I begin by stating my comprehension of the totality of Islam is 
imperfect. Despite that, my question is: Why is violence a preferred
modus operandi of some Muslims, and why do the vast majority of
Muslims not speak against it? Yes, I have seen tsk-tsk apologies from
some Muslim individuals, but the nations ruled by Islamist theocracies
are supportive of : Death to Israel, the Great Satan America and all
heretics.
  Islam, it seems to me, has the enormous defect of lacking a central
authority. If it had, it would be for or against Islamic terrorism,
and that would clarify the issue completely. Instead, we have had 1200
years of varying commentaries on the Quran,which are acceptable to
some Muslims but not others and clarify nothing for those of different beliefs.
  Now, the Catholic Church has a Pope. If you do not agree with his
stance on male celibate priests or abortion or birth control, why, go
your way in peace. The Church does not condemn you to hell or assign
suicide bombers to convince you of the error of your ways.
   So, I invite any comment or answer to the question above. Please do
not bother with: Well, some approve and some don?t. That is
meaningless tripe. And while you are at it, convince me that those who
destroyed the World Trade Center were not Muslims

The answer to this one is not so cut-and-dried as your previous
questions seeking textual support for or against a doctrinal issue, so
this time I'll leave it to someone else. You may be better off on this
one asking for a show of hands as to who believes as you do and then
try asking THEM why you both believe as you do.

FYI: I mean this with all due respect without the intent of maligning
your point of view. I merely mean to point out that Islamists have not
cornered the market on mayhem. There are equal (if not more)
references to how and why so-called Christians have fought, warred,
killed and destroyed all in the name of God (or goodness, fairness,
righteousness, god-given rights, etc) over the centuries, but perhaps
that was going to be the premise of your next question.

tutuzdad-ga

K22,

This is a very thorny issue. One thing worth considering is that the
media may be, in general, more likely to report inflammatory and
disturbing stories; tales of hatred and violence seem more newsworthy
(and draw larger audiences) than accounts of efforts to achieve peace
and understanding. Voices within Islam which condemn terrorism do
exist. They just aren't "hot news."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/islfatwa.htm

When the current Pope was but a simple high-ranking cardinal he said
that Europe (meaning the European Union) was no place for a muslim
nation like Turkey.

Some priests, bishops, cardinals and the like DO very much say you
will be Doomed to Eternal Damnation if you use birth control or get an
abortion (okay, funny side story-- Catholic friends of mine in high
school found themselves pregnant. A discussion of abortion produced a
look of horror on both their faces. "It's a sin!" she said. "It's
against our religion!" he said. I pointed out that humping in a Pacer
wasn't covered but I expected it would be frowned upon).

My close buddy since high school was molested by a priest for three
years. The same priest molested his older brother, his older sister, a
younger sister and two younger brothers-- a real equal-opportunity SOB
(this is the same priest recently murdered in prison). He prayed with
them before and after each of his "special sessions", invoking both
Christ's name as well as God's. This piece of filth was protected by
the same Church that says gays are Damned.

The amount of bloodshed in Ireland that was fomented by the Church is appalling.

Shall I point out the Inquisition?

So much for your idea that the Catholic Church is warm and cuddly. 

Now I could just as easily pointed out a few problems with other
denominations-- I spent an hour explaining the REAL history of the
first Thanksgiving to a friend from Uganda-- but you allowed me a
delicious target. As for Islam being decentralized, the differences of
sunni, shiite, bektashi, wahhabi, ibadi, achmadi, etc, are similar to
the many, many divisions in Christianity or the somewhat fewer ones in
Judaism (seriously, Jews for Jesus? Is that the ultimate in hedging
your bets?).

