Short answer
No. People of every faith, and of none, have killed for a cause. The two World Wars, the deadliest wars in history, were fought by nations for land and power, not for Islam. A Jewish underground group bombed the King David Hotel in 1946. Christians have murdered doctors at abortion clinics in America. Buddhist nationalists have stirred up attacks on Muslims in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Hindu vigilantes have killed people in India over cows. No fair person blames Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism as a whole for these acts. Islam deserves the same fairness. Islam itself forbids extremism. The Prophet (ﷺ) warned that going to extremes in religion destroyed the nations before. The Qur'an says killing one innocent person is like killing all mankind. And most victims of terrorism today are Muslims. After attacks such as 9/11, the wars in reply killed many times more people, mostly Muslims. Most of them were innocent civilians, many of them women and children. Judge Islam by its sources, not by its worst followers.
Full explanation
Islam forbids going to extremes
The Qur'an calls the Muslims "an Ummat justly balanced": a middle nation. It tells the People of the Book: "Commit no excesses in your religion". The Prophet (ﷺ) said: beware of going to extremes in religion, for that is what destroyed those before you (Nasa'i 3057). He also said the religion is easy, and anyone who makes it too hard for himself will be overcome (Bukhari 39). So extremism is not Islam at its strictest. It is a sin that Islam warns against by name.
“Thus, have We made of you an Ummat justly balanced, that ye might be witnesses over the nations, and the Messenger a witness over yourselves; and We appointed the Qibla to which thou wast used, only to test those who followed the Messenger from those who would turn on their heels (From the Faith). Indeed it was (A change) momentous, except to those guided by Allah. And never would Allah Make your faith of no effect. For Allah is to all people Most surely full of kindness, Most Merciful.”
“O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) a messenger of Allah, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His messengers. Say not "Trinity": desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah: Glory be to Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs.”
Ibn Abbas reports that at the Hajj the Prophet (ﷺ) said: beware of going to extremes in religion, for those before you were destroyed by going to extremes in religion.
Abu Hurayra reports that the Prophet (ﷺ) said: the religion is easy, and no one makes it too hard for himself without being overcome by it. So do not go to extremes; come as close to the right way as you can, and take the good news of reward.
One innocent life is like all mankind
The Qur'an says that whoever kills a person, except for murder or spreading mischief in the land, it is "as if he slew the whole people". Even in a lawful war, it says: "do not transgress limits". The Prophet (ﷺ) forbade killing women and children (Bukhari 3015). He said whoever kills a non-Muslim living under a treaty will not smell the fragrance of Paradise (Bukhari 3166). And he disowned anyone who strikes down good and bad alike (Muslim 1848).
“On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.”
“Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors.”
Ibn Umar reports that a woman was found killed during one of the Prophet's (ﷺ) campaigns, and the Prophet forbade the killing of women and children.
Abdullah ibn Amr reports that the Prophet (ﷺ) said that whoever kills a person who has a treaty with the Muslims will not smell the fragrance of Paradise, though its fragrance reaches a distance of forty years.
Abu Hurayra reports that the Prophet (ﷺ) said: whoever attacks his community, striking down the good and the wicked alike, sparing not even the believers, and not keeping faith with those given a pledge of security, has nothing to do with me, and I have nothing to do with him.
The deadliest wars were not about Islam
The deadliest wars in history were fought in the last century, and not for Islam. The First World War killed more than ten million soldiers alone. The Second World War killed about 60 million people, soldiers and civilians. A Muslim historian counted the dead on both sides in all the Prophet's (ﷺ) battles, over ten years. The total was 1,018. The question is fair to ask of every belief, but the numbers do not point at Islam.
Its table of the dead by country gives military deaths of 2,037,000 for Germany (Reichskriegsministerium, 1934); 1,700,000 to 2,254,369 for Russia (Krivosheev); 1,357,000 to 1,397,800 for France (Huber, 1931); 1,200,000 to 1,494,200 for Austria-Hungary; 949,454 to 1,118,264 for the British Empire (Commonwealth War Graves Commission); 460,000 to 709,000 for Italy; 325,000 to 771,844 for the Ottoman Empire; 300,000 to 450,000 for Serbia; 250,000 to 335,706 for Romania; and 116,708 for the United States. Military dead in all: 8,573,058 to 10,824,240. Civilians killed: 2,250,099.
