Are terrorists actually muslims?

I was watching threads about Asia Minor here and on the interent overall and thinking about this. I cant believe that Muhammed would actually lead his people this way. All things today that happens in Islam seems to be too illogical and dont make sense. I can understand that there is religion which says if you kill a bad person (like a really bad person) you will end up in the heaven or that you will marry someone you dont like, but still you will have a decent life with him. But I dont really get how can Islam, which was in medieval constantly attacked by europeans and the pope and never strike back, can be such stupid religion today. I am suprised they even dare to call some actions in the name of Allah. Its really like medieval christianity.

In the past, Jihad was mostly defensive stance against other religions. Not its like a modern crusade.

Sorry, what? Did the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates just not exist? Were the people who colonized India for seven hundred years before the British showed up not Muslims?

@saren: And that contends with ten crusades led against Muslims? Not to mention that british managed to do more damage in few years than Muslims in these 700 years.

@penderor: Remember how islam begins?
Muhammad was kinda exiled from Mekka (or secretly slipped out of Mekka and moved his followers to Medina after assiasnation plot). He united the tribes and then conquered Mekka. Then he and his followers conquered other lands. A lot of lands.
That for example is empire of Abassids. Remeber why Charles Martel fought against muslims in France in Battle of Poitiers? Because they invaded France! Before that arabs already conquered land of today Spain, that's why later wars for Spain are called Reconquest.
So put your white guilt where sun is not shining and learn real history.

I always wondered what the Middle East would be like without Islam. Would all those other cool religions still exist?

@penderor: and that's a caliphate of Umayyads.

Expansion of the caliphate under the Umayyads:
Expansion under Muhammad, 622–632 (Brown)
Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphate, 632–661
Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750 (Yellow)

@rubear: put a color legend on that map though.

Those ten crusades coincided with over a thousand years of Muslim military expansion throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, and half the reason they even happened was because of that expansion. The only people who have a right to complain about the Crusades would be Orthodox Christians who were betrayed by Roman Catholics, which was the primary reason the Ottoman Muslims sacked Constantinople and replaced the Byzantine Empire with their own; this same regime eventually went on to massacre a few million Armenian Christians and Jews decades before the Holocaust.

Muslims were slaughtered in great numbers by Christians, and Christians were slaughtered in great numbers by Muslims. That was how the world worked back then. But pretending the Muslims were all just innocent victims who never pillaged and looted as much as any other civilization of the time is just apologist nonsense.

@saren: and that's, by the way, is map of Ottoman Empire during it's expantion.

Horse manure --- Aurangzeb alone did more damage in his life than the British managed in 300 years. Setting aside the demolitions and massacres of Hindu and Sikh communities, he did his best to stamp out Sufi Islam in India and replace it with a radical Sunni interpretation that is responsible for the communal conflict and casualties throughout India and Kashmir today.

Depending on what country you live in, you're more likely to be attacked by a Right-Winger than a Muslim extremist.

The title is flawed in my opinion. As far as Muslims are concerned, most Muslim extremists who were raised in the West are losers who couldn't cut it at home and who seek out glory through what they interpret as "conquest."

The people who participate in terrorism who are native to the countries in the Middle East are people with limited prospects and are promised that in death the organization will take care of their families.

So, no, they're not really Muslim. Hell, 72 virgins aren't even in the Quran. Just goes to show how much they perverted an already flawed religion.

You know who was a terrorist.... Luke Skywalker. Now was he a Muslim,who knows but there hidden text in the Quran stating the force is another name for the great Allah

This has been proven wrong several times; throughout Islamic states, the people most likely to sympathize and join extremist causes belong to the middle class and have at least a primary school education, and the people who rise to leadership are usually quite well-off and powerful; see bin Laden and Zawahiri. The poor tend to have more pressing existential concerns.

@saren: Crusade had nothing to do with Muslim conquest. Europe just wanted the trade routes to Asia the Muslims controlled.

There isn't one reason for any of these things. The reconquista was a Christian movement against Muslim annexation of Spanish lands for over 300 years in Iberia and nearly 800 years in Andalusia. The Byzantines were appealing to the Pope for military aid against aggressive Seljuq campaigns for decades before Urban finally acquiesced and launched the first Crusade. Again, pretending the Muslims were minding their own business before they were attacked by greedy Europeans is just apologist nonsense.

@saren: Same holds true: low prospects forces them to extremism because they're looking to make a name for themselves when you speak of "middle-class" Muslims.