Much of the problems come about because of attempts to interpret the
religious writings of the Koran and hadith, and similar difficulties
exist with the Old and the New Testaments (and have been the cause or
basis of terrible actions as well). An example is the statement by
early Islamic scholars that there are errors in transcription of the
Old and New Testament and these are why there are discrepancies among
them and the Koran (smart guys-- blame in on some long dead folks).
You can see that somewhere over the centuries some scholar or
politician who wanted to make a name for himself might use this to
accuse one group or the other of blaspheming the works, and thus they
should be (choose one or more): kicked out, made to pay a fee, forfeit
property, tortured, killed, etc.

The muslims I know are to a person disgusted by islamo-fascism. They
are all naturalized American citizens with a better knowledge of US
history than 90% of college graduates, I'll wager. Each is highly
educated and not one speaks fewer than four languages. Strangely
enough they are all agnostics, and this probably is not a coincidence.
They are also disgusted by fundamentalist christianity (among other
religious extremes) and have a healthy suspicion of theocracies.

There are nuts in every tree, Knowitall22. You might be seeing the
nuttiest because they work very hard to make a big impression. As for
your comment "Please do not bother with: Well, some approve and some
don?t. That is
meaningless tripe," discourse is not meaningless tripe. Sometimes an
answer can be as simple as "some do and some don't."

Here's an example: Does anyone believe your "meaningless tripe"
comment reveals you to be a very young and very foolish person who is
not above attempting to bait others?       Some do and some don't.






[Too much, everyone? Sorry!]

Just a minute tutuzdad: I'm talking about right now, AKA today.
Christians, Muslims, Romans, Mongols etc. have slaughtered many
innocents. So have Hitler, Stalin and Mao. The past is irrelevant to
my question. If you know of any Christian suicide bombers active
today, enlighten us. I am sick unto death of politically correct
pussyfooting. So, I ask for a second time: Were those who destroyed
the World Trade Center Russian, Chinese, or Italian? If not, exactly
who were they? Is that a great mystery?
K22

markvmd: Cut the crap. *Some* Catholic clerics say you are damned to
hell if you use birth control? Such as who? Exact quotes please. My
point is the Pope speaks for all Catholics, and if one doesn't like
it, take a walk and no hard feelings. I am not Catholic, FYI. THe
Catholic Church, precisely unlike Islam, does not condemn all
non-believers to hell nor does it send out suicide bombers to convince
you of its righteousness. If you want to cite instances of injustice
by any religious belief, none of us will live long enough to hear it
all.
  If you hate Catholics and Christians, help yourself. You have one
billion Muslims on your side, so you win the majority vote, hands
down.
K22

Pinkfreud: I am second to none in my admiration of your intellect and
marvelous input. But you missed or disregarded: Please do not bother
with: Well, some approve and some don't.
  My question stands, unanswered.
K22

markvmd: Second comment: Thanks for making me young...I am 78 years old. AND:
The Catholic Church is most assuredly not *warm and cuddly* as you
said, in your ignorance. It is a demanding religion...as is Islam.
  I have this feeling that you are wallowing in emotion and
unconnected with reality. There is of course the possibility that your
comment is intended as a spoof, in which case I apologize.
K22

I am no expert on Islam

However I am pretty sure that there are passages in the Koran that say
'respect people of the Book', namely Jews and Christians.

One of the reasons why the Jews got expelled from Spain was because
they had cooperated with their Moslem rulers.

The Crusades were pretty horrific, the use of the word 'crusade' is
extremely offensive, a mob of uncivilized Europeans descending on a
significantly more advanced culture.

From what I can gather the 9/11 guys were a bunch of hard drinking,
womanizing young guys. My guess is that they got caught up in a 'boys
own' type of adventure led on by irresponsible older maniacs.

I put a lot of this down to a high level of unemployment amongst young
males, alarmingly poor and misguided education, and availability of
funds.

I've a feeling that Moslems regard themselves as some sort of second
class citizens of the world it is convenient to put the blame on
Israel, the USA, Europe etc.

To some extent we have brought this on ourselves, in 1979 the Russians
foresaw what could happen, which is why they 'aided' Afghanistan. At
the time I and others were saying that we should have helped the
Russians, or at least sat on our hands and kept quiet.

