Is Islam a religion of peace?
This question — Is Islam a religion of peace? — has recently been hotly debated [1], and it’s an interesting question because the controversy that has surfaced around it exposes some really interesting things about the differences between the philosophies of Islam and the West. But before I get into details, I’d like to point out that there are some things that we should keep in mind that are crucial to understanding this issue. I’ll summarize them below.
The first crucial part of this question is what the term Islam is referring to. Is it referring to Islam as it was 1,400 years ago in the Quran and the Hadith and in history? Or is it referring to Islam as it exists today in Muslim's minds? Or is it referring to Islam as it exists today in civil law and politics in Islam-dominated countries and Islam-minority countries? Or is it referring to a combination of these?
The second crucial part of this question is what constitutes peace. In order to figure out whether or not an idea or action is peaceful, we need to have a standard by which we differentiate between pro-peace and anti-peace. And we have to agree on that standard, otherwise we will disagree about which ideas and actions are pro-peace versus which one’s are anti-peace.
The third crucial part of this question is the context in which it was asked, because knowing the context of the question allows us to have insight into the other two parts of the question. So let’s consider some context. Why did this question popup into the minds of so many people around the world? Well, it’s because so many people in the West are asking themselves why there are so many Muslims who want to commit suicide and kill infidels in the name of their religion, while there are also so many Muslims that aren’t willing to commit terrorism or sympathize with terrorists. And why are they asking this? It’s because these sets of Muslims, who I'll call extremists and moderates, both claim to be following the core principles of their religion, while each of them are claiming that the other group is misinterpreting the Quran.
So what are their positions? The extremists are claiming that Islam is a religion of war, and that they must defend their religion from anybody who they perceive is attacking it, by waging war on the attackers [2] — this is known as jihad. In contrast, the moderates are claiming that Islam is a religion of peace, and that each Muslim must defend his faith (from doubt) within his own heart by doing good deeds and not doing sins [3] — this too is also known as jihad.
Now the people asking this question — Is Islam a religion of peace? — are non-Muslims looking at Islam from the outside in. And they are watching the extremist Muslims and the moderate Muslims answering this question in rival ways, both claiming to have the truth on their side. So who is right?
Before I address that, I’d like to address the standard by which we should judge ideas and actions as pro-peace versus anti-peace.
The standard of judgement: pro-peace or anti-peace?
In order to shed some light on this issue, let’s consider some things we already know. One of the most important inventions of the Western world is the philosophical doctrine known as liberalism.
Liberalism holds that people are created equal, and thus should be treated equally under the law. It says that individuals should have rights that should be protected, by the state, from being infringed upon by other individuals and by the state itself. Two crucial concepts within liberalism are freedom and reason — without these, liberalism is impossible.
Freedom is about individuals being able to do whatever they want, short of infringing on the rights of other individuals. This allows each individual freedom to pursue his own happiness the way he sees fit.
Reason is about individuals making their own judgements, instead of just believing things on the authority of other people, like the head of the state or the head of a religion. Without reason, how could a person pursue his happiness? Believing things on authority, for example, about what is a good life, is not going to help him figure out what is best for him. Nobody knows my interests besides me, so if I were to make life decisions on the authority of other people, then I’d be making my life decisions without considering my own interests. That’s a recipe for disaster!
I should note that freedom and reason are interconnected, in the sense that without freedom, one cannot make his own choices (reason). And it goes the other direction too: Without reason, one would be believing things on the authority of other people, not making his own judgements, and so while he may have physical freedom, he is effectively mentally enslaved. [does this need more explanation?]
So what constitutes peace? If a person infringes on the freedom of another individual, then that’s anti-peace. Murder infringes on the victim’s freedom to live. Theft infringes on the victim’s freedom to do what he wants with his private property. This applies to nations too. If a nation initiates war on another nation, that infringes on that nation’s sovereignty. So peace is about individuals respecting the autonomy of other individuals and about nations respecting the autonomy of other nations.
