Is Islam Necessarily Violent?

According to Geert Wilders, mainstream Isalm has not been taken over by a violent strain. Rather, "It's a violent religion, an intolerant religion" (Daniel Schwammenthal, "An Ordinary Dutch Life," Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2006, p A8). Such a conclusion seems reasonable coming from a member of the Dutch Parliament who has been living in hiding under 24-hour police protection ever since the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh two years ago by a Dutch-Moraccan radical Muslim. His policies and views on Isalm have provoked death threats from radical Muslims. His view of Muslims and Islam in a modern society? "I make a distinction between the religion and the people. I believe in the people, I believe that Muslims can integrate in society. But I don't believe in a European, moderate Islam to come in the next 10,000 years."

But if Islam is by nature a violent religion, I would expect much more violence simply due to the massive world presence of almost 1.5 billion Muslims. Instead, the violent expression of Islam seems to come from the Middle East and fringes. This leads me to wonder how much culture enhances or supresses violent teachings in Islam.

How much of the violence we see is due to the centuries long Sunni-Shiite dispute? Certainly, this conflict is a major factor in the U.S. pacification (or lack thereof) of Iraq. But it doesn't seem to go beyond that.
(dark green is Shiite, light green is Sunni)

How much is due to the general political culture in the Middle East, a culture that relies on force, violence and intimidation to settle political rule? According to one of their own, this is the view of the neo-cons in the U.S. Joshua Muravchik writes, "We agreed on the need to address the root causes of terrorism, but for us that root cause was the political culture of the Middle East. Political culture did not mean Islam. Rather, it meant a habit of conducting politics by means of violence. At the time of the attacks, not one of the region's rulers (apart from Israel's) had been freely elected to his post. All relied on force and intimidation" (Can the Neocons Get Their Groove Back? Washington Post, November 19, 2006, p. B03).

Certainly, Pope Benedict XVI, among many others, is worried about the violent tendencies of Islam in Europe (cf. his University of Regensburg address in September 2006 at Catholic World News ). These views are consistent with Bernard Lewis (What Went Wrong?) and Daniel Boorstin (The Discoverers) who observe that Islam is coterminus with the sword.

Well, I'm out of time for the day. But here as some considerations as I see it now -
1) violence is not necessary to Isalm (contra Lewis, et. al.) but is the offspring of Islam and Middle Eastern culture (but how does one separate the two?),
2) any violent tendencies in Islam have been stripped out of non-Middle Eastern expression of the faith in places like Indonesia (assumes that Islam is essentially peaceful outside Middle Eastern culture), or
3) Isalm is not necessarily violent but has been subjected to extremist interpretations that hijack Muslim devotion.

In a way, the answer to the question, "Is Islam necessarily violent?" does not much matter considering the fact that many active and violent Muslims are seeking to undermine the West in the name of Islam. The question that matters more is, "How will the West defend itself against those violent Muslims that do exist?"