By Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn

In the Qu’ran, God himself anticipated earthly extremism. “We have made you a middle people,” Allah says to the Muslims in Chapter 2, verse 143—a suggestion that Islam was founded, in part, as a means by which the people of the faith might keep the things of this world in perspective and in proportion. In the popular imagination of the first years of the 21st century, though, Islam (like Christianity and Judaism at different times and in different places) is more likely to be thought of as violent and literal rather than peaceable and interpretative. It would be politically correct but pointless to act as though this were not the case.

Put bluntly and broadly, many people today wish to portray Islam as a peaceful faith with a violent few, arguing that “jihad” (literally, “struggle”) is a spiritual term encompassing the Muslim’s daily religious life and that it can only be used for armed struggles that are defensive. On the other end of the spectrum are those who believe Islam is a violent faith in which jihad is a perpetual militaristic element. The truth, it seems reasonable to say, lies somewhere in between. Believers of all kinds have killed in the name of their conception of God, or of the gods. Historically, some of the blood has been shed in what some traditions think of as “just wars,” some in unjustifiable atrocities, some in battles of conquest. And yet believers of all kinds have done great good in the name of their conception of God, or of the gods, in acts of mercy, charity and liberation.

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