Commentator Huma Munir offered an excellent portrayal of the Qur'anic vision that has been corrupted to justify a violent political reality ("Real Muslims don't terrorize," April 7).
Somali-born American activist and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali has labeled Islamic radicals the "Medina Muslims," a minority living by the strict rules Sharia religious law that seeks to impose it on everybody else. A second, larger group she calls the "Mecca Muslims," who abide by the religious rules without violence but live in uneasy tension with a modernity that is seeping into and corrupting their religious belief system.
Our leaders continue to espouse the shallow mantra that the Taliban, al-Qaida and Islamic State are fringe elements because they seem to believe that the people who voted for them can't handle the truth.
After Muhammad died, in 632, successor caliphs quickly spread Islam across North Africa into Spain and Muslim armies advanced until they were defeated at the battle of Tours, not far from Paris, in 732.
Conquered Christians had three choices — convert, die or live in the shadows paying a tax with no proselytizing and no building or repairing of churches.
The Ottomans snuffed out the last vestiges of the Byzantine Christian Empire in 1453, when they conquered Constantinople and then advanced through Eastern Europe to the gates of Vienna. The last attack on Vienna was in 1683, after which the Ottomans were slowly driven back to Constantinople.
The British defeated the Ottomans in World War I and destroyed the caliphate. In 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood was organized to drive the British out of the Middle East and restore Muslim control. It has mutated into ancillary organizations throughout the world.
Sharia law continues to define Muslim society today. Christian missionaries and converts are subject to execution, as are women convicted of adultery, homosexuals and people who speak blasphemy against The Prophet.
From radical fundamentalist to the moderate believer, Muslims abhor our promiscuity, women's equality, mixing of the sexes, acceptance of homosexuality and the use of alcohol and drugs. But most damning is our right to believe in God — or not believe — and to decide what our own individual relationship is with Him.
Western intervention only emboldens the Medina Muslims and drives the Mecca Muslims to support their actions against the West. Ms. Ali correctly observes that the solution is an internal struggle and a reformation within Islam, and it won't come from 140 character tweets of support from the West.
The Protestant Reformation was started by John Wycliffe in 1380 preaching against papal corruption. Jan Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 for his attempts at reformation, but the movement continued. The 1500s saw the rise of Martin Luther, John Calvin and a full-blown religious war with entire regions of central Europe depopulated by the carnage.
The Thirty Years War of the 1600s ended with a re-balancing of political and religious power in Europe. The Islamic Reformation has a long enough path ahead of it without being further inflamed by intrusions from the West.
Charles Campbell, Woodstock