First of all the Prophet Muhammad did not make anyone "worship" him in fact he prohibited it in the most absolute of terms.

Second of all who drew first blood? Look into the history of the Battle of Badr - when the Makkan Pagans saw the Muslims they sent out the entire Army to fight against 313 people.

Third of all the people of Madina had invited the Prophet into Madina themselves and asked him to come bring order to the city. The Prophet made a pact that if anyone attacked the city they all would defend Madina together.

Fourth of all - the Makkans are actually the ones who raised a huge army and laid seige to Madina - supported by certain tribes in Madina which betrayed the Prophet and supported the Makkan Pagans and yet Madina was defended.

Fifth of all after all of this a peace treaty - the treat of Hudayba was signed with the Makkan Pagans and then was broken - after this and later on the Muslim army went into Makkah only to have no resistence and the city surrendered and the very leader of the Pagan armies (Abu Sufyan) becoming Muslim. Then the Prophet Muhammad gave a general amnesty of forgiveness to the people of the city.

Tyrannical? I think not. Especially when you see many other Prophets (earlier ones) such as Prophet Jacob (peace be upon him) went into and killed whole cities as is reccorded in the Old Testament.

In Islam war is either just or unjust - it is just when it acts as lifting the barriers to the good and it is unjust when it acts upon a barrier to the good itself. To see a discussion concerning this please refer to Ibn Tuffah's books of Maliki fiqh for just one example.

Yes, there were wars but the rules of combat were: do not kill women, nor children, nor noncombatants, nor wage workers, nor religious authorities, nor cut down trees. In Islam it is not even permitted to use a bomb if there is a likelihood that it will kill civilians (Mudaf`i al-Mazlum - Shafi`i fiqh for reference).

Compare this to some of the contemporary wars - Agent Orange being used in Vietnam (which is against Islamic law), depleted Uranium in the first Gulf War, the massacre of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust by Hitler, etc.

Yes, some Muslims go outside the bounds of Islamic law and misinterpret things based upon their own whims and desires to justify terrorism - yet the traditional books of jurisprudence are clear on this whether it is Imam Nawawi's Maqasid or Imam Dardir's Aqrab al-Masalik or Ibn Qudama's Mughni - three of the most major books of jurisrudence in Islamic history.

People judge Islam based upon their "knowledge" of Islamic jurisprudence - yet for one to even be qualified in such in Islam he must memorize the Qur'an, at least 15,000 sayings of the Prophet Muhammad as well as master Usool al-Fiqh (the roots of jurisprudence) and Fiqh (jurisprudence).

People open up books and take out things out of context not even in it's original language and judge a whole people. It would not make sense for me as a Muslim top open up the books and find a classical theory such as St. Augustine's cognite intrare (“lead them in”—i.e. “force them to convert”) which believed in forced violence to make people convert to Christianity at all costs and then henceforth assume this of all Christianity.

Two-thirds of Europe's Christian population was killed due to the violence which came of the period of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and as writer Vincezno Olivetti says in a recent article:

Then there were (among many others wars, pogroms, revolutions and genocides) the Napoleonic Wars ( 1792-1815 ); the African slave trade that claimed the lives of 10 million; and the Colonial Conquests. Estimates for the number of Native Americans slaughtered by the Europeans in North, Central and South America run as high as 20 million within three generations.

Yet I do not judge Christianity based upon those actions. Your saying "Islam must be judged by what people are doing now and what the religion actually says" is like saying Christianity can be judged by the serial rapists, and mass murderers in this country.

If your response to this is "but you see they are a vast minority of our people" - well they are also a vast minority of our people. As the aforementioned writer also says:

He argues that terrorists truly represent Islam, writing: “If they say they do it in the name of Islam, we must believe them. Is it not the height of illiberalism and arrogance to deny them the right to define themselves?” The remainder of the essay, however, is an extensive effort to deny other Muslims the right to define themselves by rejecting extremist interpretations of Islam. In fact, less than 5 % of Muslims could be classified as fundamentalist in outlook, and of that 5 %, less than 0.01 % have shown any tendency toward enacting terrorism or “religious violence.” It is thus “the height of illiberalism” to define as terrorists over 1.3 billion Muslims who have nothing to do with “religious violence” because of the misdeeds of a fringe minority of 0.005 %. At most, one in every 200,000 Muslims can be accused of terrorism. That is to say there are a maximum of about 65,000 terrorists worldwide—roughly the same figure as the number of murderers on the loose in the U.S. alone, with over 20,000 homicides a year and a population of only 300 million.

If your response is that we are not condemning anything - maybe you just aren't paying attention. Take a look at the Islamic Supreme Council of America's website which has a whole section warning on Islamic extremism: www.islamicsupremecouncil.org

To quote the Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani - the chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America who warned about terrorism to the State Department as early as 1999:

St a forum sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Shaykh Hisham spoke of a "threat that will grow" if Americans do not "quickly stop the kind of extremist ideology that is filtering in."

He also has said:

The responsibility is on the American Muslim community to reject extremism and to condemn any act of violence. We must keep to a moderate line, as Prophet Muhammad said, "We are a moderate nation."