One important thing I should clarify is that peace requires the use of physical force in self-defense from those who initiate force. As an example, if an armed intruder broke into your home running towards you with a knife, while your children are sleeping upstairs, it is your responsibility to defend yourself and your children, by meeting force with force. And if he succeeded at committing murder, then our government will put him in jail, which is a use of force against the aggressor in order to protect the rest of society from his evil. Analogously, if a nation initiates war with another nation, the aggressor nation’s force must be met with force. So self-defense is pro-peace, in the sense that it’s trying to restore peace after war has already ensued.
So an idea or action that is pro-peace is one that respects freedom and reason. And an idea or action that is anti-peace is one that doesn’t respect freedom and reason.
An interesting thing to note here is that this question — Is Islam a religion of peace? — arose in people’s minds with most people already having a pretty good understanding of the difference between pro-peace and anti-peace. Most people asking this question already know that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an act of war (anti-peace), not an act of self-defense (pro-peace).
Now that I’ve established a standard for differentiating pro-peace from anti-peace, I’ll discuss some common positions people take on the question — Is Islam a religion of peace?
A common position taken by left-leaning Westerners
One common position that Westerners take on this issue is that Islam is a religion like all other religions, and people should have the right to practice whatever religion they like as long as it doesn’t encroach on matters of the state — this is what is meant by ‘separation of church and state.’ And since they recognize religions as not in conflict with the laws of their state, they assume that this should hold true for Islam too, since it too is a religion. And since they see Muslims within their communities living out their lives peacefully, they think that the Islam these Muslims are adhering to must be peaceful. And so they conclude that Islam is a religion of peace. And when they are asked why there are so many terrorist Muslims, they blame it on the harsh conditions that those Muslims are living in within their countries. But this position has a few flaws.
One flaw is that many of the terrorist Muslims were born and raised in Europe where they have access to lots of welfare programs, so it doesn’t make sense to blame terrorism on harsh conditions of poor countries when many of those terrorist Muslims don’t live in those conditions. For the Muslims living in the West, the Islam that they are adhering to is producing (anti-peaceful) extremists who are committing martyrdom-suicide-bombings in their misguided attempt to get closer to Allah and go to heaven.
A second flaw in this position is that it falsely assumes that Islam is not in conflict with matters of the state, because it assumes that Islam is like the other religions Westerns are familiar with. Islam is different than those other religions because it has a political dimension, so it’s not only a religion — it’s also a political ideology. It instructs Muslims how to operate a society. It gives laws about what should and shouldn’t be allowed by the state. And it instructs Muslims how to respond to people who deviate from those laws. So this means that Islam is in conflict with matters of the state. In other words, Islam does conflict with the Western tradition of ‘separation of church and state’. Now, if Muslims abolished Islam’s political dimension, then this would solve it's problem of conflicting with the tradition of ‘separation of church and state’. In other words, if Islam reforms such that it no longer has a political component, then the new Islam will not have the flaw that the old Islam did.
A third flaw in this position is related to how it addresses the issue of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism tries to deal with the conflicts between people of different cultures living within the same nation. I think the issue arose from racism, and from our attempt to try to fix it. In response to this, some people think that in order to not be racist, one must judge all races, and cultures, as equal. But this is a mistake. Cultures are not equal. Cultures are sets of ideas, and ideas are not equal — for example, pro-peace ideas are better than anti-peace ideas. Races on the other hand, are equal, in the sense that all people, no matter what race, have the same uniquely human quality, which is universal intelligence, in other words, the faculty of reason. So in this sense, all individuals are born equal, because they have the same faculty of reason.[3] And all individuals (well after birth) are not equal, in the sense that some of them have better ideas, and act better, than compared to others — note that actions are consequences of ideas, so judging actions means judging ideas. So, if you judge a person on his ideas, in other words, by merit, then you are not being racist. In contrast, if you judge a person based on which race, or culture, or tribe, or religion he’s from, then you are not judging by merit, and instead you are being racist. So it doesn’t make sense to judge a person by his race, like it doesn't it make sense to judge a race. Races don’t have ideas, and it’s only the ideas that can be judged. Analogously, a person’s race doesn’t determine what ideas are in his mind. In contrast, judging a person by his ideas makes sense, and judging cultures, religions, and ideologies, which are all sets of ideas, make sense too. This means that judging all cultures and religions as equal is ridiculous. It’s moral agnosticism, and all it does is help pave the way for evil people to commit their anti-peaceful actions by pressuring pro-peace people to avoid judging anti-peaceful ideas and actions. So moral agnosticism is itself anti-peace.
