Should We Call it “Radical Islam”?

Mohammad did not suggest that the Koran was simply inspired by God as if the ideas were given to him from a divine source. He taught that the book was dictated word by word by the angel Gabriel.

This is very important, and explains why Muslims find it difficult to re-interpret a law code for a seventh century Arab tribe into the modern world. If the book really was dictated word by word in Arabic from heaven, then surely it must be obeyed literally.

This is why the Muslim extremists’ arguments are so convincing to their fellow Muslims and why it is so difficult to separate out the religion of Islam from the political aspirations of ISIS and from the motivations and actions of the terrorists.

Clinton and Obama may wish to separate Islam from the actions of ISIS and the terrorists, but it is difficult to do so and be honest.

What is  needed is for Muslims themselves to forswear violence, stress that “jihad” is no more than the spiritual and moral struggle and explicitly state that Sharia law is no more significant for the world’s population than Canon Law is for Catholics, and that it is NOT the aim of the Islamic religion to conquer the world by jihad and impose Sharia law on all  people.

If this is true, then Clinton and Obama had better use all their diplomatic muscle to get Muslim leaders worldwide to make such a declaration.

If the Muslim leaders–both political and religious–can’t make such statements, then to be on the safe side we had better take Islam at face value and assume that Islam does teach what the Koran says, that violent jihad is expected of all Muslims and Sharia law is to be imposed globally.