Misconceptions about Islam

The two misconceptions that surprised me the most, and I found the most interesting are that Islam is "the religion of peace" because Islam is derived from a Islam word that means peace, and that Islam is well suited only to the Arabs because most Muslims are Arabs.

I always believed that the word Islam was roughly translated to mean peace but it is actually derived from the Arabic word "al-sim" which means submission or surrender. The submission is believed to mean submission to Allah which is the Arabic word for God. This was surprising to me because for as long as I can remember I thought that the word Islam meant peace. I always wondered about the Muslim extremists and how they could use Islam to make what they do reasonable in their on minds when Islam meant peace, but now that I know it means submission to Allah I understand how a terrorist could make Islam work for them and believe that what they are doing is accepted in their religion. I am glad that I know now that Islam is derived from a work that means submission because I can better understand the Islam religion.
The misconception is that Islam is well suited only to the Arabs because most Muslims are Arab. I always thought that most Muslims were Arabic and that there where not many other nationalities that had a very large population of Muslims. The actual numbers are that only 18% of all Muslims are Arabic, the two countries with the highest concentration of Muslims are Indonesia and Bangladesh. Islam is growing religion that is spreading throughout the world. The misconception that most Muslims are mostly Arabic is a very popular misconception, because that is what I have always heard and believed.

I think that there are many misconceptions concerning Muslims and the Arabic race in general and I am very glad that people are letting these misconceptions be know for the misconceptions that they are.