I seriously doubt that the majority of ISIS and Al Queada are "middle-class" in their country.

Well, did Jesus say that he hated gays? or that people shouldn't be allowed to wear condoms? The philosophy of the prophet is long lost, only the power structures and the tools of oppression remains.

Russian guy explained you your misconception about the peacefulness of muslim civilisations, Balkan was under constant attacks from muslims for centuries.

Those terrorists which are muslims, really are muslims. But that's not the real problem of Islam. The real problem is that those terrorists which are muslims find motivation and justification for their actions in the holy writings of Islam.

If a muslim robs a licker store or steals a bacon, this clearly has nothing to do with Islam, but when a Muslim kills someone who attacks or mocks or criticizes Islam, when a muslim claims he did this in the name of Islam and when a Muslim quotes Quran to justify his actions, that's clearly the problem of Islam.

If I made a book of morals, and gained billions of followers, and among those billions, millions interpreted certain doctrines written in my book in a way that was demonstrably detrimental to the society, It would be my responsibility to either remove those doctrines from my book, or to rewrite them and properly explain them in the book, so that they can't be wrongly interpreted anymore.

The problem with islam is that the supposed Author of the words in Quran is Allah, and how can he make any changes if he doesn't exist? Also if he's perfect it is impossible that everything he said wasn't already perfect and perfectly explained. This is the thing that makes it almost impossible for religions to improve themselves and which makes them stuck into the past, and this is the reason why religions are dragging down the humanity.

Not true at all, research has shown that the link between low prospects and extremism is extremely weak, which is why wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have produced a disproportionately large number of terrorists, all predominantly from the middle class and upper class. There is more of a link between civil liberties and extremism.

Close to 2000 British citizens flew to fight for ISIS, and according to the British government very few of them come from anything that could be called an impoverished background. "Jihadi John" had a British university education and a good job, as did the people who hacked Lee Rigby to death on the streets, and the underwear bomber. Poor people are not useful to terrorist groups. Tunisia produces the largest number of foreign fighters for ISIS, and they tend to be students in college studying subjects like engineering and finance. Only 10% of Hamas consists of poor people, in a state where 40% of the population is poor, and over 60% of Hamas consists of people who had jobs and education before they decided to take up the cause. It's not about money. It's ideology.

@saren: I never said they were "minding their own business," I said Crusades were set out to reclaim land for trading purposes.

And I should have said that was a ridiculously simplistic answer, because the Seljuqs were only one of several forces attacking Christians in Europe and the Middle East, and the rebranding of the Pax Dei into an emblem of war was to bring those Christians overseas under the protection of the Church. There may very well have been other, more opportunistic reasons, but they weren't the only reasons.

The real problem is not whether Allah exists or not but the people who are reading and interpreting it. Even if Allah does exist, those words were written by men, which is even by Muslim definition is imperfect.

Words are words; they represent ideas and references to objects. I am a non-Muslim raised in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation with 95% Muslim majority and most are quite moderate. Unlike in Iran or Saudi, most shops are allowed to open during Ramadan and no one is going to throw you rocks for it or amputate your hand for theft (except maybe the Special Administrative Region of Aceh which is allowed to use Sharia Law, being a hotbed of Radical Islam today and since before the Dutch colonised it 300 years ago). A lot of Muslims I've talked to, although they might not tell you, commented on how funny an Arab woman in a niqab (the veil that makes you look like a ninja) looks like. A Muslim neighbour even invited my family to dine with them during Ramadan.

Now, what I think needs to change is education and habits. Islam never underwent a reform on the scale of the Protestant Reformation which allowed the Roman Catholic Church to draw clear lines in their teachings and practice. A lot of Muslims in my country and around the world may not really be reading and finding a message within the Quran, but simply adhering to what their imams told them. This seems to be habit they carry since the Middle Ages when illiteracy rates were as high as 90-99% of the world population. Sure, some of them maybe well-versed in reading Arabic text, but they're just reading the Quran and not actually studying it. This is a loophole easily exploited by Muslim theologians with political interest: they just tell other Muslims that Allah wants them to destroy New York and restart the Holocaust, and the rest will follow suit.

If imams and Ayatollahs can start a good habit of teaching others how to read and find meaning in their holy texts, we could slowly but steadily wipe out potential radicalism.

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what are you on about? are you trying to say that some muslims are terrorists? or that all terrorists are muslim or have some affiliation to it? because the latter is so wrong it's unbelievable

Well...if a terrorist is muslim then he is muslim. If he is not then he is not.