Over 100 Islamic scholars from all Islamic groups signed a document recently condemning the violence of the recent cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) where is the coverage of this in the media?

Shaykh Muhammad `Afifi a greatly respected jurist wrote a 50+ edict refuting the claims of extremist terrorist ideologues and dismantling the argument of Muslim terrorism. If you have the time to read it you can find it here:

http://mac.abc.se/home/onesr/d/dcmm_e.pdf

Where was the discussion of this on the news?

al-Azhar al-Sharif - the greatest Muslim University in the entire world was the first organization in the entire planet to condemn the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They condemned these attacks before ANY other institution yet where is the recognitition of this in the media?

Terrorism was condemned by Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of the Al-Azhar mosque of Cairo - which is seen as the highest authority in Sunni Islam - said groups which carried out suicide bombings were the enemies of Islam.

Even in the scholars of Saudi Arabia which have been plauged by the surge of the extremist Wahhabi sect of Islam has said:

"Hijacking Planes, terrorizing innocent people and shedding blood constitute a form of injustice that can not be tolerated by Islam, which views them as gross crimes and sinful acts." Shaykh Abdul Aziz al-Ashaikh, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and Chairman of the Senior Ulama, on September 15th, 2001

There are more and more examples, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf responded to this question on 60 Minutes with Ed Bradley after the 9/11 terror attacks.

Ed Bradley: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the responsibility... Does not Islam, does not Allah require that Muslims police their own religion and rid themselves of extremists? Hamza Yusuf: Yes, absolutely. It's an obligation for Muslims to root them out. And I think it is a jihad now for the Muslims in the Muslim country to rid themselves of this element. CBS's 60 Minutes, September 30, 2001

T.J. Winter - Islamic convert and scholar in Cambridge University in England has written a wonderful peice on the whole matter clarifying the difference between the extremist disfigurements of Islam and the true pristine traditionalist Islam

Please read this before replying to anything:

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/moonlight.htm

It's called: Bombing Without Moolight: The Origins of Suicidal Terrorism

I think you should also read the words of Shaykh Nuh Keller in his great article "Making the World Safe for Terrorism" which is availble here:

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/terrorism.htm

We reject absolutely any form of terrorism, from whichever state, or group of desperate men, it may emanate.

Thanks

Omar

Here, I'll do it for him:

Oh, but they were oppressed. Remember the Inquisition? NO and neither do you. That was centuries ago. Get over it. My family was kicked out of Scottland (this was before the English simply started to murder people and instead sent them to America -- North Carolina especially). But am I still mad at England? No. So why are you still bringing up something that happened that long ago and has absolutely no relevance to anything today? Because you are afraid that you might be proven wrong and you can always fall back on your cop out answer.

Yet Sunni-Sufis do not have the money to publish all of this so our voice is unheard often. Please see the writings of the great poet Rumi, or the poet Ibn `Arabi, and other major great Sunni-Sufi scholars for more information.

Whether you like to believe it or not - Muslim terrorists harm Islam and Muslims just as much as they harm Chrisitans and Jews. Who blew up that mosque two weeks ago which killed hundreds of Muslims - at the grave of the gransons of the Prophet Muhammad? Yes, Muslim terrorists most likely, killing Muslims. In my own country of Syria we had our consulate blown up - who did this? Muslims! Who died? Muslims!

The Wahhabi-Saudi machine of petro-dollars is producing an influx of this hate literature which is fueling into U.S. mosques. If you want proof of this a report was done last year and you can search on the internet. I would like nothing more than for the U.S. Government to pressure Saudi Arabia to quit printing this junk which is filled in almost every mosque. As Shaykh Hisham Kabbani said 80% of U.S. mosques. This is not Islam it's WAHHABISM ISLAM which some Muslims even excommunicated and called infidels.

When the Wahhabis first made it on the seen, as Imam Abu Zahra reported, thousands of Muslims were massacred - this was in 1700s! They said blood was all over the streets - this was before the Wahhabi violence pushed over into fighting non-Muslims.

There is a good book by a Jewish neo-Conversative (yes I don't discriminate by race and political affiliation) called "The Two Faces of Islam" - while it does have some errors in speaking of some things it is a good generally accurate book at showing the face of the majority of Muslims as compared to Wahhabi idiocy and terror.

You can buy the book here

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00069SR9Q/sr=8-2/qid=1142744532/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-1438577-3087869?%5Fencoding=UTF8

So if they are harming Muslims as much as they are harming other religions, why do states like Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, and the list goes on, allow Muslims to commit genocide? It's great that you want to speak out against terrorist, but where are those that matter? Where are the numbers? As the fastest growing religion, why is your religion the ones who are most quite about it? When the masses and heads of state (aka, the people who matter) actually speak out against your "radicals," then maybe I'll recant my statement of Islam is full of crazy terrorist.

To Reality: I agree we need to speak out more. Thats why I write articles and thats why I continually stress and repeatedly condemn terrorism with people I meet on a day to day basis. Yes more needs to do be done and yes we have the responsibility to do it.

