Ok, Mark William Paules, I’ll bite back.
Islam is a comprehensive way of life highly valued by its peaceful practitioners for its sense of orienting them to their place on this Earth and giving them a moral grounding. The call to prayer is beautiful, the 5X day prayer lends further grounding to the rhythm of an individual’s daily life.
“Jihad” means individual striving for personal excellence.
As for “art”, some of Islam’s mosques are among the most exquisite creations springing from the hands of man. The giant Baniyam Buddha statues gratuitously destroyed by the Taliban (justified by one line in the Koran) had been an integral part of the Afghans’ cultural milieu for centuries.
Islamism (usually preceded by the word “radical”) is a creed dreamed up by a bunch of outlaws to whom the word “jihad” means that a “good” Muslim is necessarily required to slaughter any individuals labeled infidels, polytheists, unbelievers, Jews, even fellow Muslim shi’ites …whoever the creed declares to be non followers of Islam. Or, in the case of shi’ites, non followers of the correct Islam.
According to the creed of Radical Islamism, anyone not believing in the necessity of violent jihad cannot be a “good” Muslim.
(The alternative to death for the unbelievers is dhimmitude where you might be allowed to live in a state of submission to your Islamic superiors as you might be useful as a source of tax money.)
Let me note that Sayyid Qutb (the “inspiration” for Al Zawahiri’s version of Salafist Islam) was a genuine, Grade A down to earth crackpot.
The followers of Radical Islamism The Creed have attempted to convince themselves that they are following Allahs’ single plan for this small Earth by spreading the creed to all corners of the Earth and overwhelming (through destruction) anything that is not it.
In order to justify itself, the creed relies on certain (bellicose) passages in the Koran relative to conditions under which Mohammed lived 14 centuries ago.
