more innocent people do so because they think by killing they are pleasing Allah, that their own death is martyrdom and they will be rewarded in Paradise. They hope to be blessed by Allah, eat celestial food, drink pure wine and enjoy the company of numerous divine consorts.

Are they completely misguided? Where did they get this distorted idea? How did they come to believe that killing innocent people pleases God? Does Islam really preach violence? Does it call upon its believers to kill the non-believers? The majority of Muslims denounce those who commit acts of violence and call them fanatics and extremists. But are they really extremists or are they doing what the Quran tell them to do? What does the Quran really teach? Have we read the Quran? Do we know what it teaches? Let us go through some of them and take a closer look at what Allah says.

What Qur'an Teaches:

Quran tells Muslims to kill the disbelievers wherever they find them (2:191), murder them and treat them harshly (9:123), slay them (9:5), fight with them (8:65 ), strive against them with great endeavor (25:52), be stern with them because they belong to hell (66:9) strike off their heads; then after making a “wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives” for ransom (Q;47:4). This is just a token of what Quran says should be done to the unbelievers.

As for the Christians and the Jews, the order is to subdue them and impose on them a penalty tax and let them go not before humiliating them (9:29).

Quran is alien to freedom of belief and recognizes no other religion but Islam (3:85). It relegates those who disbelieve in Islam to hell (5:10), calls them najis (filthy, untouchable, impure) (9:28) and orders the Muslims to fight them until no other religion except Islam is left. (2:193) It encourages the Muslims to strive with might and main those who resist and fight back. According to the Quran they are mischief doers and the punishment such people is: “execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; 5:33

The Quran stresses that the disbelievers shall have a great punishment in the world hereafter” (5:34) and quite descriptively depicts a horrendous chastisement for them stating that there they will drink boiling water, (14:17) that they will be engulfed in smoke and flames like the wall and the roof of a tent and if they implore relief they will be granted water like melting brass, that will scald their faces, (18:29) and that "garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skin shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods” (22:19).

The Quran vehemently prohibits the Muslims to associate with their own brothers and fathers if they are non-believers (9:23), (3:28).

As for the women the book of Allah says that they are inferior to men and they must obey their husbands, otherwise their husbands are advised to “admonish them, refuse to share their beds, beat them” (Q;4:34). But the punishment does not end there, because after the uppity woman dies, she will go to hell (Q;66:10), says the prophet of Alah.

Quran emphasizes the superiority of men over women by confirming that men have an advantage over the women (Q;2:228). It not only denies the women's equal right to their inheritance (Q;4:11-12), it also regards them as imbeciles and decrees that their witness is not admissible in the court of law unless it is accompanied with the witness of a man and that two women’s witness is equal to one man’s witness (Q;2:282). This means that a woman who is raped cannot accuse her rapist unless she can produce a male witness. Muhammad allowed the Muslims to marry up to four wives (although he himself had a score of them) Some interpreters claim there is no such limitation in the Quran, and the verse 4:3, that says “Marry women of your choice, Two or three or four;” should be read as marry one, two, three, four, etc, and this verse does not put any limits to the number of wives a man can have.

Muhammad gave Muslim men the license to enjoy their "right-hand possessions" (women captured in wars) as many as they can capture or afford to buy (Q;4:3), even if they (the captive women) are already married to someone else (Q;4:24).

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of verses in the Quran that call for violence, hate and war. Some Muslims claim that the violent verses of the Quran should be read in their context. However, the fact is that violence IS the context of the Quran. There are so many violent verses that they leave no doubt about their intent. Would a real God incite us to kill other peoples?

There is no such thing as terrorist gene. But there is a terrorist mindset. That mindset finds its most fertile ground in the tenets of Islam. Denying it and presenting Islam as a religion of peace the lay public is suppression of the truth. The history of Islam between 7th and 14th century is riddled with violence, fratricide and wars of aggression, starting right from the death of the Prophet and during the so-called 'pure' or orthodox caliphate. Muhammad himself hoisted the standard of killing, looting, massacres and bloodshed. The conduct of the Prophet, as recorded in Islamic sources, is questionable especially from a modern perspective. Muhammad was a charismatic man but he had few virtues.

Muhammad set the tone of violence right after his arrival to Medina. He raided merchant caravans, invaded the Jewish settlements, broke treaties he had signed with them, looted, massacred with no regards to human rights, compassion or fairness. He banished some of them after confiscating their belongings, massacred others and took their wives and children as slaves. He raped women captured in these raids. This holy man of God even had intercourse with a 9 year old child.

These are not stories but records from authentic Islamic sources. It can be argued that these behaviors were not unknown or unusual for the conquerors and leaders of the mediaeval world but these are not the activities befitting of a peaceful saint and certainly not of someone who claimed to be the Mercy of God for all the creation.

