Is Islam a Religion of Peace?

[SO•Audiojack]

What Brixton said is true.

There's no such thing as a religion of peace. Some people may find peace in their religion, some may find conflict. It's down to the people.

The problems come from people who use their religion and their beliefs as a tool and an argument to achieve their secular goals. Those goals could come purely from their own desires but more often than not they're also tied to tradition, ancestral pride or whatever.

But nobody does things without selfish reasons, whether it be a very tangible reward (in life or in afterlife) or just something like the sense of belonging. Nobody does it just because a religion asks them to unless they're very deeply mentally ill, and most of islamist extremists are not.

People are just doing what they want and religion is just the principal backing for that. What people do want could also be tangentially related to their beliefs, for example what they believe they will achieve in afterlife or whatever.

It just looks like it's purely the religion itself because of the big group of people hanging on to that same religion and getting organized. An (imperfect) analogy would be a sport team that wants to win a championship, they all have their own reasons for being there and doing that and wanting to win but they're all united by their sport.