As someone married to a muslim and someone who goes to a mosque frequently I hope I can bring something new to this discussion. -- nothing new just the usual well I go to a mosque every day....
Pray To Jesus' original post just smacks of someone interested only in confirming his existing bias. These sort of audio recordings and interviews are in all religions. Scientologists have recordings of ex-christians saying how they were deceived and the religion is evil, muslims have recordings of converts saying how their atheist lifestyle was evil etc etc. There's no shortage of people willing to offer up their past beliefs for propaganda use. It brings nothing new to the discussion. -- of course they do....there are exceptions to everything..hell Satanists have recording of people converting...go figure!
But to his main point about the correlation between religious beliefs and conflict. There might be something of truth in there but not as much as he might wish. The argument put forward is essentially that a person who reads the koran and takes it literally will consequently become violent person and use violence to terrorise. The main issue here is that two people may read it literally and come to two different conclusions. One may think violence is called for, the other may think not. But most importantly, knowing dozens of muslims and having met hundreds, not a single one has ever thought violence was part of their religion. Indeed they are quite vehement in the peaceful nature of the religion (Islam does after all translate as peace. ) -- the majority of Muslims refuse to take a stand against this so called violence...I did noit say all..i said the majority. Possibly the reason they refuse to take a stand against the violence is because secretly they agree with the violence as long a ssomebody else is doing the violence??Whether a holy book is the literal word of god or not is not really important in this discussion- the interpretation is everything. Christians know (or should know) that the bible is not supposed to be the literal word of god, but instead inspired by god. But that has not stopped them from still using it to justify the same actions as muslim terrorists, or the other end of the spectrum, to inspire incredible acts of courage and charity. -- we are talking about Muslims at this present time in history....incredible acts of charity..hmmm....sounds like diatribe to me...
Really, it is the muslim leaders who are responsible for the interpretation of the koran. There are many schools of thought regarding this. The most important one for this discussion is the Wahhabi school of thought. The OP is nearest to truth with this school of thought. It is the most rigid and intollerant religious movement of modern times (it started in the mid 19th century) that has recently spread around the world, primarily thanks to saudi money. Osama was a wahhabi, the taliban follow a similar school of thought to wahhabiism- pretty much all islamic terrorists will be wahhabi or follow a similar school of thought. These people do not read the koran alone and come to their own conclusions. They learnt their islam, not from books, but from preachers. This is the salient point here- the source of the violence is not the book, but the preacher. -- umm actually the book exhorts Muslims to kill those who refuse to convert.....and stoning a woman for being raped....where did that come from...seems to me like you don`t know the book...
So it is not true for the OP to state that the book (and consequently the religion) inspire violence. There are these "hate preachers" in all abrahamic religions. It could be argued they have a greater hold in islamic nations as they are poorer and less developed.
I think it's perhaps even more important to point out that you would need to either ignore or be ignorant of the entire history of these nations and how their society works to really believe what the OP says. The frequent mistake when talking about the middle east and islamic nations (and africa, and the indian subcontinent) is to think that they are a group of nations with a common religion. The national boundaries in these areas are almost irrelevant. The main driving force behind these violences is usually racial or at least cultural. The national border are relatively new inventions in these places and do not follow the traditional divides of tribe and culture. You will notice the religious divides match the tribal divides. Syria is a great example. The divides are, from the outside, seemingly religious. But a cursory glance at the situation would show it is tribal. People have a great loyalty to their tribe and it helps their leaders to justify it in their religion. There a historical grievances between these tribes that go back a long way and are in no way routed in any religious ideal.