IS: "Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is the religion of fighting"

[Napoléon]

Islamic State (IS) has released an audio message it says is from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which if confirmed would be the first in months.
The message urges Muslims to emigrate to the "caliphate" it has proclaimed in areas of Syria and Iraq. A reference to the Yemen conflict means it is recent.

...

"Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is the religion of fighting. No-one should believe that the war that we are waging is the war of the Islamic State. It is the war of all Muslims, but the Islamic State is spearheading it. It is the war of Muslims against infidels."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-32744070


I found this BBC article on reddit.

The conversations on this topic people seem to have whenever it gets brought up are quite funny to me. People often mindlessly defend Islam, and indeed all 'moderate muslims' in the name of nothing but political correctness often times. They come out with things like "99 percent of muslims are moderate, IS doesn't represent them" (I got this exact example from the comments on reddit, I'll link below this paragraph). But, is that the truth? 99 percent of muslims are not moderate. Not anywhere near it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/commen...s_never_a/

In the same comment thread someone posted this, in response to the claim that 99% of muslims are 'moderate':

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wwjtd/2015/...-apostasy/

FAITH: Do 36% of Muslims support Sharia Law and/or death for apostasy?



This is not a handful of extremists.  This is a real and massive problem in the parts of the world where Islam is most ingrained.

Now, let's put this into perspective. I think most of us here would agree, that support for Sharia law, and death for apostasy, aren't 'moderate views'. When people go on like these barbaric viewpoints are in the minority in Islam, they may well be correct. But even if the 36% is questionable (and it is according to the above article), it still looks like a good estimate and the data is taken from Pew research. 312 million people (the 36% referred to) is not a small number. 312 million people who identify as muslims, do not hold moderate views.

That is a fucking frightening number of people, and just from the above data, it isn't even the full representation of muslims across the world. I'd like to point out, that with the above data the article author mentions that:

His sources all seem good, as does his assessment of Cenk Uygur’s objections to Harris, but with a caveat: the blog post at Believers vs. Non-believers and Shermer both say “36% of Muslims” when they should say “of Muslims in the Middle East and parts of Europe.”  The table only tackles those places.  There are Muslims in other countries that are likely far more moderate which would bring the global number down

For starters, the table addresses more than just the middle east and Europe, it has places such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, who all have significant muslim populations. Second, it's a completely baseless assertion that other countries (like the USA) would have 'more moderate muslims'. There's nothing at all to suggest this would be the case.


So...

When IS says Islam was never meant to be a religion of peace, when such a significant proportion of muslims (even if it is the 'minority') hold such barbaric ideals, it fucks me off to no end that people even bother to defend 'ordinary muslims'. People like to make out like Islam is this peace loving religion, and that only a very small number of muslims are violent, backward thinking morons. The simple truth is that's bullshit. A hell of a lot of muslims across the world are violent, backward thinking morons. According to the above more than a third.

People come out with the utter crap that is "most muslims are peaceful, Islam is a religion of peace", and they try to make out like it isn't representative when we see things like the Islamic State, or people being beheaded and stoned all across the middle east. Please direct these asshats to the above, and get them to tell you that the 312 million people who believe in backwards and violent practices aren't representative of their fucked up religion. Such a significant proportion of people, regardless of whether it's the majority or not, cannot be ignored, and fuck these people who try to downplay how much of a problem these views are for the rest of the 'civilised' world.