Why Islam isn't a religion of peace

I have viewed recently the debate, Islam is a religion of peace at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGvMo47pw7Q

The late great Christopher Hitchens and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two men I admire greatly, shared more than a massive intellect. They both believed that it was moral and right, by whatever means, to rid the world of dictators. It is a motherhood concept with which few would disagree. We all like to see the downtrodden get revenge on the bullies. Hitchens probably got his mindset from days at boarding school - Bonhoeffer was immersed in a sea of power plays in both his theological and day-to-day life.

But the rather disappointing element of the Hitchens and Bonhoeffer thesis, shared with that most articulate and compelling Islamic critic, Ayaan Hirsi Ali , is the disregard for the history that underpins the rise of dictators to power. There is something almost deliberately delusional about ascribing evil to a dictator, conveniently ignoring the mass of factors that sweep a dictator to power.

If you choose to see the Holocaust as the end game of a demented mind, then the answer obviously is to rid the world of demented minds. Much more difficult and complex, however, is deep analysis of what conditions prevailed that made that demented mind so attractive to a nation so noted for its depth of culture and thought. Did the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire by Protestantism create such disunity amongst Germans that any unifying force, no matter how sinister, was welcomed? Did the oppression of a newly unified German by wounded superpowers create such resentment by the 'underdogs' that the invasion by extreme ideology was only a matter of time, not personality?

As an historian, I cannot respect the two-dimensional views of events as simply driven by personality. It is both too glib and too convenient. But far more dangerously, it forgives the masses of their crimes of collusion. In the fervour to rid Libya of Gaddafi, we lost the clarity of perspective that would lead us to conclude that Gaddafi was a rather loose cannon in the armoury of European and US foreign policy, courted when convenient, vilified at leisure. We also ignore the decades of collusion by the population of Libya in accepting him. Why didn't this Arab spring emerge two decades earlier? What kept people quiet?

And, in the West, we still tolerate the fascism of Saudi Arabia - or rather we turn that blind eye, that eye so very useful in absolving our guilt.

A close look at Islam and Mohammed tells a story that is neither extraordinary nor exceptional. Rejected amongst his own, Mohammed finds a ready audience for his religious fervour in a place where religious turmoil was hardly foreign. His personal quest to revenge the rejection he suffered in Mecca almost certainly complemented the political imperative of Medina to challenge the dominance of Mecca.

A sour zealot gets much too much traction for his ideas and rides the back of an unlikely military victory to notoriety. Such is the accidental nature of history. An almost failed assassination attempt by an obscure Serbian, accidentally successful, on an insignificant European aristocrat lights a fire in Europe which burns beyond any of the intentions of the assassin. In what sense can we attribute the cause of the fire to the match when the heat-wave and the mountain of fuel are so obvious?

If the unifying effect of Islam first on the Caliphate and later on arguably the most successful Empire of Europe - the Ottoman Empire - is down to one man, one book and one God, then its time for historians to close down their university faculties and go work at MacDonalds. If religion does more than simply post-rationalise ideologies that rise out of the ashes of failed power, then we really are doomed, because an American president, when things get really bad in the US, really will press the button to annihilate those whom God rejects.

It really is time we stepped out from behind the mantel of personality and religion based schemes of guilt and recognised the inherent propensity of us all to follow blindly the dictators, whatever they may be. There is no less compulsion in profligate capitalism, where a bank or country can be too big to fail, to serve a master than in the dark streets of Islamic Iran.

There is no religion of peace. Peace is that period when hawkish forces do not dominate. No religion creates this, just as no religion drives people to hostilities or atrocities. Only the human inclinations towards contentment or domination drive peace or violence, via the complex machinations of power structures. The whole "religion is the author of ..." thesis is fundamentally flawed and we should, frankly, "get over it".

You can quote as many Qu'ran verses as you like, make as many claims on Mohammed as you like and give as many facts about the actions of Islamist as you like, but in the end you are colluding with those who build elaborate smoke screens for human nature. No God, Bible or dogma makes you act either peacefully or violently - these are choices made from complex social and neural impulse and imperatives which we are still struggling to understand.