misleading presentation has caused since 2001. For
example, in his Foreword Schwartz-Barcott says that people
quote selectively from the Koran to find segments to
legitimate their pre-existing violent aims:
Their purpose is to use the Qur’an, and
specific verses of the Qur’an, so selectively as
to legitimate their own violent schemes to
recruit, motivate, and instruct others
according to their purpose. In all likelihood
this is exactly what Osama bin Laden and the
Saudi shaykh [sic] were doing at dinner when
they quoted the Qur’an...^367To this academic it is not devout Muslims’ profound
understanding of the Koran which drives them to violence
(we can be sure that Bin Laden and the Sheikhs were
made to memorise the Koran as children).^368 No, to this
soldier-turned-academic, Muslims must abuse the Koran
in order to justify some pre-existing desire for violence
and mass-murder (thus, he completely ignores the core
texts of Islam which portray the founder of Islam as a
warlord)! On this view, the Koran and Islam are innocent,
the worldʼs problems with thousands of terrorist attacks by
devout Muslims are because some people are simply
inexplicably evil, and it is inconceivable that their actions
were the result of the most enduring violent political
ideology in history. We are to believe that being immersed
in the fundamentals of Islam (where the promise that to die
killing unbelievers is the only guaranteed way for believers