@saren: Out the back, let's start with the fact that Osama Bin Laden was an outcast in his own family from birth. Being born to a non-Saudi mother was something that limited him and his prospects.

Secondly, Jihadi John did not have wealth. Jihadi John grew up poor as dirt and lived in Government issued housing. He was intelligent and became an IT, but, from what I've read, he felt persecuted and discriminated against. He went seeking glory in a place where he would exalted.

I don't know where you read about the British butchers, but I've never heard of their educational status. Neither of the two men were born into Muslim families though, they were both mentally challenged men hiding behind Islam as a way to comit atrocity. Adebowale had been in trouble with the law for drug offences and Adebolajo for violent crime (one of which gave him brain damage). They were losers.

Your 10% of Hamas being poor number is hard to corroborate, but, even if it were true, Hamas is much more than a militant group: Hamas also has a political wing and is the political representatives of the people of Gaza which could be why non-poor people also join. The Gaza Strip is hardly a place where economic activity is booming; people join what they have. It's like African Americans and gangs or European immigrants and their respective Mafias: low prospects/expectations turn poor people to extremism. The Palestinains don't elect Hamas because they're Muslims who want war, they elect Hamas because they think Hamas fights for them and they foolishly underestimate the might of Israel.

Finally, I stand by what I said about poverty, but I will accept that there is a strand of Islam where extremists flock, but it only appeals to losers.

it can be anyone

@saren: Yes, the Seljuqs conquest lead in part to the start of the Crusades, but you make it seem as if it were a sense of pride in keeping Europe "European" that lead to the Crusades.

@rubear: 30,000,0000 of Aztecs and 20,000,000 of Incas = slaughtered in name of God and gold.

Now ehm, dear sir, can you show me how many humans killed Caliphates and Muhammed because someone said he wants to believe in their own god?

Or have you ever heard of Charlemagne?

@just_banter:Learn english or at least meaning of question mark. I asked if those people who attack Europe and USA are real muslims, because I dont remember Allah allowing killing people for not believing in him.

@mortein: I doubt that in Koran is said that you are allowed to kill someone because he dont believe in Allah.

@penderor: you shouldn't comment on people's grammar especially considering yours is far from perfect :)

And why do you think muslims not part of this condemn them for what they are doing? of course they're not 'real' muslims

Depends what you count as a "Muslim".

most of them yeah, they are just jealous.

Osama bin Laden's personal wealth before 9/11 was estimated at $300 million, and that was just the stuff the authorities could trace. He might have had limited prospects relative to the rest of his family, he might have been an outcast within his family, but he was outrageously wealthy compared to 99% of the world and wanted for nothing. His mommy issues didn't make him a terrorist, Salafism did.

Jihadi John lived in government housing because his family refused to work. There was a massive controversy in Britain after his identity was revealed and investigators from the media and police discovered that his parents had never held a job in the 20 years since they had immigrated to Britain, despite living in a £1.4 million apartment in Maida Vale, one of London's most affluent neighborhoods, where their rent and living expenses were fully paid for by Britain's equivalent of the welfare system. Government housing in Britain is not all the same as the housing projects of Chicago and New York. Combined with housing benefits and child benefits, the Emwazi family was claiming over £30,000 a year. Plenty of Britons with actual jobs would kill to make that much. He would also have had to pay £40,000 to get a degree from Westminster. He was the sole "winner" from a family of losers, and he decided his calling in life was to behead the people who'd been paying his rent all his life. Of course he'd say he was persecuted and discriminated against. That's how propaganda works. What else could he possibly say? It's no different from Asim Qureshi talking about his struggles and the sympathy for radicalism they engender while dropping £20,000 a year for an elite private education 90% of the Britons he hates can't afford. Some are always eager to say these people "use Islam as a scapegoat for their behavior", but somehow no one ever seems to think these guys just use discrimination talking points as a cover for radical Islamic beliefs.

Adebowale and Adebolajo were both students at the University of Greenwich. Neither of them were mentally challenged, and I have no idea where you got that. Adebowale was also in trouble with the law for twice trying to join radical Islamic groups. First he tried to join al-Muhajiroun before they were outlawed in Britain, and later he was caught in Kenya and deported back to Britain after trying to join al-Shabaab, the same group that killed 150 Kenyan Christians last week. Does that strike you as the act of a man "hiding behind Islam" to cover up a criminal lifestyle? Traveling thousands of miles to another country to join a Somali terrorist group trying to exterminate Christians in a neighboring country? Does the fact that he was also a drug dealer somehow mean he could not be a religious fanatic? The Intelligence and Security Committee even held an inquiry after the trial where they blasted MI5 for not realizing that trying to join al-Shabaab was so obviously an indicator of extremist views.

