We see, day after day, more people scared of ISLAM and I think this happens because of our ignorance. What can we do? Maybe it's our duty to understand more before we judge. We are always scared about the unknown and about the things that we think are not right, maybe this is the main reason we tagged people.
When you say Islam you are making reference to over 1.7 billion followers and maybe it's something wrong with this number because it means that near 23% of global population and 1 of 4 people on this planet are Islam followers. So why are there so many media voices that when they speak about the terrorism problem, they associate it with the Islam name?
The answer is, on one hand, Al-Qaeda that has been founded in 1988 by Osama Bin Laden to fight against the Soviet Invasion of the Afghanistan and, on the other hand, ISIS, that has been founded in 1999 and then joined Al-Qaeda in 2004. ISIS has separated from them in 2014 when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi created the caliphate, claiming territories in Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
But let's talk about numbers and see if they represent Islam, because when you want to mark someone you must be sure that you are at least talking about a majority.
Al-Qaeda- there are about 39.000 active combatants that are fighting for them, which means 0.00224% of Islam followers.
ISIS- there are about 90.000 active combatants that are fighting for them, which means 0.00529%.
So wait, are we discriminating a religion with over 1.7 billion followers for only 0.00753% who are extremist followers that have misinterpreted the Qur'an ? Yes, because they are killing innocent Americans, European, people that are not following the Islam religion. A study of Al-Qaeda reveal that they kill eight times more Muslims than non-Muslims and the the numbers are bigger if we talk about ISIS.
I'm not Muslim, I'm christian born in Orthodox religion. Like most of us young people, we don't like the dogmas and we are always looking for an answer. Like I said in my previous article, it is all about the timing. If we look back, not much time ago, the christian religion also made a lot of mistakes: the Witch-hunt that resulted in near 100.000 executions in the name of christian religion, Crusaders, Heretics and the list can go on.
image credit: Wikimedia
No-one blames ourselves because we did it with our hands and it is more easy to point the finger to someone else. I'm faced with this thinking over and over again and everywhere: "it is not our fault, it is the fault of the other".
It is our problem because we isolated these countries, we always put limits between us and them and we became accustomed to see an enemy everywhere. We must start to have a common conscience and look not only in our yard when we are doing very well, but also say a sincerely "do you need some help?" to our neighbor (maybe not invade him with a tank) , send some supply and give him the knowledge now, to prevent a disaster later.
If you want to share with me your thoughts and questions, I will gladly answer.