West scaring away people from Islam: Saudi cleric

Are you sure it's not the "blow yourself up in the name of Allah" speech?

A top Saudi cleric told Muslim pilgrims marking the climax of Haj on Tuesday that the West was using the global phenomenon of terrorism to scare people away from Islam and discredit legitimate Muslim causes.

Even if that's true, which I don't think it is, it's because YOU give us the terrorism to use against you. If you didn't terrorize, we wouldn't use it to true to scare people away from Islam.

And you don't need our help to scare people. There is some sort of violent conflict in almost every Muslim nation and in some non-Muslim nations the Muslim majority is still acting violently.

Look, I'm very much for freedom of religion and personal freedom and all that, even though I'm not a religious person but let's look at the facts here. I have a hard time believing that EVERY country on this planet is "holding the Muslim population down" bad enough to justify Holy War. It seems to me that Islam is not a "religion of peace" as much as you'd like us to think it is.

When a Christian bombs an abortion clinic, it's a rare event that is carried out by extremists who have a distorted view of their religion. At what point do we take a look at the religion as a whole? How many violent acts must be perpetrated, in the name of one religion, by a follower, before we say, hey, maybe the problem here is the teachings of the religion and not a distorted view?

I know many Muslim men and women and I've read some (not all) of the Quran and have had many discussions with my Islamic friends. My view: Islam is far too easy a religion to distort in a violent and war-like manner. A good look at the teachings needs to be done in the Islamic community and, maybe, a better interpretation needs looking at.