Can Islam Survive the Century?

If you took a poll of Western students and asked them to write down the first ten things that come to mind when they hear the word “Islam”, how many would write down “9/11?”

What about the first five things that come to mind? Even though I haven’t performed this experiment, I think I know the answer.

For a religion that’s existed for centuries and whose believers have discovered hydrochloric acid and invented algebra, it’s insane that many people associate Islam with the actions of a few radicals within the last few decades.

This is no small subject matter. There are estimated to be 1.8 billion Muslims in the world today. That’s a big number. In fact, it’s so big that it’s nearly impossible to imagine. Let’s put one billion in perspective as an amount.

To count from 0 to 1,000,000,000 nonstop would take you about 30 years! To count all the current Muslims in the world one by one, it would take almost sixty years. That’s a lot of people who more or less believe the same thing — and how well do Westerners really understand them?

I’ve been learning about Islam as part of my expanding curiosity toward any and all religions (well, barring Scientology, that is), and I came across a book called Islam Explained by Tahar Ben Jellhoun.

The book unfolds as a conversation between a Muslim father and his curious son who’s trying to separate what Islam is from what it’s known for.

That book greatly inspired this article but there are a few key differences.

While this article strives to teach the basics of Islam, it retains an uncompromising critical eye for its shortcomings. Nothing is beyond reproach; nothing is beyond questioning; especially not a belief system that guides billions of people around the world.

I’m not going to paint a rosy picture of Islam based on “how it should be” because we can’t evaluate any religion without paying attention to the actions of its followers and it would be willfully ignorant to pretend that widespread Islamic terrorism didn’t exist right now.

That said, we should always strive to understand before passing judgment, and even then, we must pass our judgment in the context of many considerations and counterarguments.

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