"Islam is violent! Just read the Koran to see for yourself!"

[Swargey]

You guys seem to be missing a very important part here: The bible and the Koran or whatever were written by people. Not god or Allah or some other god of some sort. The people, or person rather, who wrote it wanted power and achieved it in a very clever way. They wrote a so called "holy book" and say that the words in there are from god (or Allah) himself. In the book they make it seem that if you don't follow this religion, then you should be killed. This does two things: 1. Provide endless power to yourself, and 2. Kills anyone who would challenge you. That's basically my opinion on what really happened.

(Yes, I am an Atheist)

 

[aronnax]

Marriage to Muhammad
Aisha was initially betrothed to Djubayr ibn Mutim, a Muslim whose father, though pagan, was friendly to the Muslims. When Khawla bint Hakim suggested that Muhammad marry Aisha after the death of Muhammad's first wife (Khadija), the previous agreement regarding marriage of Aisha with Ibn Mutim was put aside by common consent. [2] Watt suggests that Muhammad hoped to strengthen his ties with Abu Bakr. [2]

Aisha was six or seven years old when betrothed to Muhammad. She stayed in her parents' home until the age of nine, when the marriage was consummated.[3][4][5][6] The marriage was delayed until after the Hijra, or migration to Medina, in 622. Aisha and her older sister Asma only moved to Medina after Muhammad had already fled there. Abu Bakr gave Muhammad the money to build a house for himself. After this, the wedding was celebrated very simply. After the wedding, Aisha continued to play with her toys, and Muhammad entered into the spirit of these games.[7]


[edit] Status as "favorite wife"
Even though the marriage may have been politically motivated, to mark the ties between Muhammad and his companion Abu Bakr, most early accounts say that Muhammad and Aisha became sincerely fond of each other. Aisha is usually described as Muhammad's favorite wife, and it was in her company that Muhammad reportedly received the most revelations.[1] Aisha is believed to have been Muhammad's only virgin wife. They adduce the following episodes as proof that Muhammad and Aisha's marriage did not always go smoothly, and that Khadija's memory never left Muhammad

A pedophiles is a person who has sexual interest in children before puberty.
This marriage had none of that. Yes Muhammad was fond of her alot but only when she was older and even so it was not even in the romantic or sexual love. And when I said "treated her like a daughter", he really did treat her like a daughter

 

[aronnax]

You guys seem to be missing a very important part here: The bible and the Koran or whatever were written by people. Not god or Allah or some other god of some sort. The people, or person rather, who wrote it wanted power and achieved it in a very clever way. They wrote a so called "holy book" and say that the words in there are from god (or Allah) himself. In the book they make it seem that if you don't follow this religion, then you should be killed. This does two things: 1. Provide endless power to yourself, and 2. Kills anyone who would challenge you. That's basically my opinion on what really happened.

(Yes, I am an Atheist)

Well, the Quran was written by God in a way. God sent messages to Mohhammed for him to repeat it. What he said was written down and became the Quran. So ya

 

[Pannonius]

IMHO, there's no excuse for marrying a 6-year old. If he loved her as a daughter, he should've adopt her. A sane person would do that, not marry a poor child. This is just wrong, and nothing can make it right!

 

[aronnax]

IMHO, there's no excuse for marrying a 6-year old. If he loved her as a daughter, he should've adopt her. A sane person would do that, not marry a poor child. This is just wrong, and nothing can make it right!

According to Christian Law, this is wrong. However according to Muslim Law is allowed. To call that rule babaric because it differs from what you and yet does no harm to anyone is a disrespect for other ideals. This is a reason that fueled a major riot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Hertogh_Riots

 

[MayNilad Man]

You guys seem to be missing a very important part here: The bible and the Koran or whatever were written by people. Not god or Allah or some other god of some sort. The people, or person rather, who wrote it wanted power and achieved it in a very clever way. They wrote a so called "holy book" and say that the words in there are from god (or Allah) himself. In the book they make it seem that if you don't follow this religion, then you should be killed. This does two things: 1. Provide endless power to yourself, and 2. Kills anyone who would challenge you. That's basically my opinion on what really happened.

(Yes, I am an Atheist)

Doesn't explain how these religions can be so progressive in some areas.

 

[Pannonius]

According to Christian Law, this is wrong. However according to Muslim Law is allowed. To call that rule babaric because it differs from what you and yet does no harm to anyone is a disrespect for other ideals. This is a reason that fueled a major riot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Hertogh_Riots

Haveing sex with small children, some ideals!
Screw PC-ism, that is just WRONG!

 

[EdCase]

Well, the Quran was written by God in a way. God sent messages to Mohhammed for him to repeat it. What he said was written down and became the Quran. So ya

Do you know how many serial killers have claimed that God talked to them ?

Your saying all they had to do was write it down and then they could claim legitimate religious status ?

 

[Eukaryote]

The statement in the title of the thread is true. Islam is indeed inherently violent. However, if you've read the Bible, you should know that the Bible is overflowing with violence, plenty of it ordered by god. So obviously, Christianity is inherently violent as well.

