Islam Explained

I am reading a book (Islam Explained) written by a man after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He wrote the book for his children and all children after hearing his own repeating ignorant remarks made by other people about Islam and Muslims. In the tradition of "good things come in small packages" the book is short in length but not short in content.

Some things I have learned:

Why the men who flew the planes were not real Muslims-

Allah, like the god of the Jews and the Christians, forbids killing yourself, which we call suicide. And He forbids killing other people. So those men who got on airplanes, who killed the pilots with a knife, and then flew the planes into the skyscraper in New York- those men don't understand the Muslim religion, and they are fanatics.

What really awaits them after death-

...someone who kills himself by burning will repeat this act eternally in hell. Anyone who throws himself from a building will throw himself for infinity. This is horrible! This is true if one is a believer.

A good description of what a fanatic is-

It's somebody who thinks he's always right and wants to be the most powerful. If you don't agree with him, he becomes very wicked.

What the word Islam means-

submission to peace

What the Angel Gabriel said to the prophet Muhammad-

He told him that there was one God, all-powerful and very merciful. He told him that we must be faithful to the word of God, that we must believe in His message, that there is another life after death, that man will be judged by his action, and that every member of the human race will have to testify about what he has done during his life, that good and just men will be rewarded by going to heaven and that the others, the bad men, the unbelievers, the criminals, will be judged and sent to hell. He told him that we must do good and avoid evil, that men must be well behaved and believers, and that above all we should not worship stones and believe that there are other gods than God.

Why this is the same as what Christians are taught-

...before Muhammad's religion, there were two other religions, Judaism and Christianity. Both of them worship a single God. They, too, had prophets: Moses and Jesus. The Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims were to form "a single community of the believers." Islam came to join these two religions. They are called the monotheistic religion, or the religions of the Book. The book of the Jews is the Torah; the book of the Christian, the Bible; and that of the Muslims, the Koran

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Why if we have the same God the Jews and Muslims in the Middle East are at war-

You're mixing things up. The Muslims and the Jews are fighting over the same land, but it is not a war of religion. Islam recognizes the prophets of the Jews and the Christians.

How-

The Muslims owe their prophet Muhammad, God's messenger, their worship and love. They owe the same respect to Moses and Jesus. Don't forget that Islam appeared about six centuries after Jesus. Thus it is the most recent monotheistic religion in human history.

I am only half-way through this book and I am astonished by how little I knew about the Islamic religion. I see now that as long as we (humankind) focus on the differences between our religions and not the similarities, nothing will change. The fanatics will keep killing others and themselves in the name of religion.