By Andrew L. Jaffee

Virtually every contemporary Western leader has expressed the view that Islam is a peaceful religion and that those who commit violence in its name are fanatics who misinterpret its tenets. This widely circulated claim is false, says Davis.

- WorldNetDaily, November 2, 2006

Gregory M. Davis, author of a new book entitled “Religion of Peace?: Islam’s War Against the World,” answers the question, “Is Islam inherently violent and expansionist?” Davis’ work is definitely worth the read. Here he is in his own words:

The mistake Westerners make when they think about Islam is that they impose their own views of religion onto something decidedly outside Western tradition. Because violence done in the name of God is “extreme” from a Western/Christian point of view, they imagine that it must be so from an Islamic one. But unlike Christianity, which recognizes a separate sphere for secular politics (”Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”), Islam has never distinguished between faith and power. While Christianity is doctrinally concerned primarily with the salvation of souls, Islam seeks to remake the world in its image. According to orthodox Islam, Sharia law – the codified commandments of the Quran and precedents of the Prophet Muhammad – is the only legitimate basis of government. Islam is in fact an expansionary social and political system more akin to National Socialism and Communism than any “religion” familiar to Westerners. Islamic politics is inevitably an all-or-nothing affair in which the stakes are salvation or damnation and the aim is to not to beat one’s opponent at the polls but to destroy him – literally as well as politically.