I'm afraid that we were also responsible for the mess in Iran, the
Shah could not face the withdrawel of support from specifically the
USA.

@MarkVMD, if your 'Moslem' friends are agnostic, then they are not
Moslem, although I take your point, and have had many Moslem friends
who were sane, sensible and good company.

That's the same as asking, "Why do Americans torture foreigners?"

@Nelson

I'm not sure that they do, the US stuff in Iraq was not exactly
torture, it was morons playing around. The UK stuff looked as if the
Iraqis were slightly complicit (those rather disgusting photographs
set up by British squaddies).

The stuff we hear about 'water boarding' at Gitmo, sounds odd to me,
it does not sound all that practical.

Given sufficient physical or mental intimidation, people will admit to
anything, but unless one is setting up show trials (which are
pointless), the information is going to be unreliable.

I've no idea what is going on at Gitmo, but it seems unlikely that the
US has done a trawl for encephalate sadists - more likely they have
psychologists trying to turn the inmates.

Note that Uzbechistan, who go in for show trials, kicked out the USA
when the Uzbechs got criticized. Our glorious UK government behaved
disgracefully when our ambassador got carried away - they tried to
discredit the guy.

My guess is that the US knows that some people will believe that it is
torturing inmates, there is nothing that will change their minds, so
they might as well not bother.

However if one defines 'torture' as threatening to return a Saudi
national to the tender clutches of Saudi intelligence who really will
take them apart, then the USA is definitely 'torturing' people.

Personally I believe, that if properly run, Gitmo could be quite a
good way of recruiting 'talent'.

frde-ga:  I am lost in admiration of the ingenuity of you and others
in avoiding answering a very simple question.
   You mention unemployment among yoing males and poor education among
Muslims as a possible cause of terrorism. You could say the same of
African-Americans,
who have yet to fly an airplane into a skyscraper.

nelson-ga: The same? Your concept of scale and mine are not in good agreement.
Not to mention the apples and oranges aspect.
   But then, I am unaware of the hundreds of US government sponsored
suicide attacks which kill thousands of innocents. I resolve to pay
closer attention to breaking news in the future.
K22

Stop jumping down everyone's throats man. I thought frde-ga's response
was pretty good. What do you want as an answer?

Islam condone's terrorism cause it's a bitch,
The vast majority of Muslims don't speak against it cause they hate us all.

Happy? Oh, and you can't "invite any comment or answer to the question
above" without expecting a bit of "Well, some approve and some
don?t"... some people believe it's an answer (and some don't.)

Haggismcbean, Knowitall22 is baiting people. This is no different than
"Jew baiting" or "nigger baiting" and should be treated as such. I
would expect such actions from a young and foolish person, not a
purported 78 year old. It must be 78 in Canadian, which would be
something like 16 in American.

Muslims have condone terrorism from day one but its the media which
only shows one side of the story.  Right now what is going on in
Middle East and Europen countries has nothing to do with Islam but its
all political game and revenge.  Don't blame Islam for what some
people are doing.  I hope you visit http://askmuslims.com and learn
atleast basics about Islam.

thx

I would like to add that there is probably a fair amount of misunderstanding.

I've yet to be able to see Al Jazeera in English, and I'm aware that
the BBC has started both an Arabic and Farsi television service.

However, as or when they get widely viewed, we'll probably get a
clearer view of what is going on.

islam does not condone terrorism .
most the islamic counties in the world are uneducated.
there is no religion that condone terrorism.
its the people who do it

Basically what Tefe said.

It's not Islam itself, but Islamic leaders (who themselves are not all
of the same mind) who condone terrorism when they agree that the
targets of the terrorism are the enemy. In other cases, it's just that
terrorists just do it, even if the leaders say no. Islam, like the
Eighth Amendment or Christianity, can be used both ways.