This is a good little excerpt from an article I was recently reading:

http://www.islamicamagazine.com/content/view/167/59/

Something’s been getting fairly annoying lately. The Terrorism Conversation. Makes me want to give up. As a Muslim, people constantly engage me in either an accusatory or inquisitive manner—or worse, both. Here’s a typical conversation all too familiar to countless Muslims living in the West: BOB: But you have to admit, you Moslems are pretty prone to violence. ABDUL: No, no. You don’t understand. Muslims are peaceful people. Of the billion and a half Muslims worldwide, only a small percentage are hell-bent on using violence. BOB:Yeah, but they kill innocent people. And they call themselves “Moslems.” They carry out their aggression in the name of “Islam.” How could you not feel some responsibility? ABDUL:Why should I feel responsible for the crimes of some whackos just because they claim the same faith as me? They’ve twisted the teachings of Islam. They’ve sold out the vision and spirit of a great religion—that’s not my fault! BOB:Well, you and your leaders should at least condemn the violence; condemn the aggression; condemn the terrorism. ABDUL: What do you think we’ve all been doing—especially since 9/11? Every major Muslim organization, every big Muslim leader and scholar … heck, even every single Muslim country on earth has done nothing but condemn terrorism! Yet you continue to blame ISLAM and ALL Muslims for the actions of a radical fringe element. That’s just not fair. BOB: Really? Well, why haven’t I ever heard of all these condemnations? ABDUL: Gee, that’s a good question … And so on. But recently I overheard a very interesting conversation along similar lines. It felt like quasi-déjà vu; very familiar, but not quite right. Two guys were talking in the row behind me on an airplane (of all places): ABDUL: But you have to admit, you Americans are pretty prone to violence. BOB: No, no. You don’t understand. Americans are a peace-loving people. Of the nearly 300 million people in my country, only a small percentage is hellbent on using violence. ABDUL: Yeah, but that small percentage is running your government. They invade countries without the right to do so, and they end up killing innocent people. They’re American leaders, and they carry out their aggression in the name of “America” and “Freedom and Democracy”— how could you not feel some responsibility? BOB: Why should I feel responsible for the crimes of my government? I didn’t vote for Bush. In fact, the majority of American voters didn’t vote for Bush in 2000, and in 2004 nearly half of them didn’t support him—and that’s with a pathetic voter turnout anyway! These warmongers have twisted the meaning of Freedom and Democracy; they’ve sold out the vision and spirit of a great nation—that’s not my fault! ABDUL: Well you and like-minded Americans should at least condemn the violence, condemn the aggression, condemn the ridiculous, counterproductive “War on Terror.” BOB: Well, I can assure you that there a lot of Americans who feel that way. And they do speak out against the criminal and imperialistic actions of our government. They are grassroots activists, and intellectuals, and professors, and journalists, and business leaders, and important public figures and celebrities. They condemn openly and forcefully what’s wrong about American policies at home and abroad. Yet you continue to blame AMERICA and ALL Americans for the actions of a radical fringe element. That’s just not fair. ABDUL: Really? Well, why don’t we ever hear these alternative voices condemning misguided American policies? BOB: Gee, that’s a really good question … Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Next time, perhaps I should politely interrupt Abdul and Bob: ME: Uh, excuse me, gentlemen. If I may, I’d like to suggest two things. First, you might want to stop watching FOX News and Al-Jazeera. Secondly, you’re both complaining about the same thing—so how about if you stop arguing and instead try to find a way to constructively work together? Both of them register blank stares. BOB (BOB & ABDUL): : I don’t even have cable/satellite. ME: Oh, I see.

As for America: no where near the same numbers. However, much more in America are protesting the administration than Muslims are protesting terrorism. And speaking of, the "administration" isnt blowing up shopping malls, ethnically cleansing countries, cutting off heads, shooting gays, cutting off hands for stealing, (shall I go on or do you get the point?). Look, I understand the back and forth of it, but when such a small portion of your community speaks out compared to such a large percentage that speaks out here, there is really no comparison.

We don't have magic bullets; those are only for presidential assassinations. No, and that is why we put our troops in harms way to cut down on civilian casualties. We send them door to door when all we really need to do is carpet bomb the entire region. Believe, we have the fire power to do it.

We have humane means like the gas chamber, the electric chair, the firing squad, and--even some places today--the hangman's noose. If you murder someone from my family, you'll be lucky if you get the electric chair. The gas chamber and lethal injection is for pussies. If you murder someone, then expect to die (aka, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime). Is the death penalty anything new? No. So don't be surprised when you are sentenced to die after being convicted of a qualifying offense. As for firing squad, that was last used in Utah by a person who was anti-death penalty. He tried to use it to show how inhumane it was, but bottom line is he chose to be shot at. Even more so, he was guilty and deserved to die. As for hanging, it is still on the books in some places, but never used. Military tribunals still offer that as a recourse for treason I believe. But you know what? If you commit treason, I'd hang you myself.

So my backyard may not be squeeky clean, but it aint the shithole the Middle East, Northern Africa, (and pretty much most of Central and East Africa too), Indochina, and Indonesia is.