One day soon, this somber young man plans to offer up a final prayer and then blow himself up along with as many U.S. or Iraqi soldiers as he can reach. Marwan Abu Ubeida says he has been training for months to carry out a suicide mission. He doesn't know when or where he will be ordered to climb into a bomb-laden vehicle or strap on an explosives-filled vest but says he is eager for the moment to come. While he waits, he spends much of his time rehearsing that last prayer. "First I will ask Allah to bless my mission with a high rate of casualties among the Americans," he says, speaking softly in a matter-of-fact monotone, as if dictating a shopping list. "Then I will ask Him to purify my soul so I am fit to see Him, and I will ask to see my mujahedin brothers who are already with Him." He pauses to run the list through his mind again, then resumes: "The most important thing is that He should let me kill many Americans" (Ghosh).

So begins another tragic example of unnecessary death in the increasingly complicated relationship between the Middle East and the West. However, a particularly remarkable aspect of this young Iraqi man's story, detailed in a recent Time magazine article, is his devotion to his religion. Ubeida details how, with a final prayer, he will impel Allah, the Muslim God, to allow his suicide to kill the maximum possible number of other people. This homicidal impulse and the religion of Islam seem inextricably linked in the young man's mind. If deep religious conviction is enmeshed in such a horrifying conclusion, a difficult question remains: Is Islam an impetus to violence?

My interest in this topic began in an attempt to resolve a personal hypocrisy. Being a nonreligious person, I have often avoided day-to-day matters of faith. Religion often seemed like a sealed-off, forbidden place where someone like me, a skeptic and a doubter, should not venture. Still, however, I have always been interested in the general, theoretical study of religion, despite keeping myself, by any means, from the same forbidden areas in everyday life. I have always enjoyed reading and talking about this subject in a rational way, as a study in history and culture. After these brief and infrequent inquiries, I dealt with twin impulses regarding religion and its place in the modern world; one was an ambivalent equity toward religion, a result of my commitment to open-mindedness and freedom, and the other was a marked distrust and suspicion of religious faith and practice. The former was theoretical, the latter practical, and rarely did the two intersect in my brief and superficial encounters with Christianity. When the September 11^th attacks by radical Muslims occurred, though, the wall I had constructed between these two reactions to religion collapsed, and I was left in an awkward situation. I had known very little about Islam prior to the attacks, which made this dilemma even more difficult to untangle. On the one hand, I did not want to discriminate against any one religion or disrespect another's free choice; on the other, I felt my judgments and fears - that this faith was unnecessary and dangerous and scary - coming to fruition. I saw myself as a hypocrite, wishing for religion's demise in my own world, yet wishing for religious freedom in everyone else's. Islam, in particular, seemed plagued by similar quandaries in the American culture, especially after the events of the last few years have pushed it to the forefront. These wider controversies only caused me to ask more questions about Islam. The hope of a resolution of a personal inconsistency, as well as a more universal one, is what led me to this research.

Every American has as much at stake in the true nature of Islam's ties to violence as religious scholars or foreign dignitaries. This question touches on national interests as well as the finances, safety, and social conscience of ordinary citizens. The United States' military and diplomatic resources are pushed to the limit in Islamic countries like Iraq and Afghanistan in an attempt to suppress a terrorist threat that is almost exclusively Muslim. According to an article on Salon.com, more than a million American soldiers have been deployed, as of April 2005, to fight in post-9/11 wars (Benjamin). And according to CBSNews.com, Congress has approved approximately $300 billion, funded primarily by taxpayers, in that same time period for use by the military, for reconstruction, and for other aspects of the current war on terrorism ("War Costs"). While the U.S. is currently using such extreme military and economic tools, however, it is the responsibility of all citizens to understand the exact target of these measures. Political evil and corruption is the most immediate answer and one that seems to guide American combat overseas. However, might there also be some substance in the fact that a common religion unites almost all enemies of the United States? If so, it is possible that the billions of dollars of funding and the thousands of lives that have gone into the war zones of the Middle East have not reached their true potential. Could theologians combat terrorism more effectively than soldiers? This question also cuts to the core of basic human instincts. When does personal safety supersede societal consideration when considering a religion like Islam? When boarding an airplane and noticing a Middle Eastern man reading a holy book, one must know whether that book, those religious words, will impel that man to hijack the plane and murder hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people. It is for these reasons that all citizens should fully understand the nature of Islam toward violence.

