Last Thursday Fulani herdsmen killed the wife and nephew of a Christian in Plateau state, Nigeria in an attack on their home.

Jeffrey Moses, 26, said he and his wife, 21-year-old Ladi Jeffrey, and nephew Shadrach Zwewhie, 19, were asleep when armed herdsmen attacked their home at about 9:20 p.m. in Jebbu Miango village, Miango District, Bassa County. Ladi Jeffrey was mother to a 16-month-old baby.

Just like Boko Haram and the Islamic States in West African Province, which split off from Boko Haram in 2015, and Fulani herdsmen are well-armed and never obstructed by Nigeria’s security operatives. They invade rural Christian communities to burn them down and slaughter church and community leaders, including women and children.

Raymond Ibrahim reported that in a disturbing video released on April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State in Sinai, Egypt, executed 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama, a Christian. 

Salama appears on his knees in the video, with three men holding rifles standing behind him. The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe:  “All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels”—this latter part was said as the terrorist contemptuously pointed at the kneeling Christian before him—“until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.”  This is a paraphrasing of Quran 9:29, which commands Muslims to “fight the people of the book,” understood as meaning Christians and Jews, “until they pay the jizya  (monetary tribute) with willing submissiveness and feel themselves utterly subdued.”

The middle speaker continued by threatening “all the crusaders of the world”—a reference to Christians in the West—while singling out the countrymen of the one about to be slain: “as for you Christians of Egypt, this is the price of your support for the Egyptian army.” The speaker then points his rifle at the back of the Christian’s head—as chants of “jihad! jihad! jihad!” blare out—and fires at point-blank range, killing him.

Why all this killing by Islamists? Does not Islam mean “peace” as argued by Muslim apologists and like-minded Westerners?

Islam Does not Mean Peace

Last week I had a conversation on Islam with a Moroccan woman who insisted that Islam is a religion of peace because “Islam” means “peace.”

Begging to differ, aside that “Islam,” which is a verbal noun, the fourth form of the Arabic root s-l-m (al-Silm), signifies “to submit” or “to surrender,” the fourteen-hundred-year history of Islam shows that Islam is not a religion of peace. One who accepts Islam and makes such submission is a Muslim. Such a person is termed a mu’min (believer), and one who does not accept Islam is a kafir (unbeliever).

The rationale for such atrocities committed by Muslims is based on their submission to both the notions that they must kill the kafirs for Allah’s greater glory and that their acts of terror would inscribe them in a book of martyrs and that Allah would reward them with instant ascension into the paradise that awaits all faithful Muslims:

• Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment; Except for those who repent before you apprehend them. And know that Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. —Sura 5, 33–34
• He who goes forth in Allah’s path and dies or is killed is a martyr, or has his neck broken through being thrown by his horse or by his camel, or is stung by a poisonous creature, or dies on his bed by any kind of death Allah wishes is a martyr and will go to Paradise. —Sunan Abu Dawood, Book 15, hadith 2493

The late Nabeel Qureshi, a convert to Christianity from Islam who then became politically active against the Islamization of our society, stated:

“If we understand that to be Islam, then there’s no question that Islam has violence in its original form. Muhammad used violence to accomplish his ends…. We can just quote the words of Muhammad. If we go to Sahih Bukhari, for example, this is the volume of Muhammad’s traditions that is understood to be the most trustworthy . . . What (Muhammad) says is, ‘I have come to fight those who do not say, “La ilaha illallah Muhammadur Rasulullah.” In other words, ‘I have come to fight those who do not proclaim Islam, and if they do not say this, their persons and their property are not safe from me.‘”

“If Muhammad is,” says Qureshi, “according to these traditions, using violence to accomplish his ends, I simply cannot see how we can call it a religion of peace.”

In condemning the London Bridge attack in 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May said: “They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism.”

Unfortunately, today because of politically correct policies of NGOs, such as the  United Nation’s Defamation of Religions Resolution, which is sponsored by the Saudi-backed Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, soft law is being used to coerce governments to prevent objective and critical investigation into the Islamic religious texts Muslim terrorists quote to justify their acts of terrorism. Any such attempt would render the person(s) an Islamophobe.

The concept of “Islam is a religion of peace” came into use in modern times when Islamists ceased being aggressors and portrayed themselves as victims. In an article published by the Middle East Media Research Institute, writer Sawt Al-Hind says:

“The slogan, ‘Islam is the religion of peace,’ repeated continuously by apologetic du’at [Islamic preachers] while trying to appease the West and their cronies, is one of the efforts to water down and change the meaning of Islam.”

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Mario Alexis Portella is a priest of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy. He has a doctorate in canon law and civil law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome; he also holds a M. A. in Medieval History from Fordham University, as well as a B.A. in Government & Politics from St. John’s University. He is also author of Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up.

Book available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or WestBow Press.