Alright, historian of the Middle East here, teaching at a respectable university in the US about Islam and the Middle East. You ask questions about Islam in this thread and I try to answer them. Gogogo...
Cheers

Are you religious?

No, I am not. But I know what religion is good for, so I have great respect towards all religions.

do you consider islamic terrorist attacks to be more religiously or politically motivated?
do you consider islam a "peaceful" religion?

Definitely more political...How peaceful a religion is depends on your interpretation of it. There is not anything inherent in Islam that should make it less peaceful than any other religion.
Cheers

Is it true that the Quran calls for death to non-Muslims?

Not true. There are certainly quite violent passages in the Qur'an dealing with specific problems that Muhammad and the early Muslim community experienced. However, these verses should not (and were not, historically) taken as universal commandments or rulings towards the other faiths. That is why as late as 750 (that is more than a century after Muhammad's death) only 10 percent or so of the entire population ruled by the Muslim empire was actually Muslim. The rest were Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians etc. Even today significant numbers of Christian Arabs live in places like Lebanon and Egypt. Non-muslims living in the early Islamic dynasties had to pay some additional taxes (called jizya) though and that may have gradually contributed to the process of conversion to Islam in the Middle East. It would be, nevertheless, correct to state that the level of tolerance that the Muslims had toward other faiths was unparalleled (with the possible exception of the Buddhists' tolerance toward other faiths) before the coming of the modern age.

There are non-Muslim populations in Muslim countries, like Christians in Egypt and Lebanon, and Jews in Iran. You'll also find immigrant non-Muslims from all over the world working in Muslim countries as professionals like doctors and engineers. How would this be the case if the Qur'an called for the death of all of these non-Muslims?

Sometimes I get the sense that some don't think about this kind of question seriously before asking it.

not that you don't have a point, but come on now, its a valid question since theres a ton of **** written in people's holy books that most adherents don't follow for whatever reason/excuse they can muster up. Then you have people who either accidentally misinterpret things, or people who purposely misinterpret things to trick others, etc, etc.

I can think of a ton of things in the Bible that fall under this category, so I'm sure there is as much, if not more, confusion surrounding the Quran.

Incorrect. The Qur'an is very clear, especially with respect to these kinds of matters.

not for people who have never read it, and learn about it mostly from things they watch on the news and read on the internet. If you want people to understand it better, its best not to be a douche towards them when they ask a pretty simple question ... especially in an "ask me" thread.

Bearing in mind the enormous amount of misinformation about Islam floating in the media, it was definitely a legitimate question. I think I answered it so on to more questions, gogogo.

Sorry, wasn't trying to be a douche; the OP already did a good job of answering the question, so I didn't expound on it.

"it's not clear for people who have not read it?"


Priceless.

What is your take on Hirsi Ali? She spoke at my school last week, and it seems she accomplished the opposite of her goal.

what is your take on Islamic laws regarding homosexuality and treatment of women? Do you forsee these laws eventually being changed, or do you imagine that they will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future?

details?

My sincere take on her: She is basically a media whore who does not know much about what she is talking about. She conflates her cultural experiences with religion and says what the neoconservatives and their ilk want to hear about Islam.

Do you find it funny that an asteroid is still deemed holy even though we know what they are (i.e., not rocks sent from heaven or paradise or w/e but just rocks from space) now?

Much about the treatment of women in contemporary Arab world ultimately is explainable by the tribal patriarchal culture of the pre-Islamic Arabia; and although Islam tried to make some reforms in that regard, historically speaking, it lost this battle to patriarchy. Islam basically sees men and women as ontologically equal (under God, of course) despite some differences between the genders emphasized in the classical Islamic law. I think that some change in the interpretation of law is probable in the future, as Islamic countries face the currents of modernization. The issue of homosexuality, on the other hand, might prove to be more problematical as the actual sexual act is clearly condemned in the Qur'an.

agreed. Many students here thought she was an idiot. She ended up turning more students on to islam (trying to prove her wrong), than she did turning people away with her anti-islam propaganda. She also refused to answer any question involving Turkey.

People knew even back then that it was simply a stone and nothing more. One of the companions of Muhammad (and the second Caliph), Umar, once stated that he would simply ban the people from adoring that stone (Hajar ul Aswad, the black stone near Kaba) if he did not see Muhammad being respectful towards it.
No educated Muslim would be so delusional to think that it was actually sent from paradise. To the educated Muslims it is simply a symbol for concentrating their mental and devotional energies directed towards God.

Ahhh, the good old Turkey. Any country that cannot be explainable by some idiotic mantra about the backwardness of Islam is fine in my book.

I do not know much about the demographics of my university. But I think all of my students are, at least nominally, Christian.

Does martyrdom have a place in the Islamic religion? Is it a good thing? If so, what are some of the legitimate means one can achieve martyrdom?