Muslim World Image

[Pae]

The sad truth is, there are sadistic lunatics out there. Some of them use 'religion' or 'faith' as a justification of their actions. Honestly, the content of the faith does NOT matter whatsoever to these people. If religion didn't exist those atrocities still would because this has nothing to do about religion or faith. They would simply find another reason whether it be cultural or political or whatever.

Khortez to say that buddhist faith are exempt from this behaviour is a gross misrepresentation. A quick google search of 'buddhist extremists' will generate ~452,000 hits. There are also incredible heroes in a variety of faiths... Christian heroes (William Wilburforce), Hindu heroes (Ghandi), even Islamic heroes as I'll detail below.

While I am a very devout and outspoken Christian and as someone who genuinely looked at the Islam faith, when you take things out of context it would be very easy to justify violence. But then again... you could take Harry Potter out of context and do the exact same thing. When taking the Qu'ran as a whole, I've had trouble justifying / interpreting the actions of extremists as legit.

I will reiterate. This isn't about faith. This isn't about religion.

So to return to the original question, how does one heal the muslim world image (and subsequently is it possible) - that's tough to say. First you need to extract the believers from those who abuse it. Not an easy task.

I did read once in MacLean's (kind of like the Time Magazine for Canada) about a woman who lives in Montreal. She's muslim and she is VERY outspoken against radical islam. She preaches heavily using the Qu'ran against oppression of women and violence. I know she's had a number of attempts on her life by radicals but she refuses any body guards or extra protection (likely cause she knows if she's killed she becomes a martyr).

I hope as more people like this step out from fear, people who come from the culture/faith, the world image could begin to change.