A religion of peace?

From CNN:

KADUNA, Nigeria -- Dozens have been killed in northern Nigeria in rioting that erupted after a newspaper suggested the Prophet Mohammad would have approved of the Miss World beauty contest.

The death toll in the town of Kaduna was an estimated 105 with a further 521 injured taken to hospital, aid workers said on Friday.

Angry mobs in the mainly-Muslim city 600 kilometres (375 miles) northwest of Lagos burnt Christian churches and rampaged through the streets stabbing, bludgeoning and burning bystanders to death.

Shops were looted, cars were overturned and scorched while makeshift barricades were set alight. Fires also burned in mosques and windows were smashed.

Shehu Sani of the Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress told The Associated Press he watched a crowd stab a young man, force a petrol-filled tyre around his neck and burn him alive. Sani said he saw three other bodies elsewhere in the city.

I don't understand this.

I'll even grant you that all religions, at some time, have done similar atrocities. But this strikes me as beyond the pale. A newspaper remarks that the Prophet would have picked a beauty queen, and the religious fanatics go berserk in an orgy of rioting. "Orgy" is precisely the word for people who drag people from their cars and beat them to death. Who stab someone and, not content that he'll probably bleed to death, stick a gas-filled tired around his neck, light it off, and watch him burn to death. You watch people behave like this and they cease to be human. Not because of where they are. Not because of their race and ethnicity. Because of what they're doing.

And they do this was crying, "God is great!"

God is great, throw another infidel on the fire! Better than shrimp.

A religion of peace ... my ass. Religions go through phases, or so it seems, and their fundamentalist members can't adopt to the modern world. Here is an entire continent caught in the throes of the 20th century (not yet the 21st for them, really), and fundamentalist members of Islam can't hack it. Because of the inherent nature of the religion, binding itself to governing people in all aspects of their life, these members have inordinate influence. What do I mean? Islam is not just a religion, it is a method of government. Islam doesn't just rule the mosques of Saudi Arabia, it rules the country. This is the norm for Islam.

Contrast with, say, the US. It is arguable that we are a Christian nation, that many of the laws of the land (including the Constitution) are built on Christian principles. But while a priest may hold sway over his parish, he doesn't run the city (unless he's elected, of course). A bishop is not a state governor, the Pope is not President. Oh, oops, let's not forget that priest, bishop, and pope are designations of a particular flavor of Christianity. No doubt a Baptist will take offense, let alone a (gasp) Protestant. Bring on the Lutherans!

That Christian-based document, the Constitution, even has a clause that says that Christians can't run the whole show (First Amendment, separation of church and state, etc.). This would be antithecal for the Muslim world. They do not separate the two, church and state. They are one and the same.

And people riot, cry out "God is Great!" and kill hundreds.

3,000 Americans die and they cheer, clap, revel in the glory. A great victory, they say, worth of celebration. Even if I buy the argument, that they are celebrating a strike back against the Great Satan, the Oppressor of the Universe, that it's just peachy to slaughter people going about their every day lives, as opposed to military forces, I contract that with a gory battle in US history. Forgive me, but at the moment I can't remember the specific name of the battle involved, but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

World War 2, the Pacific War. The US has taken an island and the Japanese want it back. They send an invasion fleet. We hit it with all we've got and essentially blow 'em out of the water. Warships and transports, all sent to the bottom of the sea. Now the unanticipated occurs. The overwhelming majority of the Japanese landing troops survive. They're floating in the ocean. The water is warm; odds of survival are exceptionally high. Worse, for the Allies, the tide is carrying them right toward the beach they want to invade! In all likelihood, they will come ashore and the battle will be joined, precisely what sinking the Japanese fleet should have prevented.

A grim decision is reached, orders issued. For the next several hours, Navy and Army fighters and bombers strafe and bomb all those men floating helplessly in the water, killing thousands, leaving the chunks and survivors for the sharks.

I have read several accounts of this battle. Not a single one revels in it as a great victory. Not a single one cries in God's glory for the thousands slaughtered. In my mind, this was far worse than nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet was equally necessary in the context of an all-out war! Accounts tell of men returning from a single strafing run and refusing to do another. No one was ordered to make any of these strikes, mind you; all had to volunteer, understanding what they were being asked to do: wholesale slaughter. Many volunteered, accepting the necessity, and perhaps heeding the classic questions regarding who will do the hard things. "If not now, when? If not me, who?" And no doubt many reveled in the blood. But there was no widespread cheering and clapping and leaping about advancing behavior, reveling not in the victory but in the slaughter!

So excuse me if I have my doubts about a "religion of peace." All religions may claim that mantle; these practioners, in Nigeria and elsewhere, make a mockery of it.