Islamic Extremism?

Niger State, Nigeria. A crowd of angry Muslim men recently stoned and clubbed a woman to death, overpowering the police who were seeking to shelter her. What act had this woman committed to deserve so violent a death? Murder? Theft? Adultery? While any of these could have gained her a death sentence, it was none of the above. This brazen criminal had been seen speaking to a group of Muslim youths about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in therefore had dishonored God's prophet, Mohammed. Under Islamic Shar'iah Law (which the Muslim population of Nigeria, a land split 50/50 between Muslims and Christians, seeks to impose upon the whole country), the mob was simply carrying out justice.

The West shakes it head and sighs, "Islamic Extremism." After all, real Muslims, those who live in the multi-cultural land of tolerance that is America, would never do such things. That is true, America's Muslims have learned well the lessons of modern, critically interpreted theology that so many in Western Christendom have come to embrace; in a word, "don't take your faith too seriously". Don't read the sacred texts as if the writers meant what they said. Don't look to the traditions which form the very foundations of the faith, those things which carried it through centuries of hardship and trial. Don't side with God when the rational, enlightened people of earth oppose Him.

But if one has the ability to step back, away from the current trends of thought which pervade society, one may ask, "Who are the extremists?" That minority which waters down and reinterprets their religion in order to become accepted by a society that places no value on religious conviction, or the fanatical mobs of Nigeria, and Indonesia, Syria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, Egypt, the Phillipines, etc., who, like the generations before them, are following the precepts of their fanatical religion?