I appreciate your long and thoughtful answer. I am actually Muslim, and from the Middle-East. I agree with most of what you said, I only disagree with the premise that Islam is an inherently violent religion. While I usually ignore such statements, seeing this atrocious conflict in Sudan being reduced to "Islam bad" especially when it's primarily non-Arab Muslims being genocided just irked me too much.

To your point, you're right that the Quran and the Hadith make some statements that to an unlearned individual's interpretation, appear to promote total war against the unbelievers. As you also point out, this is not unique to Islam, as demonstrated by the Crusades for example. I don't think the relative accessibility of the Quran today is a valid point, as in the current day and age anyone can pick up the Bible and read something like Matthew 10:34 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010%3A...] and claim that Jesus ordered Christians to fight.

Continuing to use Christianity as an example, today you don't get that many extremist Christian groups because most places with significant Christian populations are well developed, generally have highly educated populations, robust political processes, and strong rule of law. Back to the map OP posted, if you overlay it with a map of Christian populations, you'll find a strong overlap in central Africa. Central Africa was recently decolonized, has unresolved political issues, and is majority Christian, as a result you get extremist organizations like the LRA forming [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army_insur...].

My point is, it's easy to manipulate some holy text or another to claim it orders to fight the disbelievers. I would say the average Joe who does not need to worry about how tomorrow he will feed his family and educate his children will never get up in arms to kill someone just because of a cherry-picked verse from a holy book. If that happens and this Joe gets up to murder his neighbor, either Joe is a psychopath at heart, or the core reason is something else. If that wasn't the case, then Islam has a huge problem with disobedience, because its 2 billion followers aren't slaughtering everyone right now.

Anecdote time. I had the pleasure of acquainting someone who seriously thought about joining ISIS during their heyday. He was in high-school with me, I didn't know him very closely, but enough to paint a picture. He lived in a dysfunctional home with a terrible father who was too harsh and too violent. He lived in the street most of his childhood, basically treating his home as where he goes to sleep. He came from a poor background, was rock bottom academically, all while living in a country where most youth do not have high hopes for the future. He also had a history of drug abuse and generally thuggish behavior. On a spiritual level, the dude did not give a single iota about any teaching of Islam.

It was 2015. In the few months leading up to his arrest, he had a change of mind and heart. His closer friends tell me he started joining some FB groups where ISIS was doing recruitment. Having been exposed to a couple of recruitment videos myself, I imagine it would have been super lucrative for someone like him. They were always boasting about the loot the fighters would get from battle, how in a couple of months of fighting you could have your own house and land, a nice truck, a subservient wife, all while being super badass with guns and fancy combat gear AND God would love you and send you to heaven if you die (but you wouldn't, because look at the map, ISIS is unstoppable). It was almost like a parody version of the American dream. No need for a higher education, job interviews, hard work, or knowing the right people. If you can pick up a gun and don't mind killing these worthless scum who don't know any better, we can take care of the rest!

Somehow he was arrested and was imprisoned before he could join ISIS. He was released from prison a couple of years ago, and from what I hear some special prison treatment took its toll and now he wouldn't hurt a fly. When this guy tried to join ISIS, was his sole motivation the belief that God earnestly ordered Muslims to indiscriminately fight the unbelievers? A better question: would he have joined them without the promise of wealth beyond his wildest dreams and a chance to start anew?