Ah,no;aside from the fact that I'm a crazy Jew-try reading 'Because They Hate' by Brigitte Gabriel-a Lebanese Christian,who spent seven years in a bomb shelter(and check out her web site)

Considering the agenda and objectives of the Islamic movement in the world, I must adopt a rational unfavorable opinion.

I have a very negative view of islam and its adhearents.  I base my view on what I have seen.

It is very nasty.

I don't care much for religions of any type, including the one I'm nominally a member of. That being said, there are way to many ignoramuses out there bashing Islam who know as much about it as they do about brain surgery. Are there fanatics in Islam? Absolutely. Now that we've established that, let me introduce you to Pat Robertson and Ian Paisley and Torquemada, as the Christian representatives of fanaticism. Islam was one of the preservers of knowledge after the fall of Rome, and together with the Irish Monasteries, kept the flame of intelligence burning for four centuries.

This was while northern Europe was peopled by brutal and ignorant savages with no thought past the next pillage and rape.

Islam as a religion of hate? Let me enlighten you my friends. At their worst, all religions are religions of hate. And at their medium to best, most are just fine.

It is no better or worse historically than any of the other two major monotheistic religions. . .and if you're keeping score, you'll wind up marking your own team the winner by ignoring the historical crimes of (your favorite religion here). . .remember kids, your prophet despised the hypocrites the most. . .

Really now, how can anyone have a favorable view of this religion based upon its history past and recent?

Discounting all its atrocities in the past, let's move to the 21st Century. As recently as the Spring of 2001 Mohammedan mobs were forcing conversion of Christians on the Moluccas Islands in Indonesia. Don't tell me about the "religion of peace."

No more or no less than any other Religion.I have met people from almost every faith you can think of,and there are good people and bad ones of every stripe.

There are some extremists who give Islam a bad name, but for the most part it is a peaceful and fulfilling religion. I am not personally a Muslim, and I have to admit that some of their customs bewilder me. However, I realize that there are billions of Muslims in this world, and not all of them are militants who want to blow up Americans.

Depends. The militant groups such as the ones responsible for the deaths of theses hostages need to be executed.

My views have definitely changed since viewing the video of Nick Berg's beheading. However, I do realize that there are good and bad people in most things, but I will never understand how so many people allow themselves to be duped. Presently, I have an unfavorable opinion of Islam. I simply do not see the use or purpose for it...as with most organized religions.

Kill the infidel whereever you find them. Kill the Christian and the Jew, If your wife acts up beat her lightly, etc etc. I read this in the Qu'ran when I was researching Islam, this is just some of the stuff I read. I am not against people who practice Isalm but like most religions I dont like most of it's teachings.

I don't know enought about Islam to make a judgement about the religeon itself but I don't believe they are terrorists nor do I believe they teach their members to be. If that were true then 1.3 billion suicide bombers would have no trouble at all wiping out Israel and western civilization.

UPDATE- CONGRATULATIONS TO GONEAWAY FOR FINALLY ANNOUCING TO THE WORLD JUST HOW BIGOTED, RUDE, HATEFUL AND MISERABLE SHE REALLY IS. TAKES A LOT OF COURAGE FOR A SO-CALLED CHRISTIAN TO MAKE SUCH A COMPLETE ASS OF HERSELF....Sometimes I'm amazed at how intolerant people can be towards certain religions. It appears to be Islam's turn at the whipping post right now, but please remember that Islam is the religion of 1.3 billion people and to say that every one of them is a hate-monger and a killer is misguided at best and hateful at worst. I know my religion is suffering from a real image crisis right now and what the vast majority of peaceful muslims need to do is make a meaningful break from the intolerant pockets that seem to be popping up all over the world. People also need to quit focusing on the violent aspects of the Koran. I know there is some violent stuff in there but believe me, the average muslim does not feel the need to slaughter infidels or make jihad against any and all things Western. After all, the Bible says execute those who work on the sabbath so the Koran is not the only holy book with some violent overtones. Anyway, comparing books and religions is not the point. The point is that 95% of muslims around the globe are tolerant peace loving people just trying to make their way in the world like we all are. Don't judge a whole religion based on the actions of some loons who are blasphemizing Islam for their sick means. We Muslims need to stand up and separate ourseves from them and make more of an effort to get the real face of Islam seen. As always, I will gladly take any questions or talk about my faith with anyone on this forum who wants to know more. Mail me if you have any questions! (Don't worry, I'm not out to convert anyone).BOTTOM LINE- NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS AND THOSE WHO CLAIM THEY ARE NEED TO GROW UP!

