Islam Today
It is relatively easy to explain the Islam of today to a Westerner as Westerners are well exposed and probably even emerge from Christianity, a religion of the same family as Islam, all under the so called umbrella of Abrahamic Religions ( Judaism, Christianity and Islam ).
If we take the Torah or the Old Testament as being the Book of God, Version 1.0, we can similarly say the Bible or the New Testament as God, Version 2.0, and thus the Koran can be referred to as God, Version 3.0.
Those who study or know history, especially the history of Christianity, will be familiar with the very many crimes and cruelties exhibited by religious zealots in the dark history of Christianity and history of mankind, and is even clearly documented in the Bible. This is God 2.0. There is a reason history is being taught in schools all over the world, the very important reason is that if we do not learn from history, we will be punished by repeating the same mistake over and over again.
"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." The quote is most likely due to George Santayana, and in its original form it read, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’
God 3.0 is Islam, and the followers are generally referred to as Muslims, and there are quite many of them. Statistics say there are over 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. ( There are an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims around the world, making Islam the world’s second-largest religious tradition after Christianity, according to the December 2012 Global Religious Landscape report from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion. )
The advent of new Information Technology and Communications has made it possible for Islam to spread quickly far and wide and has reached the shores of West, catching people by surprise almost everywhere it lands, even in so called “Islamic” countries themselves !
Islam mostly succeed and thrive in failed states and societies or communities, with many unhappy people, and many losers, as it promises a way out of their miseries in life. In stronger and more advanced states, Islam knocks on the door, sometimes violently, and insists it has the right to set foot, by virtue of the "democracy" being practised by these states. Once Islam gets one foot in the door, it is goodbye democracy, hello theocracy. In this way, Islam has become 1.6 billion.
Before I proceed too far with sad stories into this hopeless, dark alley of doom, I wish to give readers some degree of hope, some good news. Is Islam really that bad, that violent ? Well yes and no. For all the bad negative examples of Islam, it has some very good values, golden values and sayings very useful to mankind. But it is all lost to human greed, bureaucracy, jealousy.
The Islam today is by and large, bad and violent and ranging from simply ridiculous to being utterly disgusting and shocking. However, it isn't originally so and certainly Islam was not built on such negative inhuman spirit. Otherwise it would never have made it all as one of the worlds greatest and prominent religion.
It is not a world renowned religion because there are over 1.6 billion followers, no. That's mere quantity and quantity is nothing. If we are to count the number of fools and idiots there are in this world, it would likely be a lot more than the number of Muslims, but then again, that does not really mean anything, does it ?
And so Islam does have some very good qualities, certainly a very high and sophisticated philosophy, good values, good teachings, so much so that those who follow Islam says it can only be from God, for no human can have such values, superhuman values. They say only God can make the Koran, but real history of Islam teaches us that the Koran was compiled by a group of scholars, many years after the death of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad.
The good news is that there is some really very good quality teachings and lessons in in Islam, yes. And not to forget that Islam introduced Science to the world, the Science of Verification. All the Mathematics, Optics, Chemistry and such, all came from Islamic Scholars during the glory days of Islam and the Islamic Empire.
The bad news is that it isn't easy to get at these good values. And today it is almost alien to Muslims. Most are lost in the confusion of the modern world, many of them distorted, and many more said to be or written of as invalid or outdated. Just how many Muslims know the “camera” came from the Arabic word “Kamar” and the very first camera in the world was this “kamar” with a picture of a distant tree against its wall, coming from a hole purposely bored through the wall of the room ( which serves as the dark room ) ? Learn History, Islamic History will amaze you. Do you know that majority of the stars we see in the sky bear Arabic names, for the Arabs were ardent scholars then ? Muslims today haven't a clue. All the Science and Medicine and Mathematics brought by Islam is lost in the politics of Islam.
Islam is introduced by indoctrination. This is usually done by families and a child is powerless against what the parents say. The have to obey and believe. A whole barrage of selected values and prejudices, both good and evil, are introduced, and usually indoctrinated. And the indoctrination can be intense and severe. The result is what we see today in the Islamic world. And is the root cause of Muslim countries being poor and often well behind other nations in terms of human progress and civilisation and is also why very many Muslims become Islamists.
It is extremely difficult for an innocent child or young adult to resist Islam. For over 1400 years, Islam has developed some very effective tool to spread and embed itself into almost any human being. Most major world religion has this characteristic, else they would not have become a world religion in the first place. And 1.6 billion Muslim must surely be the testimony to this.