Is Islam a religion of peace?

Honestly as long as both the Bible and the Quran continue to ask for violence against others for any reason that is not in self defense or in order to protect the weak I don't care how moderate you think you are with your religion.

You are worshiping a god be it Yahweh or Allah who has continued to condone violence and engages in regular genocide, rape, incest and more. If you think your "god" is anything else you are sadly mistaken and Neither Jesus nor Muhammad give much of any good advice about living and LOTS of bad advice.

Until religion is replaced with reason we will always hold ourselves back as a species.

But we'll still have broken records like you even if religion is outgrown.

Very tact Sheperd. If you don't want to address my points then fine but don't just try and blow things off with insults.

Frankly it's below you and your smarter then that.

But we need religion! How else will we control the masses?

The masses don't just control themselves you know!

The communists tried....didn't work. In fact, with the collapse of the communist system, religion has made an amazing resurgence in former communist nations, be it Christianity and Islam in the former Soviet controlled regions, or Daoism and Buddhism in China, Viet Nam and Cambodia. Religion isn't going anywhere for a very long time.....and when one does, it's usually replaced by another as we're hard wired for it.

It doesn't negate the fact that these beliefs are not true and that most of us are atheists about Zeus, Baal, Set, etc.

In fact Religion especially in the west has been shrinking in how many people attend formal ceremonies like church.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6517807.stm

Now there could be a million things that would cause this. Some would argue it's more people thinking for themselves and realizing that the teachings of the church don't line up with morality. Some would argue it's just that more mega-churches are drawing in the members away from smaller organizations. My only point is that overall the numbers are dropping.

Also your Communist example doesn't work because that was a point where Atheism and bias against theism was more of a forced government action then people reaching a logical point on their own which is what real people promote.

That and even if we are as you say humans are "hard-wired" for religion the wonderful thing about evolution is that our needs and wants will change with time to reflect what will better guarantee our survival.

There's an interesting theory discussed (and I hate to reference the book because of how much instant hate it invokes in some people) in the god delusion where Dawkins discusses how religion could have come about by evolution and how we will start to evolve away from it given time.

It's an interesting theory and while I was going to type it out here I'll leave you to do the research. I'm more then willing to discuss the theory or just Islam in general if you still want to talk.

cheers.

The search for the "proof" that Islam is a uniquely violent religion is as laughable as it is tragic. What kind of misguided fool honestly believes that they can correctly and comprehensively describe the religious beliefs of more than one billion people by reading a book to which not all of them subscribe, and the meanings of which have been a subject of sometimes-violent debate by highly educated people, some of whom devote their entire lives solely to the study of Scripture, for hundreds of years?

Why do we accept that there are as many different varieties of Christianity and Judaism as there are fish in the sea, but search so obsessively for "true" Islam? Why do we refer to the "non-practicing Jew" or the "unaffiliated Christian," the Protestant, the Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, the Coptic Christian, the Baptist, the Anglican, the Reform Jew, the Orthodox Jew, the Reconstructionist Jew... and yet struggle to find "the Muslim?"

As for the idea that Islam emerged from, and was always, violent or incomprehensible, do remember that Greco-Roman culture had a terrible time of trying to understand and assimilate the Jews, a strange people whom to them seemed incapable of reasonable compromise, and had a terrible habit of engaging in periodic violence. Let's do recall, too, that European Christians engaged in repeated acts of butchery from the Dark Ages onward, slaughtering Jew and pagan and Muslim alike, often without provocation. People acting in the name of Christianity were responsible for terrible misdeeds against the various non-Christian peoples whom they found and later converted.

True, but complaining about Christians doesnt change anything about Islam.

The answer to the original question is no.

*During these serious and trying times, people of all faiths should
remember these four great religious truths:

1. Muslims do not recognize Jews as God's chosen people.

2. Jews do not recognize Christ as the Messiah.

3. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the
Christian world.

4. Mennonites do not recognize each other at Hooters or the Liquor Store.*