I've never been keen on writing about religions because that's a highly personal matter. Each of us go about communicating with God in our own individual ways. Muslims are not evil people who seek to destroy the world. Islam is a relgion like any other, it contains as much violence as the Bible does. Indeed, many of the tenets of Islam were borrowed from the Bible. Islamic culture is far more holistic than the Christian faith, private and public lives are much more mixed here. So that's why sometimes you see a lot of political rhetoric dressed up in religious doctrine in this faith. Indeed, one of the reasons for the establishment of the Islamic faith was political. There's nothing supernatural about the whole thing. Muhammad wanted to unify the tribes of Saudi Arabia for the purpose of invading other lands further afield. Arabia was overpopulated and the dry desert land couldn't sustain the people. So in the generations after Muhammad, Islam spread along with the conquering Arabs from Persia to Spain. They never required people to convert to Islam, but a lot of people did because the Arabs used it as a glue to hold society together much like with Christianity did during the reign of the Late Roman Emperor Constantine. While Europe was stuck in the Dark Ages, a time when Christian fundamentalism took root there coinicidentally enough, Arab culture and society were making advances in agriculture, technology, science, philosophy, and mathematics. The Greek classics were preserved by the Arabs. The Muslims lost their first place status only when the Europeans got out of their slumber and began their Crusades to the Middle East to recover Palestine. At that point, the Europeans were introduced to Arab ideas which laid the groundwork for the Renaissance over 100 years later. As trade routes changed in the 1400's with the advent of new sailing technology in Europe, the Middle East began to get locked out of the lucrative Europe-India trade system. A long period of stagnation began; Arabs began to look to religion as a solution to all their problems which gave rise to theocratic movements like Wahhabism, which combine religion and politics. It wasn't much different than the Dark Ages in Europe. Political, economic and social considerations determine the evolution of religious movement many times. Religious fanaticism is not unique to any one religion. There are Christian fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalists and yes, even those peace loving Buddhists have their own home grown fundamentalists. They are trying to preserve an idealized version of a traditional society that never was. At base, this kind of thinking is not healthy at all. They are regressive by nature, not progressive. Fundamentalists don't have any answers by far and away, they never really change any minds with their drama and emotionalism. Now religion itself is fine, it helps sustain a lot of people in their faith and that is more than fine, but don't go around telling people they're going to hell. The Catholic church is especially good at laying up the guilt trip, if you don't go to church and give them money, then you're going to roast with the worst of them. After all, it's God who makes those decisions, it's not for us to judge. The fundamentalist types need to stop trying to play God. Of course, this is a very broad critique of religion as a whole, you certainly can apply this is Islam, the reality is that this religion is no worse than any other. The bottom line, to go to war over such trivial matters like differences in relgious habits is very primordial and one can only hope that we've moved beyond this point. It's clearly obvious that we haven't. Witness Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, and Kashmir in India.

I'm one of that heretical minority in the U.S. that has a favorable impression of Islam. To judge the entire religion--and it is HUGE, people, way bigger in scope, history, and style than most realize--based on the actions of a radical, hate-obsessed fringe group is akin to judging Christianity based on the actions of the Aryan Nation, or the campaigns of Cortez and Pizarro. We have Islam to thank for keeping the flame of learning and rational inquiry burning bright during the darkest of times after the fall of Rome--while Paris, London and Rome were inhabited by murderous, ignorant fanatics, Baghdad, Granada and Seville were centers of civilization. Go look at the Taj Mahal and tell me that this most beautiful creation in the entire world was built by a representative of a religion of hate. Islam is an entire WORLD.