Gives about 15 million battle deaths and 45 million civilian deaths worldwide, and notes that estimates vary widely. Total dead, soldiers and civilians, by country: Soviet Union 24,000,000; China 20,000,000; Germany 6,600,000 to 8,800,000; Poland 5,600,000; Dutch East Indies 3 to 4 million; Japan 2,600,000 to 3,100,000; India 1,500,000 to 2,500,000; Yugoslavia 1,000,000; Romania 833,000; France 567,600; Italy 457,000; United Kingdom 450,700; United States 418,500.
A biography of the Prophet (ﷺ) in Urdu. Its table of the battles of his lifetime counts 1,018 dead in all: 259 Muslims and 759 of their opponents.
- Over 10 millionSoldiers killed in the First World War
- About 60 millionSoldiers and civilians killed in the Second World War
- 1,018Dead on both sides in all the Prophet's (ﷺ) battles, over ten years
Jewish underground groups and settlers
In 1946 the Irgun, a Jewish underground group, bombed the British offices in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. It killed 91 people: Arabs, Britons and Jews. The Haganah, the main Jewish defence force, condemned it. Lehi, which the British called the Stern Gang, murdered the UN peace mediator Count Bernadotte in 1948. In 1994 a settler, Baruch Goldstein, shot dead 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron. In 2023 the UN recorded settler attacks in the West Bank rising to seven a day.
On 22 July 1946 the Irgun, a Jewish underground group, bombed the wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that housed the British government offices. The blast killed 91 people: Arabs, Britons, Jews and others. The Haganah, the main Jewish defence force, publicly condemned it.
Lehi, called the Stern Gang by the British, was founded in 1940 by Avraham Stern, who split from the Irgun. It killed Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East, in Cairo in 1944, and the United Nations mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem in September 1948.
On 25 February 1994 Baruch Goldstein, a settler from Kiryat Arba and a follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane, opened fire on Muslims at prayer in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. He killed 29 worshippers and wounded about 125 before he was overpowered and killed. Israel condemned the attack.
OCHA reports settler violence in the West Bank rising "from an already high average of three incidents per day in 2023 to seven a day now".
In Europe and America
In July 1995, at Srebrenica in Bosnia, Bosnian Serb forces killed about 8,000 Muslim men and boys. Two UN courts ruled it genocide. The killers came from an Orthodox Christian people. Yet no one calls Christianity a religion of genocide for it. In America, anti-abortion extremists have attacked abortion clinics. Since 1993 they have murdered 11 people and tried to murder 26 more. In 1994 Paul Hill, a former Presbyterian minister, shot dead a doctor and his escort in Florida. He said he did it to save unborn children.
In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces killed about 7,000 to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys after taking Srebrenica. The UN tribunal and the International Court of Justice both ruled that it was genocide.
The National Abortion Federation, which has kept records since 1977, says the first abortion provider was murdered in 1993, and that "In total, there have been 11 murders and 26 attempted murders due to anti-abortion violence."
On 29 July 1994 Paul Hill, a former Presbyterian minister, shot dead Dr John Britton and his escort James Barrett outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. He said the killings were justified to save unborn children. He was executed in 2003.
In Asia: Myanmar, Sri Lanka and India
In 2017 Myanmar's army drove nearly 725,000 Rohingya Muslims into Bangladesh. A UN mission said up to 10,000 may have been killed. It found that extremist Buddhist groups had spread hatred of Muslims for years. One monk, Ashin Wirathu, led such a movement. Time magazine called him "The Face of Buddhist Terror". In Sri Lanka in 2014, after a rally of a Buddhist nationalist group, Muslim homes, shops and mosques were attacked. In India, from 2015 to 2018, vigilantes killed at least 44 people over cows, 36 of them Muslims.