On a related note, a person should not be judged by his past ideas and actions, and instead he should be judged by his current ideas and actions. As an example, it doesn’t make sense to judge me by a mistake I made 10 years ago if I’ve already corrected that mistake since then. Analogously, a set of ideas like a culture, a religion, or an ideology, should not be judged by it’s past ideas and the actions of it’s adherents who died long ago, and instead it should be judged by it's current ideas and actions. As an example, in the Bible it says that a women should be stoned to death if she is found to not be a virgin on the night of her first marriage (aka an adulterer), yet no Christians today administer the death penalty on adulterers — so Christianity has evolved and shouldn’t be judged by this idea that has already been abolished. So, just like individuals evolve over time, so do cultures, religions, and ideologies evolve over time.
A common position taken by almost all moderate Muslims
The position that almost all moderate Muslims take on this issue is that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the so-called aggressive parts of the Quran are being taken out of context, and misinterpreted, by extremist Muslims. When confronted with questions about the aggression against non-Muslims, they defend the Quran by saying that there is context that is being ignored — they say that it was in self-defense. But this is false. The founder of the religion initiated over 60 military campaigns against neighbor nations, every time as the aggressors, never in self-defense. Within the life time of the founder of the religion, the Islamic empire grew to a size comparable to the largest empires in history. Muslims were created by involuntary conversion, not by persuasion. These people are ignoring history.
When confronted with questions about the aggression on Muslim wives by their husbands, they defend it by saying that Islam improved the treatment of women as compared to before Islam, in the 7th century in the deserts of Arabia. The problem here is that the treatment of women hasn’t improve since then. The laws of Islam, i.e. Sharia law, are being applied in some countries even today, 1,400 years after the improvement of women’s treatment. So women in these nations are still being treated as second class citizens — they can’t vote, can’t drive, can’t initiate divorce, don’t get equal inheritance, don’t get equal custody rights, and a husband is still allowed to beat his wife if she doesn't submit to his will. Demanding submission under threat of violence is not peace. It is war. This is sanctioned by Islam. And in the nations where Islam’s political dimension is put into action, then these inequalities are also being sanctioned by the state. So it doesn’t make sense to say that Islam improved the treatment of women, when the very same Islam is also being used to stop improving of the treatment of women.
When confronted with the issue of reform, like the way Christianity reformed, most moderate Muslims say that they need to reform by going back to the core principles of Islam. This is interesting because to reform means to change from a worse position to a better position, and that’s what happened with the Christian reformation, but these Muslims are saying something sort of opposite of that. They are saying that they need to change back to what Islam was when it first started 1,400 years ago. The thing is that that’s not a positive change, i.e. evolution. Instead it’s a negative change, i.e. devolution. They are assuming that Islam at it’s beginning was better than Islam today, that it was greatest thing in the world. But this is ignoring history. And it’s also just made up stuff without any connection to reality.