In any analysis of a subject as ancient and diverse as Islam, many new terms and historical facts are essential for complete understanding. Muhammad, often called simply "the Prophet," is one of the religion's key human figures and is said to have lived in central Arabia in the sixth century AD (Munir 42). At forty years old, he received a series of revelations from the angel Gabriel that Muslims believe constitute the entirety of the Qur'an, the holiest book of this faith (Ahmed 28). According to Smith, the religion that this Holy Prophet heard and soon spread was monotheistic, accordant with the basic tenets of Christianity and Judaism - with which it shares Jesus, Moses, and many other prophets - and held as its primary decree a follower's unquestioning submission to Allah, the one true god. The name "Islam," in fact, is derived from the Arabic for "surrender," as well as from the root for "peace" (Smith 12). Followers of Muhammad and any who practice his religion are known as Muslims. However, turmoil over the succession of Islamic leadership, immediately following Muhammad's death, divided the faithful into two distinct political sects, the Sunni and the Shi'a (Kapuściński 81). Also, a theological, rather than political, split occurred in the eighteenth century with the emergence of Wahhabism, a fundamentalist version of Islam that currently dominates Saudi Arabia (Qureshi 16). A unique aspect of Islam, furthermore, is its ability to transcend the normal sphere of influence in which religions like Christianity and Judaism usually exist, contained within the mind and expressed only on certain holy days. Muslims are incredibly devoted and, instead of keeping Islam within the usual framework, have extended their religion into nonreligious areas. For example, Muslims have divided the world as mankind knows it into two distinct theaters of existence.  According to Gudel, the Dar al-Islam, the first of these theaters, represents the realm of all things Islamic, geographically, militarily, and culturally. This concept is comparable to "Christendom" in Christianity and, in a modern sense, is similar to the West, a geographic and ideological denotation of Western Europe and America. The second, the Dar al-Harb, literally "house of war," represents all things non-Muslim (Gudel 21). Those who are not loyal to the one true faith, i.e. Islam, are known as infidels.  An objective of the faith, many would argue, is to convert infidels, make the Dar al-Harb more Muslim and, in so doing, extend the boundaries of the Dar al-Islam. A religious process known as jihad, or "struggle," is a spiritual method that seeks to accomplish this (Hoveyda 2). Jihad is, for most Muslims, a personal experience. However, many Muslim extremists and terrorists have defined their acts as jihad, and, in the Western press, it has often been translated as "holy war" (Firestone 37). Perhaps with these key terms at one's disposal, this research may yield a stronger result.

Many experts are resolved in their determination that Islam is an impetus to violence.  This assertion is organized into three distinct arguments. The first maintains that religious literature, namely the Qur'an, is extremely violent and advocates the killing of infidels. The second argument makes clear that throughout history, Islam has been used to justify violent acts.  And finally, political outgrowths of Islam are responsible for many acts of terrorism and destruction. These arguments, in addition to the main assertion that unites them, are supported by countless books and articles. A review of literature for this first position references Jihad by Gilles Kepel and Unholy War by John Esposito. In addition, Sam Harris' The End of Faith and Daniel Pipes' Militant Islam Reaches America were read, and they offered valuable studies of modern Islamic terror. Reuven Firestone's Jihad also provided essential information on a controversial aspect of theology as it applies to Islam. Furthermore, many experts will be interviewed for the position that Islam is an impetus to violence. Personal research will include interviews with Muhammad Hussain, ex-Muslim humanist and researcher of Islam; Brigitte Gabriel, founder of American Congress for Truth; and Abul Kasem, author and contributor in Islamic study. This literature and these experts have all been studied to explore the belief that Islam is an impetus to violence.

On the other side of the argument, there are those who would argue that Islam is not an impetus to violence. Their position can also be organized into three points. First, they believe that only radical Muslim sects, not modern, moderate Islam, has violent tendencies. The second argument states that violent acts tied to Islam have political and ethnic causes, not religious ones.  Finally, they maintain that Islam's violent reputation is merely a culture clash. For the review of literature for this research's second position, many books and articles were consulted. Bernard Lewis' "The Roots of Muslim Rage" provided significant background information. Ladan and Roya Boroumand's "Terror, Islam, and Democracy" and Bruce Lawrence's Shattering the Myth were also valuable resources. Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" and Lewis' Crisis of Islam provided essential information on theories pertaining to Islam's present situation. The personal research for the position that Islam is not an impetus to violence consists of interviews with Dr. Ervand Abrahamian, a professor in the history department of the City University of New York; Rev. Patrick Gaffney, an author and anthropology professor at Notre Dame University; and Dr. Itzchak Weissman, a history professor at the University of Haifa. Works of literature and personal research also significantly support the notion that Islam is not an impetus to violence.

At the conclusion of this paper, after completion of the requisite research and a thorough review of the positions, I will make a warranted assertion.