Meaning of Islam

[Pannonian]

Just to say....I don't think anybody is referring to Old Testament stories and sayings in order to defend the rights of "Islamists"* to "behave the way they do". It is to show that all religious books, of all religions, have within them violence. The idea that Islam is somehow different and inherently despicable is nonsense.

*Islamists? Is that like Christianites? The vast majority of Muslims (ie they who identify themselves as being followers of Islam) do not justify violence in the name of Islam and are as opposed to those fundamentalist terror groups as the vast majority of Christians (ie self-avowed followers of Christianity).

Islamists are people who reject the existing secular state in favour of moving towards a state based on Islamic teachings. Within Europe, I can't think of any countries that reject the secular state in favour of moving towards a state based on Christian teachings. Among the west, the closest I can think of is the US, but even there the constitution is regarded as more holy than the Bible. Among Muslim countries, even in the most rigorously secularised of them all (Turkey), there has been a move towards Islamism. Among homegrown European Muslims, there are quite a few who support the Islamist activism espoused by Muslim countries, most notably Saudi Arabia. If you don't want to call these homegrowns Islamists, that's fine by me. Traitors would be equally accurate.