9-11 was not a Muslim happy-hour

I wish to redefine my opponents definition of the Qura'an: The sacred writings of Islam that were supposedly revealed by God to the prophet Muhammad during his life at Mecca and Medina (no evidence has been offered for the validity of this claim). Firstly, I do not claim that all Muslims celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but some undoubtedly did. I am now going to look at the motivation for this attack. Why did these people think it was ok to murder thousands of other people? I am going to argue that their faith (Islam) is responsible. I shall agrue that their faith inspired them and gave them the courage to do this. No prizes for guessing what the their last words were. The following is taken from Soorah an-Nisaa'4:75 - "And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the Cause of Allah, and for those weak, illtreated and oppressed among men, women, and children, whose cry is: "Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from You one who will protect, and raise for us from You one who will help. " And this quote from Mohammad from Al Bukhari vol. 4:196 - "I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, none has the right to be worshipped but Allah. " Surah 61:4 - "Lo! Allah loveth them who battle for His cause in ranks, as if they were a solid structure. " Now, of course not all Muslims take a literal interpretation of the Koran (for which we should be grateful), but you can't deny that some people do. Even if it is a minority, some people read passages like these and can then justify terrorism. Muslims are promised "rivers of milk of which the taste never changes; rivers of wine delicious to those who drink; and rivers of clarified honey (clear and pure) therein for them is every kind of fruit; and forgiveness from their Lord. " When they die, Muslims genuinely believe that they will enter this paradise (despite the lack of evidence). Those who fight in the name of Allah are promised more in heaven than those that do not, as I hope my opponent, who has presumably read the Koran, is aware of. It is not difficult to understand this, when we see how intolerant Islam can be. Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by Ayatollah Khomeini (who offered his own money as a reward). This occurred because Rushdie published a book - The Satanic Verses (which I recommend). The ayatollah had not read this book (indeed, he probably couldn't read). He forbade every Muslim to read it and succeeded in igniting ugly demonstrations around the book, all because someone dared to have an opinion different to his own. I hope I don't need to go into too much detail regarding the issue of the Danish cartoon scandal, to which the Muslims reacted extremely violently. I do not think the 9/11 terrorists were inherently evil people (like Hitler and Stalin were); they genuinely believed that they were doing good in the name of Allah. To quote the Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg: "religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it we would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion. " A lot of people may say in defense of Islam, that these people were extremists; most Muslims do not behave like this. Indeed, but what they fail to realise is that moderate religion is a breeding ground for religious extremists. Innocent Muslims may transpire the teachings of the Koran to the next generation, who are then at liberty to act on their own interpretations. Teach someone that a book is true that claims they will be heavily rewarded for killing non-Muslims (there are many such teachings in the Koran) and you should not be surprised if they go and commit terrorist attacks: their holy book advises such behaviour.