Muslims have a whole lot of work to do. The media, isn't helping them one bit. I was raised in northern Nigeria, I knew how peaceful and tolerant we all lived in the early 80's. Imagine a young Christian child going into a mosque to nap after playing football with his Muslim friends on Saturdays. The imam will wake me up to go home when it's time for 4pm prayers.
Sometimes, I just sit and wonder How bad things have turned. In my secondary school, I had Muslims beating me in Bible knowledge and we joked about it, even my sisters were given Muslim names by our neighbours at their birth, and my dad called their kids Christian names. Musa was Moses etc.
We did sadakha (alms giving together).

Extremism has really polluted Islam, and nobody is going to fix it for you guys. The onus rests on you squarely.

Jazakumullahi Khairan for this thoughtful piece.

We just need to strive hard in becoming a real Muslim. Islam never prohibit Western education or any form of education. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) even implore us to seek knowledge as far as end of the world.

It is disheartening what type of anti-Islam lecture and lesson some scholars teach their students/followers for them to be perpetuating these criminal act called terrorism. May Almighty Allah open their heart to learn the truth (Amin)

...I am a Muslim and not a terrorist!

Nice article @op but you can't deny the fact that those miscreants wether BH or ISIS or another group are mus.lims added with the fact that wherever there is a religious crises whether Christians, jews or Hindus there is always a muslim story attached to it. I would say that these inter-religious crises is usually due to actual or potential aggression of Muslims against these other religions.

Action speaks louder than words all this long write-up will not erase what is on ground. STOP THE KILLING, STOP THE BOMBING. Then and only then we shall see the peace in Islam.

Diz reminds me of one india film I watched ..."My name is khan" .....
It all goes lyk diz ..... Tell d whole world , tell d president of Nigeria ,USA .....
Tell them lyk diz ... "Mr president , my name is mushin and I am nt terrorist " ...

san316: It happens everyday. I was in a bus in jos and a call came in. I picked and said ''assalam alaikum'' and all eyes turn on me and i was like ''kilo de''. May God nt make their actions discourage us from being who we are.

The bolded 'Their'; Does this refer to actions of non-muslims or the actions of muslims?

My only quetion is this:
Is Jihad compulsory in Islam or not?

When we label and stereotype poor fellow human beings for no reason,we play into the hands of the terrorist. We give them exactly what they want; a divided citizenry and a chaotic society. One in which it is easy for their ideologies to thrive and for their recruitment to soar. They will tell those who aren't like them-" see the people that you want to live with they don't like you",see the govt that you want to serve they can't take care of you and they can't protect you, see come to us, we are the only ones who can help you". Why do thier leaders always hide from death while they send some other people to go to fight and die? Why was Bin laden living in the most peaceful side of pakistan while his group was creating havoc all over? They're all cowards at the end of the day. And they all die like one. Hitler,bin laden,Gaddaffi, mladic etc.

.

A very intolerant religion. Mtcheeewww

Op,go and watch 'my name is Khan'.a lot of you mayn't be terrorists but prominent figures and ur imams are to be blamed.
Hw Dr faysal brainwashed his followers so they accepted to fight for Allah.
The beauty of Xtainity is dat God fights for himself,in evangelism you preach and allow the holyspirit to work in the hearts of those ppl.you can't force me to accept an deity just dat way.

san316: It happens everyday. I was in a bus in jos and a call came in. I picked and said ''assalam alaikum'' and all eyes turn on me and i was like ''kilo de''. May God nt make their actions discourage us from being who we are.

Terrorist....? Чơυ all are HATERS!

I am DYT, I am a MUSLIM and I am not a terrorist

If Islam is tolerant, why is McLatunji your mod?

kstyle2: Not all muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are muslims. Dats a fact. Proven and tested

It's not a "fact" actually, only a figment of your imagination.

And how did you "prove" and "test" it? In a laboratory or on your phone?

Following...to read later

yousee: Muslims have a whole lot of work to do. The media, isn't helping them one bit. I was raised in northern Nigeria, I knew how peaceful and tolerant we all lived in the early 80's. Imagine a young Christian child going into a mosque to nap after playing football with his Muslim friends on Saturdays. The imam will wake me up to go home when it's time for 4pm prayers.
Sometimes, I just sit and wonder How bad things have turned. In my secondary school, I had Muslims beating me in Bible knowledge and we joked about it, even my sisters were given Muslim names by our neighbours at their birth, and my dad called their kids Christian names. Musa was Moses etc.
We did sadakha (alms giving together).

