Islam Doesn't Cause Terrorism.

I am a bit of a New Atheist and so I think pointing out the delusional stupidity of religion is not only a right, but somewhat of a duty.  I don't mean picketing churches or mosques and yelling abuse, I just mean that any time religion comes up in conversation, putting forth the position of Atheism (which is that religion is a stupid delusion) is of the same worth as Christians spreading the word of Jesus.

However, the New Atheists came into being because of the 9/11/2001 attack and there change in perception from religion just being wrong, to religion being dangerous, and specifically Islam.  Sam Harris has specifically said that the beliefs of Islam cause people to be terrorists.  I think this is not only wrong, but also stupidly delusional, Atheists can do that too.

The first point is the idea that "Islamic" terrorism is some sort of special threat, when it just isn't.  In 2010 around 1,375 people died from terrorist attacks worldwide.  Your chance of dying from a terrorist attack in 2010 was about 0.000025.  This is simply not something worth worrying about.

The second point is that Islam doesn't make people become terrorists, just do the math.  There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, if we ascribe one death per terrorist and assume all of them are Muslim, then 0.00009% of Muslims are terrorists.  This means that at least 99.99991% of Muslims aren't terrorists.  If very, very, very, very nearly all Muslims aren't terrorists then Islam doesn't cause terrorism.

Now, there are certainly parts of the Qu'ran that can be used as justification to do almost anything to anybody.  Islam is a set of beliefs and morals from a deeply unenlightened time, everywhere else at the time was also a brutal, discriminative, unfair, violent place.  Read the Old Testament for something at least as unpleasant.  These justifications are used by terrorists, but justification does not mean causation.

Almost no religious people around the world actually stick to the precise words in their religious text.  Even so called "Christian Fundamentalists" or "Orthodox Jews" don't kill people for adultery, even though it is right there in the Bible (Leviticus 20:10).  Religious people don't just follow their religious texts, they start with cultural norms and then find text to back that up.

Now, compare the threat of Islam over the last few decades to the threat of capitalism, politics, or nationalism.  How many people have died in order for people to make more money?  How many people have died due to totalitarian governments?  How many people have died over their identification with one country or another?  These dwarf those from Islam.

People can find all sorts of ways to justify their desire to kill people.  Islam seems a remarkably infrequent justification for killing people, let alone causing people to kill others.  Islam doesn't cause terrorism, and if you think it does you are as stupidly delusional as those who think there is an all-powerful being in the sky who cares whether you have a ceremony or not before having sex.