Religious 'Interpretation'

The reason places like Turkey and Indonesia and Bangladesh are the way they are is because they are Muslims in name only, they memorize Quran and Hadith but don't actually understand it; which is, evidently, a very good thing. Because if they understood the Arabic, Indonesia and Turkey and Bangladesh would look like Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Sudan. In some of the other Arabic-speaking societies, Islam and Sharia have been tempered by secularism and multiculturalism. It's no coincidence that Tunisians and Lebanese aren't very good Muslims; they think they're French. That's just one example.  

Now, it may be true that the violence in the middle east and the treatment of women there is a tribal or cultural thing, but it is false to say that it is only a cultural phenomenon. Islam does indeed espouse some very barbaric things. Yes, other religions do as well, but today even the fundamentalists of those religions are peaceful when compared to Islam. If, as some argue, Islam can be interpreted differently by different people, then they have no leg to stand on. Fundamentalists are, axiomatically, interpreting their religion properly. And when Islam is interpreted from a fundamentalist viewpoint, you get things like Hezbollah and Al Qaeda and Ansar Al Sharia. Almost nothing they do or say is forbidden anywhere in the Quran or Hadith, quite the opposite actually. Islam makes it easy to become a terrorist.

Muslim moderates have no right to say that fundamentalists have grossly misinterpreted the faith. And since that is apparently the case, I see no reason why anyone should expect the problem of violent extremism within Islam to stop. Islamic fundamentalism is clashing with modernity, and Muslim moderates are exacerbating the issue by defending Islam. Rather than saying, "Yes, it IS a problem and we shouldn't take the Quran literally," they argue that a happy middle ground can be found. This is simply not the case. If the Quran is the perfect word of God, then violent, external jihad against the infidel is a valid interpretation. Your personal interpretation might be something along the lines of "Jihad is an internal struggle," but if we allow you your interpretation we must allow the jihadists theirs. Are you beginning to see the problem?

If Christians and Jews were fundamentalists the way Muslims are, then they would also be subjugating women and stoning people to death; it says to in the Bible. I'll grant you that Israeli Jews have behaved monstrously in many instances toward Palestinian Arabs, but they are not forcing their women to live in cloth bags as illiterate servants in the name of Judaism. That said, it is patently obvious that the situation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is in fact a Muslim-Jewish conflict. There are people on both sides who believe that God promised them this land. If this were only a politically motivated territorial dispute, it would have been solved by now. The ongoing conflict over a patch of desert in the Levant will continue to be a problem as long as we go on pretending that it is not a religious issue. 

Arguing interpretation of verses is as ridiculous as it gets. This is the point. If you take the 'nice' verses and ignore the 'bad' ones, then you are not in fact practicing Islam; you are cherry-picking, as Christians and Jews have been doing for quite some time now. I would love to do away with religions all-together, but there is a reason the Quran is still a dangerous text in a way the Old Testament is not - because Jews and Christians don't still hold that every word of the book is true and that people are simply misinterpreting it. Go to any secular society in the west and start reading from Leviticus to well-educated people and they will look at you like you've lost your mind. Do the same with the Quran in the middle east, and everyone will listen quietly and nod their heads and say "Ameen." And that, friends, is the problem.