Extremism has really polluted Islam, and nobody is going to fix it for you guys. The onus rests on you squarely.

Not extremism, its ignorance of the true teaching of the religion . However, we are trying our best to fight these disease, it's jst that the media is not helping mattters.

This write up seems to be blaming everybody but themselves that is the imams and Muslim scholars propagating terrorism. Okay pls answer this question why is it that every where there is a religious war, I mean everywhere, if you check Muslim will be mentioned there,? Abeg you guys need to start by dis owning all those perpetrating this evil and distance yourselves from all those them also let you lives be examples and slowly the populace would come to accept but don't blame anyone for being weary.

darqly:

The bolded 'Their'; Does this refer to actions of non-muslims or the actions of muslims?

The actions of the stereotyping christians and that of the extremist misguided muslims. Satisfied?

Abiagirl777: Op,go and watch 'my name is Khan'.a lot of you mayn't be terrorists but prominent figures and ur imams are to be blamed.
Hw Dr faysal brainwashed his followers so they accepted to fight for Allah.
The beauty of Xtainity is dat God fights for himself,in evangelism you preach and allow the holyspirit to work in the hearts of those ppl.you can't force me to accept an deity just dat way.

Nobody is forcing u to accept anything, am sure if every Muslim is a killer, lagos will be no go area for u.

The OP is right. When I was serving in one of d state in d east, some muslims do hide their name or their religion so as to avoid d stereotypes agaisnt muslim.
Am a muslim and nt a terrorist, God forbid for be to be a terrorist cos terrotist abode is hell if dey dont repent.
Islam os against killing of innocent souls.

kstyle2: Not all muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are muslims. Dats a fact. Proven and tested

Who could have been a worse terrorist than Hitler who killed 6 million jews. Was Adolf Hitler a muslim? No!

Bush fooled the world and invaded Iraq on the pretext that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, this he later aplogized for, saying he was misled.

Nevertheless, Bush had killed millions of Iraqis during the US invasion of Iraq on the pretext that Sadam had weapons of mass destruction. People died, women made widows and Children turned orphans because of the terrible nature of a single man. Is George Bush a Muslim?

Pls bro, don't be myopic! Not all terrorists are muslims. An evil person can hide under the cloack of religion to perpetrate evil.

muhsin: Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim
www.muhsin.in
muhsin234 (Twitter)

“What is your name?” Muhammad. And all eyes would turn around.

It often starts just like that, for to them, every Muslim is a potential threat, a terrorist. It is extremely awkward, if not annoying, to someone like me who was born and reared in an almost 99% Muslims community. Hitherto I didn’t know that being Muslim means that much and weighs that loads; some feel even reluctant to disclose their belief. Muslims living in multi-religious and non-Muslims majority societies today have a lot of stories to tell. The story is sometimes nasty in conservative, religiously touchy and volatile places like India, where I presently reside. Although home to about 200 million Muslims, it was discovered in a recent survey that some of them have to masquerade as Hindus to sustain their businesses. This happens due to the schism, and sometimes animosity, between them and other faithful, particularly the majority Hindus.

But why all the fuss and the buzz, you may ask. Generally identity, especially religious one, is highly polemical and extremely abstract. For instance, my ‘Muslimness’ is neither determinable based on my appearance and gait, nor proportional to my humanity and humane. Despite the whopping population of more than 1.5 billions worldwide, hundreds of millions of Muslims live in shambles due to the raging religious stereotype, which results to marginalisation and sometimes worse, as aforesaid. Needless to say, the reports of suicide bombs and other terror acts allegedly perpetuated by some miscreants calling themselves Muslims is a commonplace today. Al Qaeda, IS/ISIS, Boko Haram, etc are household names around the world. But this can’t and shouldn’t, nonetheless, justify the unjust treatment of others who can equally be victims of those murderers.
[center][img]http://4.bp..com/-M09shwpoRCY/U8pORStoTsI/AAAAAAAAAdw/lQ1MfWE2NBc/s1600/Truth.jpg[/img][/center]
Wait and ask yourself: how many Muslims are engaged in such dastardly activities? The aforementioned figure is just tentative, for the population of Muslims is, against many odds, rapidly growing. So, obviously, had the larger population of them been involved in “terrorism”, no part of the world might have been in peace, for nearly 1 in 4 people worldwide is Muslim. There is no denying that the threat poses by the ‘bad guys’ among them is alarming, but not as the media would want us to believe. Muslims do not have monopoly on fanaticism. We have Christians in C.A.R, Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, Hindus in India, Jews in Israel, etc. but Muslims remain virtually the only culpable faithful. One cannot be a Muslim, a practicing one, until somewhere, someone overtly or covertly degrades him, or calls him an extremist or terrorist. What is wrong with the choice of being? I am Muslim, so let me be. Don’t infringe my individual rights. I will not do yours, either.

