http://www.cracked.com/article_18911_5-ridiculous-things-you-probably-believe-about-islam.html
A conservative commentator recently made headlines by claiming 10 percent of all of the world's Muslims are terrorists. An amazing claim, considering that equals 150 million terrorists and if each were to pull off an attack killing just 40 people, they could exterminate all non-Muslim life on earth.

Either they're not all that dedicated to terrorism, or the claim is utter insanity.

Well, if there's one thing everyone thinks of when they hear "Cracked.com" it's "friend of Islam." Which is why we feel compelled to clarify a few misconceptions for our readers. Also, there is no way this article will ever come back to haunt us in any way.
#5.
If You're a Muslim Woman, You Have to Wear the Veil

For millions of people in the West, when you say "Islam," the first mental image that pops into mind is this:


A two-person Scotch-garded version would sell like hotcakes.

A woman covered head to toe in a burqa. The truth is, if you could suddenly gather all of the Muslim women on the planet into one giant room and had to throw a football to someone wearing a burqa, it'd be next to impossible to complete that pass.

But the whole hide-them-under-a-veil thing must be pretty big among Muslim communities, otherwise Europe wouldn't be all in in a dither over the things, pushing for bans and whatnot. Right?


Look at them there, plotting new ways to drive super-slow in the HOV lane.

After all, we all know that Islam hates women -- the fact that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that actually prohibits women from driving, or that only predominantly Muslim countries still use death by stoning as a punishment for adultery, proves it, right?

But Actually...

Thinking that all Muslim women have to dress like this...

...is like thinking that all Christian women have to dress like this:

That photo is from one of several small Christian sects that require women to dress like it's Little House on the Prairie.

So for instance, in France they have about 3 million Muslim women. French police decided to figure out how many of them wore burqas and/or niqabs and found the number to be ... 367.


Then again, these were French police.

Not 367,000, but 367, a number so small that from a statistical point of view, it's barely enough to register as a margin of error. As for the rest of Europe, the numbers are even more disastrous for the burqa business (for instance, Belgium has 500,000 Muslims, a couple dozen wear the burqa).

Yes, there are Middle Eastern countries where the veils are required by law (namely Iran and Saudi Arabia) and combined those countries have less than 5 percent of the world's Muslims. There are actually more Muslim countries that outright ban the wearing of the veils than there are that require them. They can do that because wearing a veil is not required in Islam but is more of a custom, depending on where you live and who's in charge.


Much like hot pants.

Hey, speaking of which, try this number on for size: Of the five most populous Muslim-majority nations, four of them have elected female heads of state.

So there's a fantastic chance that in 2012, Sarah Palin will be campaigning for an achievement that Muslim ladies have already accomplished.


We bet Megawati Sukarnoputri knows the United States doesn't have a Department of Law.
#4.
Our Founding Fathers Would Never Have Tolerated This Muslim Nonsense!

It's easy to stand on a soapbox and publicly bluster about what you think the Founding Fathers would think about the godless, multicultural United States today. After all, these were Christian, God-fearing men, damn it. They certainly wouldn't put up with all this tolerance for these terrorist religions.


Thomas Jefferson, moments before leaping into the air on a giant eagle and drop-kicking Saladin.

It's a good thing some Americans are standing up for good old-fashioned American values and passing laws to prohibit Islamic law from taking over the U.S., because that's totally around the corner! Somewhere, Thomas Jefferson is smiling in his grave!

But actually...

Even if they were staunch Christians (or deists, whatever), plenty of the Founding Fathers had a healthy admiration for the Muslim faith. Thomas Jefferson, for example, taught himself Arabic using his own copy of the Quran and hosted the first White House Iftar during Ramadan.


Jefferson believed in celebrating the deliciousness of all world religions.

John Adams hailed the Islamic prophet Muhammad as one of the great "inquirers after truth." Benjamin Rush, who was so Christian he wanted a Bible in every school, also said he would rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mohammad "inculcated upon our youth" than see them grow deprived "of a system of religious principles." Benjamin Franklin once declared: "Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service." Even George ****ing Washington personally welcomed Muslims to come work for him at Mount Vernon.

So, why all this Founding Father/Muslim love? Probably because Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah of Morocco was the first world figure to recognize the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain in 1777. Another reason was that the Founding Fathers were smart enough to distinguish between terrorists and everybody else on the whole damn planet, as demonstrated in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797. It was in this agreement that the U.S. declared: "The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Mussulmen [Moslems]."


Another possible translation.
#3.
"Muslim" Equals "Arab"

Remember that crazy lady with the Einstein hair who asked John McCain if Barack Obama was an Arab? No? Well, let us refresh your memory:


The instant John McCain realized that he would never, ever be president.

We're willing to bet there's more than a 20 percent chance this woman meant to say "Muslim" but accidentally said "Arab" because same thing, right? And even if you're not in the tea party camp, where you're convinced "Arab" and "Muslim" are interchangeable, you've probably operated under a similar assumption: that non-Jewish Middle Eastern people are Muslim and that most Muslims live in the Middle East.

But actually...

Only about 20 percent of the entire world's Muslim population is Arab or North African. For comparison, about 22 percent of the global Christian population is African, yet when somebody says "Christian," you don't immediately picture a dude from Africa. Equating "Muslim" with "Arab" makes just as much sense.


That'd be like associating "Kansas" with "hate-filled douchebags".

While we in the West have been conditioned to associate Islam with the Middle East, a whopping 61.9 percent of all Muslims -- aka a supermajority -- don't live in the Middle East at all; most Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region. Indonesia alone is home to more than 200 million Muslims, and the Indian subcontinent has roughly a half-billion Muslims.

It works the other way, too. For example, if you think being Arab guarantees you being Muslim these days, well, we are sorry to disappoint. As much as 10 percent of the world's Arab population is Christian (that's more than 14 million people). That means there are 1 million more Arab Christians than, oh, we don't know ... the world's entire Jewish population..


Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18911_5-ridiculous-things-you-probably-believe-about-islam.html#ixzz18xfzXrzH

Very nice said heavenlyboy34, but in my opinion the question is NOT how many muslims live on earth and where, or even if veiling is a must or not.
But the question is, which is the right religion on earth?
Fact is, and noone can dispute that, that there can be many different beliefs on earth, many different religions and many different opinions about it, but only one religion can be the right one, the one given by god or the gods.
As we all know its called 'belief' and not 'knowledge'.
So we just believe that our religion is the right one, we do not know it, do we?
So how to convince ourselves of any kind of religion nowadays?
Just read the holy books?
There should be more than just that. We live in a society where we have the possibility to get information about anything.
So why don't we also check the history of all religions?
Let's that the most famous religions of europe. Jewism, christianity and islam and let us just check their history.Do you know about it?
Hell yea it's covered with blood. All 3. Althougth its historically prooven and its a simple fact that many things went wrong there(of course in the name of god), i am not allowed to give any detaills here i think.
And furthermore i do not want to attack anyones belief. So pm me if you are interested in more or just check it out yourself.:)


ps: I am new here and i read the rules. Hope i didnt do anything wrong by this post and if yes, then just delete it and inform me.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,
martin

I don`t really pigeonhole people because of their race or religion. As far as religion goes, none of them appeals to me at all

Very interesting and probably can't compute in the minds of the Muslim haters

As to the post of whose religion is right there is not one that is right in the whole world, there is only "right for me" there is never right for all.

Maybe they are all right.