The actual number is 13%, now that I've found the source. And I was wrong, it wasn't talking about Hamas, it was talking about Palestinian suicide bombers exclusively, which I think we can agree could only fit the militant description. Crime and terrorism are not comparable. Terrorism is about politics, organized crime is primarily driven by economic considerations. The Italian mafia were not plotting to overthrow the federal government and replace the Constitution with the Cosa Nostra's code. Violent crime has been plummeting in the United States for decades and is now at its lowest level since the 70's; despite this, the rich-poor income gap has steadily increased. A correlation is not so easily drawn.

You can stand by anything you want, but it is categorically wrong. And it's not just Muslims; historically and globally, terrorism has been the tool of those with money in their pockets and food on their tables rather than those living under bridges and begging for change. People like to believe, particularly people in the West, that the root cause of terrorism is poverty and lack of opportunity, because then the solution is simple: throw money at the problem and it'll eventually go away. They don't like to believe that the root cause of terrorism is a growing group that hates your way of life and wants to wipe it out and replace it with their own, because then the solution is not so simple.

@penderor: Sorry, but are you actually talking seriously? The muslims who are fighting today in the name of Allah, have been fighting this stupid fight of theirs for a lot of years. The rise of the Ottoman Empire was based on the same idea as their recent ideas and actions. They have always tried to eliminate people who have done something ''wrong'' to their religion and in the same time to try to make them change their beliefs and religion, no matter if their orthodox christians or catholic christians.

I hold no grudge against Islam itself, but all those people who have done so much atrocities in the name of Allah are all pests and animals in my eyes.

I'm not feeling anything - and i mean it, literally anything - against deaths of some savages who were practicacing blood human sacrifices. After all much of them died not because of swords of conquistadors, but because of epidemics. How much of people died during caliphates expansions? Well, i'm sure that many. After all this wars were long and muslims are not peaceful people. For example during the end of 19-th century and the beginning of the 20-th century turks perpetrated Armenian Genocide when they slaughtered nearly 2 milllions of armenians for beign christians. The same was with greek, for example, and assyrians in the same time.

Of course i heard about Charles the Great, the man who united most of the Western Europe and basically created France. I suppose that he is the same for people of France as Rurik or Wladimir for us - legendary father-founder of state. Great man, to be short. He is the Charlye that France should be proud of, not some Headbro suicide-wishers. What else i should heard about him?)

@just_banter: I am just suprised that terrorist says they do this for Allah thats all. In the eyes of real muslims it must be insult.

@tdk_1997: But my point is if you can call them muslims.

@penderor: Why wouldn't you?

@superguy1591: You are yet again twisting Islam for your Liberal narrative.

In regards to the OP - ISIS are doing what Muhammad did during the 7th century. Like Muhammad, ISIS are conqueror's who will spread their faith by any means necessary. Islamic extremism comes from a literal interpretation of the texts.

Terrorism knows no color.

Ok, I agree with pretty much everything you said, except I think most Muslims believe that words in Quran are infallible words of Allah.

It's not hard to google out what Quran says should happen to those who insult or attacks Kuran, or to those who leave Islam.

What is that supposed to mean?

@mortein: There are Christians who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, those who agree that evolution happened, and those who have no opinion even when their Book of Genesis are the same.

All of them hold the Bible as truth as in the word of God, but they see it from different points of view. We can say the same for Islam.

Other than that, glad we could agree on that issue.

I can't figure out what side op is arguing. Are terrorists actually Muslim? Why don't you ask the people who are willing to blow themselves and others up if they are indeed Muslim. What do you think they'll tell you?

Also, Osama Bin Laden was a billionaire. Terrorists aren't born because of lack of "prospects", or because they're poor.

As for me i don't see them as muslims.

It's as good as some set of animalistic idiots killing people and saying they are doing it in the name of good or jesus or whoever they serve and claim to be christians or whatever, surely they have lost their way and no longer a member of the religion but a destroyer of the religion.

All religion stands for peace, no religion supports animalistic behaviours, even traditional believes here in africa are peaceful only those who have lost their way do stupid things and kill people for sacrifice.

My point is those terrorist who claim to be muslims have either lost their way or just destroying the religion, there are people who do things like impersonating a religion just to destroy it.

A terrorist can be anyone

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