Islam is misunderstood
Reader comment on item: [Fixing] Islam's Image Problem
in response to reader comment: Islamic Law Requires violence

Submitted by Denise (Singapore), Apr 27, 2009 at 13:03

I have read many comments and I am remain quite unimpressed with how crude some people can sound. If Islam is such a violent religion where Muslims kill non-believers, then why has anyone not quote text from the Koran so? It simply becomes a fallicious statement that highlights a bias and hatred towards a religion that claims to be a religion of peace.

We must not mix possible personal experiences and generalise it to mean the religion itself. It is unfair. Rather, we could look at the various discourse of Orientalism (Edaward Said, 1978) to truly understand why this misconception of Islamstill prevails. It is embedded in historical periods of imperialism that have built such an imagining of the Orient (middle east, etc)

Of course , I do agree that some images by radical extremists have created a brutal image of Islam. But how about other religions. Don't they have radicals too? Why are they not highlighted as possible religions which are violent in nature and action too?

We cannot discount other factors as well as the other more positive images of Islam.

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