What people need to realize is that just because terrorists are terrorists it doesn't mean that people who are like them are. Not all muslims are pro-terror, you can see that from me. And if you can't see that, then quite frankly your not the sharpest tool in the box. I am a muslim, I do not support terrorism nor am I a terrorist. I've met hundreds of muslims, not one them are like that either. Sure, some of them are a bit racist, most noticibally and specifically against blacks from the Bronx. But those are just a handful of people. People underestimate the size of islam. Hundreds of muslims are terrorists. Great, but that makes a minority. There are an estimated 1.5 billion muslims in the world, more everyday, so that means the remaining hundreds of millions of muslims across the world are being descriminated because of this small fraction of those who use their religion as an excuse for their actions to cover up their true reasons, jelousy and cowardice. So for people who don't know one thing about Islam, you don't have the right to claim if it's the religion of hate or not! You can't say it has violent passages in the holy Quaran if you haven't read a single translated word of it! DO NOT THINK that just because some crackpot on a website or someone like Jack Chick would tell you these things, it doesn't mean it's true!

I'm not religious, so I don't know much about Islam or its customs, but I feel the same way with Islam that I do for any other religion--it's the interpretation that differs from person to person. The few Muslims that I know are very sweet and pleasant people, and they do not believe in killing other people any more than any other religion does. In fact, they share so much in common with the Christian faith. The religion, according to http://www.religioustolerance.org, makes up about 20% of the world's population, making it the second largest relgion in the world (following Christianity at 33%). It's interesting to find that the term jihad, supposedly meaning holy war, really means internal, personal struggle towards the attainment of a noble goal? Most Muslims agree that the acts of terrorism on 9/11 have nothing to do with their peaceful religion; the terrorists falsely used relgion to justify a cause which the relgion would never support. I don't have a problem with the religion--as with any and every religion, it's the people who use religion as a reason hurt others that I would have issues with. A great website to learn about different religions: http://www.religioustolerance.org.

Hopw could my opinion of Islam be anything but unfavorable? This is a violent hateful power-hungry religion that seeks to kill anyone that thinks differently than them. Islam is synonymous with terrorism; need I say more?

Islam is a religion of killers and backwards medieval hate mongers. Islam is not even a religion; it is a political movement founded by Mohammed to combat those whom Mohammed regarded as enemies. Mohammed knew that the best way to combat other religions was to create one of his own in order to gain unyielding, zealot-like support for him and his ideas. Islam is a religion of hate, not peace. It is not a coincidence that 99% of the terror and hate in this world come from the Middle East and have Islamic roots. A religion of peace does not strap bombs to themselves. A religion of peace does not declare death toward neighboring countries and peoples. A religion of peace does not teach their children to hate women, stone women, force them to be supplicants and hide their face, and sew their vaginas shut if they suspect an infidelity. A religion of peace does not hijack jet aircraft and fly them into buildings full of innocent people. Islam must be destroyed.

Islam is probably the most normal religion I have ever studied. Every other religion tries to promote killing and intolerance. The koran never once states for a Muslim to ever kill an infidel. Christianity, however, does condone massacre of others beside their own.

I never studied much into Islam, but I have met lots of Muslims throughout my life and all of them were good, prosperous, kind-hearted, loving people. I know that they were taught to be polite and law-abiding by their Muslim parents before them. I figure that if Islam teaches them to be good people, It's not bad. As for Christians, I've met so many bad ones that it, unfortunatley, has driven me away from the Catholic church. Especially the homophobic, racist, and nasty Catholics who hurt me deeply. I can tell you that I have loved more Muslims than Catholics. Islam must do some good.