Barry Shaw: Islam, the Religion of “Peace”?
A retrospective look through the prism of Jerusalem
International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies
It’s a strange religion indeed that has Hamas as one of its champions.
Hamas claims to be the protector of the holy city, and they backed up their claims by launching long distant rockets in its direction.
Is it written in the Koran that you protect a holy site by firing weapons of mass destruction at Jerusalem?
How does that protect the sanctity of the holy city, let alone honor the sanctity of life?
In truth, it doesn’t.
And how about Muslim worshippers who ascended the Temple Mount to store rocks and molotov cocktails, clubs and iron bars within an important Muslim shrine?
Is that how they respect the holiness of a central shrine of their faith?
What message, what image, does that send to a wider world?
Certainly not that Islam is a religion of peace.
Since when does converting the Al Aksa Mosque, one of the holy sites in Islam, into a weapon storage facility, be construed as an example of peace?
Such acts of premeditated hate and intentional murder do not, in my eyes, seem to be the arbiters of a religion of peace.
Peace is a state of mind, a deliberate determination that this is the future your desire, a future that you can live in peace with yourself, and your neighbor.
I invite my Muslim friends to let me know if they agree with my premise, or wish to attempt to correct my clear-eyed interpretation of what we have recently witnessed.
This, before I get to their rabid expressions of violence against Jews.
I look forward to your comments because, so far, I see no Palestinian example that Islam, for them, has any connection to peace.
We have recently seen a reformation by certain moderate Arab states that give me hope, but none by many others who are more bent on death and destruction than peace and harmony.