Do you know that extremism has no place in true Islam? Ironically however, the few who subscribed to it always make the news headlines, while others who are paragons of moderation and peace loving lots are barely heard of on the mostly western and western-influenced media. This modern world owes much to Muslims as they have a very long history in developing it. Malise Ruthven in his “excellent little book”, Islam: A Very Short Introduction published by Oxford University Press explains that:


He further notes that Muslims have excelled in virtually all other fields the world today boasts having—medicine, mathematics, astronomy, optics, architecture, poetry and philosophical thoughts, among others. Going by this alone should have made being Muslim something to be so much proud of, but the exact opposite is often obtained. Of course, one is allowed to do certain things to protect oneself under threat, but it’s no more than paranoia many a times. Be it as it may, I, for once, wouldn’t subscribe to what I couldn’t perform or display before others You are still "the" Muslim unless you renounce your belief and join them, which equates to preferring the terrestrial over the Celestial, the temporary over the permanen

A few days ago, somebody called me a Boko Haram (BH) member on Facebook for my being a Nigeria and Muslim in response to my criticism of the Egyptian president, Abdul-Fatah Al-Sisi. Saying a word against Sisi is tantamount to siding with the ousted “Islamist” president, Morsi and his outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. There’s nothing more wrong than that. Unbeknown to him, there’s a world apart from their ideology and mine. .

look at the bolded
You claim not be a fanatic and you still call other people's faith Temporary?
You spent more than 3/4 of this writeup whinging about the treatment Muslims get from others, would have loved it if you criticised your Muslim brothers killing people in the name of Allah more.
pls Spend more time telling your brothers that virgins will soon finish in paradise so that they will stop all this senseless killings
Well am glad you have secured your virgins in paradise so u dont need to kill anybody

Africaine: This write up seems to be blaming everybody but themselves that is the imams and Muslim scholars propagating terrorism. Okay pls answer this question why is it that every where there is a religious war, I mean everywhere, if you check Muslim will be mentioned there,? Abeg you guys need to start by dis owning all those perpetrating this evil and distance yourselves from all those them also let you lives be examples and slowly the populace would come to accept but don't blame anyone for being weary.

They are western media and the only threat to them is Islam, becos in Islam nothing is hiding.

Keep deceiving urseff, ur Religion is of war,terror n crime. Imagine Iraq tellin Xtians 2 abjure dia Faith, pay tax or b killed! In wch Christian dominating country r muslims bn compelled 2 leave dia Islamic f8? Hop y'all knw d Sudanese woman who escaped bn killed 4 turning 2a christian.

Islam is rili "a religion of peace".....tsheeeew!

Thank God 4a country lik ISRAEL wch wil kill n obliterate al ye Arab muslims...! Yeye pipu!

Don't blame us

Boland: My only quetion is this:
Is Jihad compulsory in Islam or not?

Please don't get it twisted, JIHAD does nt mean fighting or killing it mean striving. Technically striving to correct what is wrong. 2) to enjoin wht is good. Its a misconception to say it is fighting or killing. However, it is compulsory cause thats the goal of muslims to preach word peace.

Freelancer007:

Who could have been a worse terrorist than Hitler who killed 6 million jews. Was Adolf Hitler a muslim? No!

Bush fooled the world and invaded Iraq on the pretext that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, this he later aplogized for, saying he was misled.

Nevertheless, Bush had killed millions of Iraqis during the US invasion of Iraq on the pretext that Sadam had weapons of mass destruction. People died, women made widows and Children turned orphans because of the terrible nature of a single man. Is George Bush a Muslim?

Pls bro, don't be myopic! Not all terrorists are muslims. An evil person can hide under the cloack of religion to perpetrate evil.

I do really think you are myopic and believe alot in "we versus them" mentality which is the real cause of islamic extremism. Hitler who you mentioned started the WW2 on the backbone of Nazism and German superiority not religion. Bush was never blamed for using religion as a pretext for the Iraqi war

lekahm:

Please don't get it twisted, JIHAD does nt mean fighting or killing it mean striving. Technically striving to correct what is wrong. 2) to enjoin wht is good. Its a misconception to say it is fighting or killing. However, it is compulsory cause thats the goal of muslims to preach word peace.

through violence like uthman Dan fodio abi