A friend of mine recently sent me an editorial attributed to Rick Mathes, a Christian minister who works with prison populations. In the editorial, Rick reports a conversation with a Muslim cleric in which he basically causes the Muslim cleric to admit that Islam, as a religion, has an INHERENT duty to wage violent war with "infidels" who are not Muslim. As a religion teacher and Episcopal priest, my friend was wondering what my take on this was. So I wrote the following:
