Islam’s “Dark Ages”?

A Muslim reader wrote this to Andrew Sullivan, in light of the horrific killing in London this week:

It seems Islam is going through its Dark Ages, where lack of education and a confusion of tradition with religion in Muslim countries is causing their people to be manipulated by false sermons of violence against the West as some good deed when it’s a sin and a sin alone.

All I know about Islam is that killing a human being is as if killing the whole humanity. The mindless menace of violence has a grip over the Muslim world right now and hopefully with a better-educated younger generation, where people like me can disagree, will help improve this problem. Killing in the name of “the most merciful and benevolent” God (Allah) is not true. The merciful god in Quran says that no human has a right to take another’s life as it is not his to take, even his own. Muslims aren’t even allowed to commit suicide. Combining that with killing innocent people is beyond my capacity to understand.

Islam is not a monolith. Westboro Baptist Church does not represent every Christian. These people who killed an innocent person in Bahrain are no Muslims; they are Muslims in name and have committed a grave sin against their fellow human being and god.

Read the rest here.