Misconception on Islam

I consider myself to be quite a chill person but it's always riled me up whenever I read facebook comments and media badmouthing Islam as if they know better about my religion than every damn Muslims in this world. Now I get that there are questionable and even terrible things committed by some muslims (so they claimed) but you can't judge Islam based on them. Just like you can't judge a person's moral by their races and their religions because frankly, all of them have committed atrocities at some point of time. The Americans, the Frenchs, the Germans, the Brits, the Muslims, the Christians, the Buddhists and whatever other races and religions out there, never has one with completely innocent history. A person's character should not be judged aside from his or her personal moral values, and that alone should be the sole measurement of a character. This is to say that I understand that religions and cultures do influence a person's character and that I agree that we can hold a religion or a culture responsible for whatever values they impart on the person conforms to them, PROVIDED that it's true. If a religion teaches its follower to sacrifice virgins to appease their gods, it's a shitty religion. If a culture requires you to kill a person to prove yourself to be a man, it's a shitty culture. Conversely, if the religion or the culture encourage you to be kind and improve your intellect than they get the credits too. Now, if a religion teaches its followers not to harm innocents but they do that anyway, why would we blame the religion? Clearly their moral values skewed from what their religion teaches so the blame should fall on them and whatever that teaches them to do so. This is what happens to my religion.

I was born in a Muslim family, in an Islamic country and live in Islamic culture (among other cultures). I've been learning about Islam since I can remember and never once I was taught to hurt people outside from my religion. I learned that you can resort to violence and war only when you are defending yourself and never the one starting it, and never should you touch the innocents. This is what my prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h. teaches me. I remember a story about his life, though I can't quote the exact hadith but I'm sure almost every Muslims have heard it. Once there was a Jewish (if I'm not mistaken) blind old lady living alone in Mecca (or Medina) and having difficulties in taking care of herself. She was visited by a man everyday and the man helped taking care of her. She was very hateful to Muhammad pbuh and she would have insulted him when she conversed with the man while the man listened quietly. One day, she noticed that the man helping her was a different one from before thus she enquired about him and where was the man before. The person explained that he is Abu Bakr, the current caliph and the man who had been helping her before was Muhammad and that he had passed away. The old woman cried and embraced Islam afterward.

There are many other stories like this that were taught and passed around to muslims to exemplify the values of a true muslim, the values of Muhammad pbuh. Whatever accusations you say about our prophet, we know him as the ideal, the most perfect human in history because of these values that were taught to us. If you want to be ignorant and listen to other ignorants who claimed they know the "true" nature of him, nobody can't stop you. But know this, even if you believe that he is evil and did evil deeds, and that we were fooled by him, it doesn't matter because what he is to us is what we learned about his life, his kindness and greatness. In the end, these values, his values are all that matter. We follow him because of his exemplary values we've learned, not whatever values you confused him with.