Regarding the "two versions of Islam" people keep mentioning, the Islam of war and the Islam of peace, I'd like to offer some insight here.
In Judaism, we have the Torah, and we have the Talmud - the oral law. The Torah is merely the blueprint. You will find very few details of the actual practice of Judaism in the Torah itself. The Torah is the reader's digest of Judaism. To get the details, that's where the oral law comes in. The torah is NOT meant to be taken at face value. We need the Torah AND the Talmud together. To have one and not the other is not considered true Judaism.
It wasn't until the First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians that the oral law was written down, becuase the great sages and rabbis of the time were worried that it would be forgotten.
Many of the commandments spelled out in the Torah seem very harsh, but when we study the commentaries and the Talmud, we learn that punishments were rarely carried out by courts. For example, the Torah mandates death penalty for many things, but the Talmud has such strict guidelines for allowing the courts to execute anybody, making it almost impossible to do so.
Also in Judaism, you will have debates on how strict to be with certain laws. The Talmud is full of debates between rabbinic scholars on how strictly to interpret the Torah, and differnet yeshivas and shcolars hold with different opinions, trying to analyze the most minute detail, to find clues. There is no uniformity all throughout Judaism. Every community has there own customs, and even then, there's no uniformity.
Either way, the laws of Judaism were meant for our people, and we don't try and force them on anyone - because Judaism doesn't see anything wrong with other religions. You guys have your ways, we have our own, and that's how it should be. Jews are meant to be different from other people - the Hebrew word for "holy" has the same root as "different." To be a holy people is to be different from everyone else. Many of the laws of Judaism are probably there to make us unique from all the other nations of the world, like keeping kosher. But "different" doesn't mean "evil." It just means we have our own way. All of us are G-d's children, and that's why the Torah begins with the creation of the world, not with Abraham, the first Jew. Because G-d created everyone, and every human is G-d's child. We just have a different destiny than everybody else.
That's why Jews don't have missionaries - because the whole world doesn't need to be Jewish. We actually discourage conversion, because we think you're fine the way you are (and partially because when Christians would convert to Judaism, other Christians would respond by murdering Jews.) We won't stop you if you really wanna convert, but we don't think it's necessary for you to convert to be a good person.
We want all the world to recognize G-d and be monotheistic, but that's something that must come naturally, and not be forced on to anyone. Christianity and Islam are monotheistic, beleiving in one G-d. They acknowledge Him in a different way, but they still acknowledge Him. As for polytheistic religions like Hinduism, many feel that their many G-ds are just different aspects of one divine being. Even if they weren't, and they actually were worshipping many g-ds, we don't have the divine right to massacre Hindus for being polytheistic. We're just told "don't do what they do."
Only seven laws were given to all mankind - to Noah and his family after the flood. As far as Judaism's concerned, if you follow these, you're in good shape (and if you're not, it's for G-d or a court to judge you, depending on the sin. If you're sinning against G-d - idolatry, blasphemy - it's for G-d to punish you. If you sin against another person - murder, theft - it's for a legal court to punish you).
1) Prohibition on idol worship
2) Prohibition on blasphemy and cursing G-d's name
3) Prohibition on murder
4) Prohibition on theft and robbery
5) Prohibition on sexual transgressions (rape, adultery, etc.)
6) Prohibition on "tealing a limb from an animal and eating it while it lives" (there's a lot of debate about what this means. Many say it's a fancy way of saying to be kind to animals - because if you realize it's important to treat animals kindly, how much more so to treat your fellow man kindly! It also ties in with the prohibition on eating blood. To drink blood is considered an abomination of the highest order, since it is the life of a living being).
7) Requirement to establish a justice system and courts of law.
Now for the point of all this: I don't know how it works with Islam but if Islam has an oral law that works the same way as Judaism's, you're more likely to get a peaceful, neighbor-friendly Islamic messgae. If you only go by the Quran and disregard oral law, you get extremists and militant fanatics. That's why quoting from the Quran isn't always giving an accurate representation of Islam.
Does Islam have an oral law as well as the Quran? Do Muslim scholars write commentary on the Quran explaining obscurities in its text, or have a separate book of how to practice the actual laws of Islam in your day-to-day life, or anything like that?
BTW, keep one thing in mind - like I said, there are many different viewpoints in Judaism, so what I say here isn't what every Jew in the world believes. That's why I think it's dangerous to blame a whole group for the actions or beliefs of a few.
