I don't think so, Tom. Why is it that most anti-war libertarians and many pro-war libertarians don't think it necessary to learn anything about Islam? Inquiring minds want to know.

I think the question can be posed just as 'Why do most Americans don't think it necessary to learn anything about Islam?', and the answer probably has something to do with the fact that almost all either already have another religion or are opposed to religion, and in either case don't like learning about a different one. However, on the off-chance that a muslim is lurking on SOLO and would like to give us an Islam-in-one-easy-lesson I think it would be interesting to hear. – Aaron

I can suggest several very readable books on the religion. If you want to read the Koran, you’ll have to read the Hadith. Since the Koran is ordered by the length of the Sura (Chapter), you’ll need to know the chronological order to understand which Sura abrogates the others (this is given in the Hadith). For a quick intro, read Sura 9, it’s the last or penultimate Sura according to the various writers of the Hadith.

Amber Pawlick shows how you can sample the Koran and get the overall spirit. You may want to read what she has found and try this yourself.

"First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.  

"Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.  

"Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."