It is now Day Three in the ‘Big Savage House’, otherwise known as ‘Ramadan’. where religiously inspired violence in the Islamic world during Ramadan has already managed to get past a death toll of fifty. According to the Religion of Peace website which monitors Islamic terror, so far 61 people have been killed in four separate Islamic terror incidents. For comparison, the members of religions other than Islam and those ‘far right extremists’ have caused precisely zero deaths in the name of either religion or ideology.

This means that in the space of one day, from Day Two to Day Three of the 28 day Islamic festival of Ramadan, forty people have been killed in various Islamic terror attacks. Although there are many individual peaceful Muslim people, we can no longer deny that Islam the ideology is an ideology that incites, approves of and reveres violence in various forms. Even in an average week, one that’s not associated with a religious festival that’s accompanied by an uptick of violence, Islamic terror is a constant issue. The week prior to Ramadan for example saw Islamic terrorists carry out a number of different attacks with the ultimate result that 188 people lost their lives.

Repeating the mantra that ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ doesn’t make it so, no matter how much you may want to believe it and no matter how many decent individual Muslims you may meet. Islam is different from other faiths and not in a nice way. It is a violent ideology and we do ourselves nor those Muslims who want to see reform or who want to get out of Islam, no favours by failing to acknowledge the violent character of Islam.