First of all, this thread is a complete train wreck.
Secondly, since zumby and RLK (both of whom I respect as generally excellent posters) asked a couple of questions, I would like to make my stance clear.
1. Asking whether a religion is "of peace" is meaningless in the last analysis. My point is not even that depending on how one would define a "religion of peace", one could conclude that all major world religions are of peace, or none of them are; my point is simply that the question is wrongly put.
2. A religion is different than a book, or books. It is a sociological entity, and as such its meaning should be found in its social manifestations (Example: One should be a real moron to reject the claim that in most of its actual history, Sufism advocated and taught the way to inner peace and calm to millions of people, all over the world. Now, is Sufism Islamic? Yes. Does that then show that Islam is a religion of peace. Not necessarily. This is not because the Sufis were dumb people who did not see that the essence of Islam was really violent and not peaceful at all -as most of the dumbos in the thread argue-, but because there is no "essence" of Islam--end of Example).
Islam is an umbrella term for a great number of, often vaguely related, social and historical practices. Some of these have been peaceful historically and some not (but, of course, this is true for every other major religion as well; and hence, the question is "wrongly put").
3. Religion is perhaps the most overrated explanatory variable in social sciences. Obsessing on it closes the mind on the really important variables (which are usually socio-economic). Example: Rwanda is a country in which one of the most horrible genocides in history has taken place recently. It is a predominantly Christian country. If some dumbo would argue that this religious fact would explain why a genocide happened there (you know...those genocidal Christians and their genocidal holy books) and would then provide a ton of verses from the Old Testament (an important Christian document, no doubt) to prove his point (and he can easily do that since the Bible is in fact full of vicious violence and bloodshed), all of us would laugh at that moron and his moronic explanation.
In the thread, we have such morons doing the exact thing for Islam, and nobody is laughing...This is just sad.
4. It is my firm belief that if all major religions would magically disappear from earth right at this moment, this magical development (which would perhaps give Richard Dawkins and his ilk a two-hour continuous orgasm) would do absolutely
nothing (zero, nada, zilch) to turn the world into a more peaceful place.
5. If there is any "essence" to religion as such (of which I am highly sceptical) It is the following:
"Peace is primarily a state of mind. This state of mind could be (at least partially) achieved by giving up the hallucinations of the ego".
Since all major religions try to induce this state of mind in their followers (and as far as i can tell, all the teachings of world religions boil down to that really), in principle, they are all "true".
Since people do really like their egos, however, all religions demonstrably fail. Hence, one could argue that they are all "false" as well (alternatively: they are, in fact, all political shells of some inner teaching which has so far failed miserably).
To see why they all fail, one needs to study, human biology, economics, history and sociology; and
not religion. This is a fool's game.
Cheers