The mainstream views on Islam are getting, quite frankly, rather tiring. Nearly everyone insists that you have to either be totally blind to the crisis at hand and believe that ISIS only exist because of poverty and american imperialism, or be a loony who thinks that ISIS is the pinnacle of Islamic teaching and that all Muslims are terrorists. Neither is true. Islam is not a religion of peace, but honestly, I’d be hesitant to call any religion a “religion of peace” without first indicating what I meant by peace. There is a longstanding tradition of Holy War in Islam, but there is no major, mainstream tradition of Islamic terrorism, and the distinction between this needs to be made. Saladin’s conquests were in line with traditional Islamic thought, ISIS or Al-Qaeda committed random acts of terror against unarmed civilians is most certainly not. Modern Islamic Terrorism is rooted almost entirely…