On 25 August 2017 an armed Rohingya group (ARSA) attacked a military base and security posts in northern Rakhine State. The response of the security forces, led by the army (Tatmadaw), was, the mission says, brutal and grossly disproportionate; the authorities called it "clearance operations". Thousands of Rohingya were killed or injured, and the mission calls an estimate of up to 10,000 deaths conservative. By mid-August 2018 nearly 725,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh. At least 392 villages were partly or totally destroyed, mainly by fire; most structures destroyed were homes, and schools, marketplaces and mosques were also burned. The mission records a rise in Buddhist nationalism and anti-Muslim rhetoric since 2011. It says that degrading language against the Rohingya, and Muslims in general, has for many years been part of a campaign spearheaded by extremist Buddhist groups such as MaBaTha. It names the army as the main perpetrator; local authorities, militias, politicians and monks, among others, took part in or assisted violations to varying degrees.
Time's cover story, "The Face of Buddhist Terror", on Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk in Myanmar who led the 969 movement and preached hatred of Muslims, as violence against Muslims spread there.
The High Commissioner, Navi Pillay, said violence broke out on 15 June 2014 in the town of Aluthgama, south-western Sri Lanka, after a large rally of the Buddhist group Bodu Bala Sena. As the group and its supporters moved through Muslim neighbourhoods, allegedly chanting anti-Muslim slogans, violence broke out, the statement says, from each community. Two, or possibly three, people were reportedly killed and scores injured. Homes, shops and mosques were reportedly attacked and some set ablaze. She had earlier warned of rising attacks on religious minorities and of incitement by Sinhala Buddhist nationalist groups.
Between May 2015 and December 2018, at least 44 people, 36 of them Muslims, were killed across India by vigilante groups claiming to protect cows. Many of these groups claim links to militant Hindu groups. About 280 people were hurt in more than 100 attacks. Police often stalled the prosecution of the attackers.
Sikh militants and the Tamil Tigers
In 1985 Sikh militants bombed Air India Flight 182, killing all 329 people on board. In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers fought for a Tamil homeland. Before 2001 they carried out more suicide bombings than any other group in the world. A study of every suicide attack from 1980 to 2001 found that religion does not explain them. Most aimed to drive out an occupying power. So suicide bombing is not a Muslim practice by nature. For twenty years its world leader was a Marxist group, not a Muslim one.
On 23 June 1985 a bomb destroyed Air India Flight 182 over the Atlantic off Ireland, killing all 329 people on board. The bombing is blamed on Babbar Khalsa, a Sikh militant group, after the Indian army's 1984 assault on the Golden Temple. Canada's inquiry called it the largest mass murder in Canadian history.
Pape studied every suicide attack worldwide from 1980 to 2001 (188 in all). He found that religious fanaticism does not explain them: the world leader in suicide terrorism was the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, who fought for a separate Tamil state, a group with a Marxist-Leninist ideology. Most such attacks aimed to make an occupying power withdraw.
Most victims of terrorism are Muslims
A US government report looked at the dead of five years of terrorism. Where the victims' religion could be known, between 82 and 97 per cent were Muslims. In 2014 more than 120 Muslim scholars wrote to the leader of ISIS. They told him that Islam forbids what he does. A religion whose followers are the main victims of terror is not that terror's cause.
The statistical annex says: "In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97 percent of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years."
An open letter from Muslim scholars, muftis and imams around the world to the leader of the group calling itself the Islamic State. Its signers include Shawqi Allam, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, and Abdallah bin Bayyah, with scholars and leaders from Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia and North America. Its summary lists what it says is forbidden in Islam, among them: killing the innocent; killing emissaries, and so journalists and aid workers; declaring people non-Muslim unless they openly declare disbelief; harming or mistreating Christians or any People of the Scripture; forcing people to convert; torturing people; and disfiguring the dead. It adds that bringing slavery back is forbidden in Islam, because it was abolished by universal consensus, and it condemns his taking women as concubines as a revival of strife and corruption.
Attacks, and the wars that answered them
Islam forbids killing civilians. So it condemns the attacks of 9/11, and the killing of civilians in Israel on 7 October 2023. But a fair count does not stop at the attack. The 9/11 attacks killed 2,977 people. In the wars that followed, in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond, about 940,000 people died in the fighting, on all sides. Brown University's Costs of War project counts 3.6 to 3.8 million more deaths from hunger, disease and other effects. Most of the dead were Muslims, and most were civilians, not fighters. More than 432,000 of those killed in the fighting were civilians. Young children suffered most from the hunger and disease. The 7 October attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel. A study in The Lancet estimates about 75,000 violent deaths in Gaza in the next 15 months. More than half were women, children or older people. Gaza's people are Muslims and a small Christian community, and both were among the dead. The wars in reply were led by countries whose people are mostly Christian or Jewish. Yet no one calls Christianity or Judaism the most violent religion for them. A count of attacks by Muslims alone leaves out most of the dead.
The attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York, at the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killed 2,977 people, not counting the 19 hijackers.
As of 2023, the project estimates that 905,000 to 940,000 people, including US soldiers, allied forces, civilians and militants, died from war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere after 9/11. More than 432,000 of those killed by direct violence were civilians. It estimates 3.6 to 3.8 million further deaths in these war zones from the wars' indirect effects, such as disease, displacement and hunger: at least 4.5 to 4.7 million in all. Children, especially those under five, were the most vulnerable to these indirect deaths.
Israel revised its count of those killed in the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 to about 1,200, most of them civilians, down from an earlier figure of about 1,400.
A household survey of 2,000 households in Gaza estimates about 75,200 violent deaths (range about 63,600 to 86,800) between 7 October 2023 and 5 January 2025, and about 8,200 to 8,500 further deaths from indirect causes such as malnutrition and untreated disease. About 56% of the violent deaths were women, children or older people. The estimate is about a third higher than Gaza's Ministry of Health count for the period.
An Israeli strike hit the compound of the Greek Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius in Gaza City, where Christian families were sheltering. Gaza officials said 16 to 18 people were killed. The Israeli army said it had targeted a nearby building it said Hamas used.
Ibn Umar reports that a woman was found killed during one of the Prophet's (ﷺ) campaigns, and the Prophet forbade the killing of women and children.
Costs of War counts 3.6 to 3.8 million more deaths from hunger, disease and other effects of the wars after 9/11.
The fair test: a faith's sources
Every faith has followers who do wrong. If a religion were judged by its worst people, none would pass. The fair test is what its sources command. The Bible has a command to "slay both man and woman, infant and suckling". Jews and Christians today do not read it as an order for now. Islam's sources forbid killing women and children, even in war. The people on this page broke what their own faiths teach. Those who kill in Islam's name break Islam's law too.
“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
Ibn Umar reports that a woman was found killed during one of the Prophet's (ﷺ) campaigns, and the Prophet forbade the killing of women and children.
“On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.”
Perspectives
Islam is the most violent religion
Some critics say Islam is more violent than other religions. Many terror attacks today are by Muslims, and the Qur'an speaks of fighting.
Most terror attacks in the world today are carried out by Muslim groups.
Rebuttal
Most of their victims are Muslims too: between 82 and 97 per cent, where the victims' faith was known. Such attacks are often answered with far more killing. 9/11 killed 2,977 people. In the wars that followed, about 940,000 died in the fighting alone, on all sides. The 7 October attack killed about 1,200. A Lancet study estimates about 75,000 violent deaths in Gaza in the next 15 months. More than half were women, children or older people. The Prophet (ﷺ) disowned anyone who strikes down good and bad alike. And from 1980 to 2001 the world's leading suicide bombers were the Tamil Tigers, who were not Muslims.
The Qur'an has verses that command fighting.
Rebuttal
They are about a lawful war against those who fight. The same verse says "do not transgress limits". When the enemy turns to peace, the Qur'an says to turn to peace too. The Bible also has commands of war. Neither verse gives a private person leave to attack anyone.
The Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) himself fought wars.
Rebuttal
His great battles were against armies that came for him, and he fought under strict limits. In all his battles over ten years, about a thousand people died on both sides. The two World Wars, fought by nations not in Islam's name, killed tens of millions.
The Islamic perspective
Islam forbids extremism and the killing of innocents. Violence is found among people of every faith and none, so no faith should be judged by its worst followers. Islam is judged by its sources.
The Prophet (ﷺ) warned that going to extremes in religion destroyed the nations before.
The Qur'an says killing one innocent person is like killing all mankind.
Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh groups have all killed for their causes.
Over five years, 82 to 97 per cent of terrorism's dead were Muslims, where their faith was known.
The wars that answered 9/11 and 7 October killed many times more people, most of them Muslim civilians.
A study of every suicide attack from 1980 to 2001 found religion did not explain them.