Islam, The Misunderstood Religion

Despite the size, global presence and significance of the Islamic community; negative images, myths, stereotypes and misinformation about Muslims continue to abound. Islam is the misunderstood religion. What I want to achieve with this site is to facilitate a better understanding of Islam’s role as a religion and as a way of life for more than 1.2 billion followers.

The study of Islam today is motivated by the terrorism of radical Islam. It is easy for many of us to forget that significant interest and awareness of Islam in recent decades was not driven by recognition that Islam was the second largest and perhaps fastest growing of the world’s religions. Its study was motivated by the challenge and threat of the Iranian Revolution, and the impact of what is called political Islam, or more popularly, Islamic fundamentalism.

Too often we see Islam through the lenses of terrorism. The actions of a deadly minority. We don’t do that with other faiths. Thus, appreciation of the faith of the vast majority of Muslims had often been obscured by the tendency to view Islam and equate it with radical or revolutionary movements.

We don’t do this when we encounter acts of violence and terrorism committed by Christians or Jews. The majority of us had been raised in a Judeo-Christian culture, and we are or know many Jews and Christians. We immediately and instinctively contextualize these acts as the acts of extremists, not representative of the mainstream.

We do not have a similar knowledge and experience of Islam and Muslims. It is hard for most of us to remember that until the late 1970’s, with the Iranian Revolution, Islam and Muslims were invisible to us. They were neither a part of our cognitive nor geographical landscape.

If one Italian moves to your neighborhood and he seems emotional, and he is the only Italian you know, you would think that all Italians are emotional. For many, the few Muslims and their actions that they see, are representatives of all Muslims.

Some time ago I was chatting online on a Muslim site. There were Muslims from all over the world. Someone from the United States appeared and said publicly “why are you in this conversation with all these terrorists?”.

You may have seen statements like these in the media by some religious (or non-religious) leaders. “Islam is Evil”. Not extremism is evil. Not drawing the line between extremism and mainstream. The very same line should be drawn when it comes to Christianity.