Islam : Islam And Islam

Islam is often presented in the media with a negative stereotype of violence and evil in relation to terrorism and terroristic acts not as a religion. After reading the chapter on Islam in Honoring Our Neighbor’s Faith I found much of the teaching on Islam attempt to promote harmony and in no way commit harmful acts on others or to be a terrorist. I personally had a misconception to this notion of linking all Islamic and Muslims with words such as militant and terrorist. A patient of mine recently attempted to explain to me that terrorism is not, in any way, associated with Islam. He stressed the fact that terrorism goes against the beliefs of Islam. In this paper I will provide a brief description of the Islam, their beliefs, similarities found in my Catholic religion and finally my thoughts on if the teaching of Islam and does or does not promote violence.

Fortress describes Islam, which implies “peace”, as a monotheism religion based on the teachings of Mohammed ibn Abdullah who lived around 570-632. Muslims, those who practice the religion of Islam, base all aspects of their lives attempting to please their GOD ALLAH. You may notice that all letters of these words are capitalized as to show extreme respect to their supreme being. The Muslims in addition to pleasing ALLAH, strive to please him and only him. This is done to reach paradise not in this life but the next. “Through the life to come is better and more enduring” (Ballou, 1999 p. 453). Muslims can be found in all continents of the world, including the United States, and belief in Islam account for the religion of one-fifth of the human race (Fortress, 1999).

It is well known that Muslims set aside five mandatory times to pray during the day in addition to personal...

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... violence are not acted upon in modern times. One needs to critically think and study any bible teachings according to what is the accepted behavior of modern times. My conclusion to the question if Islam promotes violence, my answer would be that some passages found in the Koran contain violent wording, but that was the acceptable behavior in ancient times.

In summary, I have provided a brief description of the Islam, mentioned some of their beliefs, identifies similarities found in Islam and Catholic religion and finally I presented my thoughts on if the teaching of Islam does or does not promote violence. An interesting final though, my patient had asked me how long I had been studying about Islam and its teachings because he said I sounded very educated in the ability to converse with him. He truly did not believe me when I told him it had only been a few days.