Yes: pure, unreformed Abrahamic religions are not very peaceful. They are quite blood-thirsty and vengeful. Let&#x27;s for a second agree that everyone reasonable wants their religion modernized and adapted to the current world (and ISIS, religious white supremacists, and abortion clinic bombers are not &quot;reasonable&quot;). We can disregard everyone who wants pure, unadulterated, literal Islam or Christianity.<p>That said, there&#x27;s a reasonable case to be made that this is ISIS &quot;branding&quot;. What their leaders truly believe is unknowable, but we can see their masterful use of propaganda, with smiling jihadis next to happy-looking children, and of course also the brutal beheadings shot in high-definition using modern techniques. I doubt the Prophet approved of HD cams.<p>There&#x27;s also a good case to be made, as in this article from The Atlantic, &quot;The Phony Islam of ISIS&quot; ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;international&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;what-muslims-really-want-isis-atlantic&#x2F;386156&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;international&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;wha...</a> ) that &quot;literal&quot; intepretations of the Quran and other Holy Texts are a red herring. You cannot claim there is <i>a</i> literal interpretation; just an interpretation that claims to be literal. But holy texts are rife with ambiguous and contradictory paragraphs, as explained in the article -- you can find an equivalent of &quot;You Shall Not Kill&quot; and in a different verse &quot;Kill The Infidel&quot;, and you need some Wise Man to explain to you &quot;ok, you shall not kill believers, but you can kill the unbeliever, unless there is a full moon (as mentioned in verse XYZ), in which case you can only kill goats&quot;. But this is the Wise Man&#x27;s interpretation; by definition there is no single valid &quot;literal&quot; interpretation. And once you accept there is <i>some</i> degree of interpretation at play, you can no longer claim ISIS is evidence that Islam is fundamentally more blood-thirsty and terrorism-prone than other religions; just that some of the current high profile terrorist organizations are using their reading of the Quoran to justify their actions, and that they claim their interpretation is the &quot;purest&quot;.<p>Even within ISIS and Al-Qaeda there is doctrinal dispute, as evidenced in this other article from The Atlantic, &quot;What ISIS really wants&quot; ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;what-isis-really-wants&#x2F;384980&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;what-isi...</a> ), which shows fundamentalist clerics disagree, and this creates splits. How can this be, if all of them believe they are following &quot;pure, unadulterated Islam&quot;?