Australian Army

From The Australian - article "Most ADF soldiers ‘believe Islam promotes violence and terrorism’" (subscriber-only link, sadly), reporting Dr Charles Miller, a lecturer in Strategic and Defence Studies at the Australian National Univer­sity"

“The best estimate … for the proportion of soldiers who have received cultural sensitivity training and who believe that the Muslim religion promotes violence and terrorism is 91 per cent.

“The corresponding figure for those who have not had cultural sensitivity training is 17 per cent.”

Oh dear!

Have you ever noticed how the "sensitive elite" talk lots about "sensitivity training", "deradicalisation", and so on, whilst obviously having little clue about the core belief system that these "programs" and concerned with? Not talking about Dr Miller, but about the mindless promoters of these "fix it all" programs. In this case the "fix" made the problem over 500% worse!

Disclosure here: I believe Muhammad was a prophet, but I am not a Muslim. Likewise I believe in Jesus, but I am not a Christian; repeat for Buddha, Moses, Krishna, and others.

The relevance: Having read the Quran at least three times from cover to cover, both in the normal order and in order of revelation (as well as a lot more stuff), I know vastly more about what Muhammad taught than the administrators and politicians who think that throwing money at a problem, without understanding it, might fix it.

Have you ever tried to explain something to a politician, something that you are expert in? Here's how it usually goes: the politician smiles understandingly, but one or two sentences in, their eyes glaze over. Another few sentences and it's "Yes, well, we'll look into that... ho, hum, hah, must go."

That is why politicians are generally useless with the hardest issues. Unless you are willing to "get inside" an issue, you will never be able to make useful contributions to fixing the problems. By being generally unwilling to listen, by trying to fit everything into their political narrative instead of seeking the truth, our political masters perpetually remain nothing more than useless decorations on the national stage.

I am going now, with the above disclosure on record, to give you my personal view on whether Islam is a religion of peace.