Religion of Peace

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not cite sources or references that appear in a credible, third-party publication. The sources provided are primary sources, such as websites and publications affiliated with the subject of the article. You can help Wikipedia by including appropriate citations from reliable sources.This article has been tagged since December 2006.

Religion of Peace (often abbreviated as "ROP" or "RoP") is a political neologism which has become synonymous with Islam. The term was popularized shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks after numerous American politicians, most notably President George W. Bush, publicly referred to Islam as a religion of peace, in an effort to differentiate and divorce Al-Qaeda and the September 11 hijackers from the rest of the world's Muslims [1].

Subsequently, many opponents of the Islamic faith and its adherents have adopted the phrase as a sardonic neologism, meant to mock an ideology they see as overtly violent. Some make the mockery more explicit by adding a trademark symbol (either in the form of ™ or by placing the letters "tm" in parentheses),^{[citation needed]} evoking the idea that product names are not always accurate descriptions. Based on sound similarity, the expression has also been satirically re-phrased as "Religion of Piece(s)" to describe suicide-bombings, which are mostly perpetrated by Islamic movitated terrorists that blow people into "pieces."

The variant "Religion of Peaceniks" is also being used lately, mocking both the Islamic ideology and its "moonbats" supporters.[2]

The phrase has even filtered down into Islamist discourse: "The defeatists should fear Allaah lest they distort this religion and cause it to become weak on the basis of the claim that it is a religion of peace. Yes, it is the religion of peace but in the sense of saving all of mankind from worshipping anything other than Allaah and submitting all of mankind to the rule of Allaah"[3]