Short answer; no.
The standard rebuttal that all faiths have at one time or another shown themselves prone to violence and repression misses the essential point. All the major religions have reformed themselves, reducing or eliminating the all-too-human tendency to sanctimonious oppression—and none of these faiths, let us remember, endorsed oppression as a universal creedal or Divine imperative. Such is not the case with Islam, a communion that since its inception in the 7th century has seldom strayed from its sanguinary path of carnage and subdual.…
… The Founders, Bynum asserts, “clearly meant to define religion in a Judeo-Christian context.” Islam, however, “is self-segregating, fosters ideas of Muslim supremacy and thereby sows seeds of social discord.” What kind of religion, we might ask, degrades women as second-class citizens, approves anti-Semitism, preaches hatred against “infidels,” sponsors terrorist attacks on an almost daily basis with Koranic warrant, and wishes to impose Sharia, “a parallel legal system based on inequality,” on its Western host countries?
Furthermore, as we have seen, Islam insists on territorial sovereignty and does not distinguish between theology and politics, which is why its definitional status as a “religion” is or should be moot.
Source: Is Islam a Religion?
