Simplistic in the extreme.



Yes, the Old Testament is violent. That's not earth-shattering breaking news. What, did you guys just figure this out last Thursday? I mean, God brought on the Flood and killed every last human except Noah's family. What could be more violent than that? Duh. And God did it.



But then something happened: the New Testament, in which God was in a much better mood. It's not nearly as violent and says stuff like "Turn the other cheek" and all that. because the head guy, the Han Solo of the New Testament, was Jesus, who was more or less a peaceful kind of guy, despite wrecking the money changers tables and all that. But overall you have to admit the New Testament is a lot calmer and more laid back.



Now with the Koran what we have is the equivalent of an old testament, and it's pretty violent, too, except that with the Koran, it specifically advocates violence against Christians. After all, one way of looking at it is that Islam is a reaction to Christianity, a me-too! religion that sprang up 600 or so years after Christianity. In that sense it is quite literally reactionary, with Christians and Jews as the Bad Guys, the unbelievers that must be killed. And the Head Guy there was no pacifist. He was an army general and slaughtering thousands was all in a day's work. Islam has no New Testament. Allah, like the Old Testament Jehovah, is still one pissed-off God.



You remember that Jesus ascended to Heaven and all that, right? That's the story. But Muhammad was not content with that. So he engaged in some one-upmanship. The story there is that after he and his army conquered Jerusalem and took over the Second Temple built by the Jews thousands of years before, he also ascended to Heaven from the Temple Mount, but he was on his horse! So both he and the horse ascended to Heaven. That's another aspect of this me, too! religion. Take that, Jesus!



The fact is, the current group of Bad Guys (tm) are justifying their actions not because of any sort of oppression. They want to "serve Allah." That's the issue here. They are motivated by their concept of Islam to engage in terrorism using their religion as the motivator.



Yet we keep hearing that Islam is a "peaceful religion." And I don't disagree with that. Perhaps a couple billion Muslims ARE peaceful.



But his particular group of bad Guys (tm) are not and they are using their religion to justify their violence. You need to come to grips with that rather than keep apologizing for it and pretending it does not exist.