Muhammad even ordered the assassination of his opponents and critics. Among them was a 120 year old man, Abu 'Afak whose only crime was to compose a lyric satirical of the Prophet. (Kitab al Tabaqat al Kabir, Volume 2, by Bin Sa'd, page 32) Then when a poetess, a mother of 5 small children, 'Asma' Bint Marwan, protested Muhammad ordered her to be assassinated too. (Sirat Rasul Allah (A. Guilaume's translation "The Life of Muhammad") page 675, 676).

The question that Muslims have to ask themselves is: isn't this blind belief in a man who lived 1400 years ago and whose conducts and teachings are questionable bringing the world to the brink of another war? The Muslims have sunk into poverty and lag behind the rest of the world. Isn't it because they follow a religion that is outdated, draconian and impractical? In this crucial moment of history, when a great catastrophe has befallen us and a much bigger one is lurking ahead, we owe it to ourselves to ask: what is the source of all these troubles affecting the world at the dawn of this new millennium.

Is it possible that the seed of this terror was planted 1400 years ago in the sand dunes of Arabia and now it has come to fruition? There are hundreds of thousand or may be millions of potential ready to kill and die terrorists virtually in every country of the world. The more we fight them and the more we kill them their number grow bigger. Each one of them will take out tens, hundreds or thousands of good people before they lay their own lives. Just make a quick calculation of the number of people they killed since the beginning of this century and how many of them we killed. It does not take a genius to see they are winning and we are losing while at the same time we are depleting our funds in finding them, prosecuting them or killing them.

Something is amiss. Somewhere we are gong wrong. Sooner of later we have to admit that we can’t win this war only militarily. We have to fight this war also ideologically. Only then we may be able to put a halt in the massive production and the recruitment of new terrorists. If we fail to see this reality today, tomorrow may be too late.

The terror has filled the air and the world is bracing itself for its doomsday. Should we not ask ourselves whether we too have contributed unwittingly, to this tragedy and whether we can stop this great disaster from happening?

Unfortunately the answer to the first question is yes. Yes, we have contributed to the rise of fundamentalism by merely acknowledging Islam is a religion. By simply accepting Islam, this cult of terror as a legitimate religion we allowed it to expand. The good and peaceful Muslims are even more responsible for promoting a religion of hate as a religion of God. By merely calling themselves Muslims, they followers of Muhammad have recognized him as a true messenger of God and his book as the words of God. Yet Muhammad was anything but a prophet and his book is anything but divine revelation. That book calls for killing; it is a prescription for hate and a manual for terrorism. When the ignorant masses read those hate laden verses, they act on them and the result is the 9/11, 3/11, Bali, human bombs in Israel, massacres in East Timor, bloodshed in Nigeria, bombing in Bangladesh, kidnappings and killings in Philippines, slavery and genocide in Sudan, honor Killings in Pakistan, torture in Iran, stoning and maiming in Afghanistan, violence in Algeria, terrorism in Palestine, murder, mutilation and beheading of innocent people, fear everywhere and misery and death in all Islamic countries. We are responsible because we endorsed Islam and hailed it as a religion.

If we are not terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, if we love peace, if we abhor these acts of terrorism then why are we supporting the Quran that preaches killing; that advocates holy war; that calls for murder of non-Muslims? It is not the “extremists” and the terrorists who have misunderstood Islam. They understand it very well. They do literally what Quran tells them to do. It is we who misunderstand Islam. We are the ones who are confused. We are the ones who wrongly assume that Islam is the religion of peace. Islam is not a religion of peace. In its so-called pure form it can very well be interpreted as a doctrine of hate. Terrorists are simply following the teachings of the Quran and others are keeping their head deep in the sand lest they see the truth.

We can stop this madness. We can avert the disaster that is hovering over our heads. But we have to fight this terrorism also ideologically. We have to denounce the doctrines that promote hate. We have to dump the claim of infallibility of a Book that incites violence and reject the questionable legacy of its founder.

Islam is not a religion of peace, of tolerance, of equality or of unity of humankind. As long as we keep this lie alive, terrorism keeps proliferating. We cannot blame those who follow the teachings of the Quran and at the same time uphold that book as a holy book.

Islam divides the world in two parts: Darul Harb (house of war) and Darul Islam (house of Islam). Darul Harb is the land of the infidels. Muslims are required to infiltrate those lands, proselytize and procreate until their number increase and then reclaim that land for Islam.

One method of conquering the Darul Harb is through marriages. Muslim men marry non-Muslim women to convert them. They often say, if we can’t conquer this country through Jihad, we will conquer it through marriage. Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslims unless the men convert to Islam before the marriage. This is because they believe women have less control over their husbands and there is a risk that she leave Islam and bring dishonor for everyone.