The Koran Preaches Violence
The Koran is not a text that teaches holiness, at least the way holiness is understood in the Judeo-Christian Western culture. For holiness teaches the sacredness of life and the championing of the virtues of loving kindness, fortitude, humility, dedication, justice, orderliness, and industriousness. These are virtues that are embodied by the characters in the holy stories and by the teachings of the characters, or by the direct teachings from God as recorded in the text. Some of these kinds of teachings are indeed in the Koran, but it is not dominant mode of teachings. The dominant teachings, reinforced verse after verse exhort an absolute submission promote an intolerance to non-Muslims and non-Muslim ideas, foster the emotion of hate to justify the Muslim crusades of violence and persecution against all those they consider infidels, non-believers in Islam, and urge the Muslim to a non-ending jihad against the non-Muslim world until all the world is under Muslim domination. Who are the non-belivers? Today the non-believers are the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus and the new age Pagans.
What is the proof that this description of what is in the Koran is correct? Just examine the speeches and actions of the most outspoken, influential, and powerful Muslims who preach the message of the Koran. All around the world, in the last few decades, in 50 different countries, these most influential and powerful leaders of Islam are the instigators of violence, war, massacres, killings, torture, and human rights violations all in the name of Islam. Why? Because it is taught in the Koran that the world must submit to the teachings of the god of Islam. And it is incumbant on the Muslim, as a religious duty, to engage in jihad to achieve this.
We next take a sampling of verses from the Koran that support our point of view. First we sample some verses that denigrate those who do not follow Islam. In Mohammed's time and place, this was the Jews and the Christians. The denigration, however, is not just in the past. It is active today. In today's time and place, it includes as well the Buddhists, Hindus, and new age Pagans.
Denigration Of Those Who Do Not Follow Islam
Evil is that for which they have sold their souls-- that they should deny what Allah has revealed, out of envy that Allah should send down of His grace on whomsoever of His servants He pleases; so they have made themselves deserving of wrath upon wrath, and there is a disgraceful punishment for the unbelievers. (Sura 2.90)
Surely those who disbelieve and die while they are disbelievers, these it is on whom is the curse of Allah and the angels and men all; (Sura 2.151)
Say to those who disbelieve: You shall be vanquished, and driven together to hell; and evil is the resting-place. (Sura 3.12)
Then as to those who disbelieve, I will chastise them with severe chastisement in this world and the hereafter, and they shall have no helpers. (Sura 3.56)
Verily Allah has cursed the Unbelievers and has prepared for them a Blazing Fire to dwell in forever. No protector will they find, nor savior. That Day their faces will be turned upside down in the Fire. They will say: Woe to us! We should have obeyed Allah and obeyed the Messenger! Our Lord! Give them double torment and curse them with a very great Curse! (Sura 3.64)
O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he among you that turns to them for friendship is of them. This friendship makes any Muslim an enemy of their own and deserving of the same fate as the unbeliever. This is because God does not guide an unjust people. (Sura 5.51)
And (as for) those who reject Our communications, chastisement shall afflict them because they transgressed. (Sura 6.49)
Therefore when they revoltingly persisted in what they had been forbidden, We said to them: Be (as) apes, despised and hated. (Sura 7.166)
I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them. (Sura 8.12)
O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination. (Sura 9.73)
The Koran's exortation to fight the infidels, the non-believers, the polytheists, the pagans, the Jews, and the Christians is not just an exortation relative to the seventh century. It is a continuing exortation that is preached just as strong today as it was in the seventh century.
Fighting
Seize them and slay them wherever you find them: and in any case take no friends or helpers from their ranks. (Sura 4:89)
And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah; but if they desist, then surely Allah sees what they do. (Sura 8.39)
O Prophet! urge the believers to war; if there are twenty patient ones of you they shall overcome two hundred, and if there are a hundred of you they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they are a people who do not understand. (Sura 8.65)
It is not fitting for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he has made a great slaughter in the land. (Sura 8:67)
Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and assist you against them and heal the hearts of a believing people. (Sura 9.14)
So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush,... (Sura 9:5)
Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection. (Sura 9.29)
O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you. (Sura 9.123)
Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in God, or in the last day, and who forbid not that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and who profess not the profession of the truth, until they pay tribute out of hand, and they be humbled. (Sura 9.29-33)
When you encounter the infidels, strike off their heads until you have made a great slaughter among them, and of the rest make fast the fetters. (Sura 47.4)
O Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal sternly with them. Hell shall be their home, evil their fate. (Sura 66.9)
Mohammed said: I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, none has the right to be worshipped but Allah. (Al Bukhari vol. 4:196)