Muhammad forbade pre-emptive war, all forms of terrorism, violently revolting against a government no matter how unjust, and even went to the extent of forbidding civil disobedience lest it lead to violence.
Muslims were brutally persecuted in Mecca from 610-620 and Muhammad forbade any violent or incendiary response to the governing authorities. He said there were three options:
--remain and bear the persecution,
--try to change laws through peaceful argumentation,
--or leave.
Many Muslims left, some to Abyssinia where they sought and received refuge under the righteous Christian King Neghus. Others left to Medina, where they forged a peaceful alliance with the Jews and soon established a unified secular state governed by the Charter of Medina.
Fighting was then only permitted in self-defense once Muslims were pursued and attacked, just as the Qur'an 22:40 allows: "Permission to fight is given to those against whom war is made, because they have been wronged -- and Allah indeed has power to help them."
Once in defensive war, the Qur'an only permits killing active combatants.
These pleasant fantasies about Islam cannot be accepted,
even when many Muslims also claim Islam to be a peaceful religion.
The reasons are the same as why we cannot accept that Nazism
is as 'peaceful' as Catholicism, even though the majority of Germans were
actually Catholics at the time of the Nazi Empire.
Neither was Stalinism as 'peaceful' as Communisim would supposedly be in theory,
even as the communists and socialist theorists simply claim that the Soviet Union
isn't "real" communism. The fact that some form of peaceful 'communism' is
actually practised on a few Jewish Kibbutzes or Christian communes is irrelevant
to the fact that 'Communism' in every large-scale manifestation has been the cause
of the slaughter of millions of innocents.
Likewise, the Chinese Revolution, although in the name of 'Communism' did not
produce any kind of peaceful 'communism' in the sense wished for by theorists.
Instead they invaded Mongolia and destroyed Tibet for no rational reason.
Similarly,
all ideological conflicts are never resolved peacefully by their peaceful proponents on any side.
What really happens is that military force is and must be met with
opposing military forces, to stop bloodshed and slaughter from being even worse.
It simply defies what we are seeing in every Muslim country today, to claim that
Islam can somehow create peace, freedom and democratic privileges.
Even allowing that many conflicts are sparked, encouraged, and even forced to start
by foreign manipulators and non-religious interests, the result is the same.
Islam is incapable of creating a peaceful, tolerant society by itself,
because it lacks the deeper spiritual principles and power that belong to true religion.
Islam can never be more than a
paramilitary cult, because its creators and founders
never had a real Spiritual Vision based on just God such as Judaism,
or a Loving God such as Christianity.
Without those deeper insights and commitments, there is no hope that any cult
could create a reasonable, peaceful and successful society that could live in harmony
with other nations and cultures, religions and philosophies already in existence.