One example of this is the claim that one of Islam’s core principles is education. It’s advocators claim that if people were better educated, for example women in Islam, then women would be fighting for their rights and things would be better. There are lots of flaws here. For one thing, the reasoning here is backwards. They want to blame women’s inequality on the fact that women aren’t educated enough to fight for their own rights, while ignoring the fact that Muslims are following Islamic laws that created these inequalities. For the second flaw, when asked why they believe education is a core principle of Islam, they say that the Quran starts out by commanding Muslims to read. But they are ignoring that Islam's main component is the requirement of submission of one’s will to the will of Allah. It’s such a huge deal that the name of the religion (Islam) means submission. My point here is that submission of one’s will is antithetical to the tradition of reason. Submission means to take things on authority instead of making one’s own judgements. So submission is mental enslavement. An important thing to note here is that most Muslims don’t do this submission thing, and that’s great. Most Muslims are living out their lives as moral beings, using their own judgement without having to rely on the authority of Muslim clerics or defunct holy books.
My position
The position I take on this is that the fact that this question is being asked by so many people around the world is a testament to the fact that there is a problem. Well what problem is that? It’s that Islam, as it exists today in the minds of Muslims around the world, is causing so much war and murder around the world.
In order for Islam to become a religion of peace, Muslims must admit that there is a problem within the religion that needs a solution. So the problem is that Islam is not yet a religion of peace, and the solution is to reform Islam such that it becomes a religion of peace.
So let's understand problem in more detail. Being a religion of peace means existing in such a state where it's adherents don't see themselves as adversaries of modern societies, and where they don’t see liberalism conflicting with their religion. In contrast, the Quran and Hadith say that Islam and the West are adversaries -- and will be until the "day of judgement” (which means forever) [y] -- and that it is moral for believers to initiate violence on the unbelievers, which is in conflict with liberalism. And today's Sharia law includes all the intolerance and hate that the Quran and Hadith do, including things like punishing apostates of Islam with beheadings [z], which again is in conflict with liberalism.
Now let's consider what it would mean for this problem to be solved. Imagine a future point in time where all Muslims see themselves as people, like non-Muslims -- where they don't divide up the world into categories of believers and unbelievers. Where all Muslims see no inherent conflict between themselves and the West and it's philosophy of liberalism — which includes the traditions of freedom, reason, individual rights, and equality under the law.
So, how do we solve this problem? Well, first of all, it's impossible to solve a problem that one denies even existing. So the people who say that Islam is a religion of peace are denying that a problem exists within Islam. And so it's impossible for them to solve it. And what’s worse is that by denying this, they pave the way for evil people to commit more evil, because they are pressuring good people to avoid judging the evil. And the more they deny the problem, the more power they give to the non-reformist Muslims who are trying to defend Islam from being criticized, from being reformed. So instead of being part of the solution, they are choosing to be part of the problem. What the moderates should be doing is standing up to the extremists by denouncing their anti-peaceful actions and their anti-peaceful hate speech, for example calling Jews inhuman, calling for death to all Jews, and calling for Israel to be pushed into the sea.
So by calling Islam a religion of peace, moderate Muslims are helping the extremists in their effort to defend Islam from criticism, against the West's effort to help Muslims reform Islam to become peaceful. Why would anything in Islam need to be reformed if there's nothing wrong it? First you have to declare that something is wrong, then you can begin making it right!
What’s wrong is that Islam, as it exists today in the minds of Muslims around the world, sanctions anti-liberal traditions. It sanctions submission, which is antithetical to reason. It sanctions initiating violence on dissenters, which is antithetical to freedom. It sanctions inequality under the law.
And Muslims are not the only ones responsible here. For Islam to reform from within, reformist Muslims must be able to have a voice, to have an audience, without being silenced by the non-reformists. And in order for them to be able to do that, we in the West must stand up for the good. We must stand up to the non-reformists by joining the reformists in their effort to reform Islam. If we do not stand up for the good, then who will? If we do not stand up for the good, then the evil will prevail. If we do not stand up for the good, then the good will be in danger of being wiped out.
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[1] Debate: Is Islam a religion of peace? Ayaan Hirsi Ali
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFvklPpGZtA[2] Wage war on them if they attack Islam
[3] _The Beginning of Infinity_, by David Deutsch.
[4] do good and don’t do sins
Poll
Topic: Is Islam a religion of peace? (read the essay first)