Today, the majority of Christians and Muslims are obviously not violent. That's easy to see, since 51% of the people you see around you don't go around hitting other people, or killing other people on a daily basis, or wishing to kill people on a daily basis. (I would add though that the Christians in favor of war are indeed proviolence, but I think that's much less than 51% of Christians, and I think the proviolence of these people isn't related to religion.)

Anyway, Christians will eternally have trouble criticising Muslims as being violent. Any Christian who says, "Hey, look at the Koran! It's got violence in it!" will have to then defend the Bible. The Bible is loaded with violence, so anyone can say, "Hey, did you notice what the Bible says?" (I'm ignoring the fact that this is a bad argument tactic. That's a different subject.)

The good thing about these holy books is that people don't truly follow them. Isn't that nice? All this talk about the Koran and the Bible being good guides for morality is completely useless! They're both incredibly poor guides for morality. Generally what people do is only follow parts of either book, and reject the rest. Because people do that, that clearly and obviously shows that those books are just not good guides for morality.

One other thing. I'd like to show examples of people who are proviolence due to religion and people who are proviolence not due to religion.

Proviolence due to religion: Osama bin Laden, Becky Fischer (female camp manager in Jesus Camp)
Proviolence not due to religion: Saddam Hussein, Bill Kristol

Becky Fischer is proviolence due to her desire to turn Christian children into soldiers. She actually admires the violence and fervor that Palestinians teach their children.

Q of the OP FT! People really screwed up when it came to understanding God.

 

[Swargey]

Well, the Quran was written by God in a way. God sent messages to Mohhammed for him to repeat it. What he said was written down and became the Quran. So ya

Ah hah! See, written by people, people who could have maybe misinterpreted their....vision or whatever they supposedly saw/heard.

 

[aronnax]

Ah hah! See, written by people, people who could have maybe misinterpreted their....vision or whatever they supposedly saw/heard.

Do you know Mohammed was illiterate? Strange enough he read about his "visions". Oh well I am just looking through the Muslims point of view. Doesnt sound better than a book that has been written by 12 people with 12 different POV and repeately translated and edited and changed to have nearly 400 different types

@ Edcase: Well this one did not go around hacking infedels in the name of god did he?

@ Pan-something: Open your eyes a little wider and take a step out of the chapel for minute can you?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

The Koran has violence in it. But Islam is not the Koran. It can't be since people have different notions of Islam, and different interpretations of the Koran.

When I make judgements about Islam I look to first hand experiences to Islam. none of them have been violent. So, a sweeping generalisation as "Islam is violent" cannot be true. There is a possibility for it to be abused. But it's no different from any other religion or doctrine or even philosofy.

 

[warpus]

Well, the Quran was written by God in a way. God sent messages to Mohhammed for him to repeat it. What he said was written down and became the Quran. So ya

Wasn't that how Dionetics was written?

 

[El_Machinae]

Doesn't explain how these religions can be so progressive in some areas.

Maybe, until an historical point. But then they come to a screeching halt.

The Qur'an, for example, has instructions on how to kill people when they commit sins ("sins" being different from "crimes", in that crimes have obvious victims). This means that we're leaving it up to private interpretation on whether to kill people for things that don't really involve society. Yay, it all comes down to subjective interpretation!

As well, the Qur'an/Hadith/ (and Bible) contain no reasoning on why these things are sins, and so there is no sufficient way to extrapolate to the modern era. Because there is no reasoning, there's no reason to assume that the extrapolative reasoning done is of any use.

In both instances, the extrapolative reasoning has been easily shown to result in harm to people: emotional or physical. Because there's no mechanism to change this extrapolative reasoning, the harms will continue as long as the religions are maintained as a morality system.

 

[Swargey]

Do you know Mohammed was illiterate? Strange enough he read about his "visions"?

Can you prove this? No you can't and no one can, it's all just a blind leap of faith religious people take. It's like deciding to jump off a cliff thinking that god will save you because you pray to it every sunday. Not gonna happen.

 

[BasketCase]

If I strap a bomb to myself and blew myself up it in the name of Kentucky Fried Chicken, does that mean KFC is violent?

No. But if thousands of people did it, then yes. If more people blew themselves up in the name of KFC than any other fast food chain, one would have to turn a critical eye on KFC and consider the possibility that KFC is fomenting the violence.

A whole lot of people are blowing themselves up in the name of Islam. Most other religions in the world are not. I want to know why, and it's entirely possible that Islam itself is the cause.

 

[HannibalBarka]

No. But if thousands of people did it, then yes. If more people blew themselves up in the name of KFC than any other fast food chain, one would have to turn a critical eye on KFC and consider the possibility that KFC is fomenting the violence.
A whole lot of people are blowing themselves up in the name of Islam. Most other religions in the world are not. I want to know why, and it's entirely possible that Islam itself is the cause.

Hummmmm, if we follow your logic, than since many more US American are killing other people than say New Zealander (and I am talking on relative terms also ie the killing done per capita), should we than conclude that the US culture is more violent than that of New Zealand?

 

[Squonk]

The comparison between violence in the Bible and in Al-Qur'an is wrong for a couple of reasons.
First of all, for christians, the true holy book is New Testament. While christians do not treat Old Testament in a way that muslims treat the Bible, it is not as important for them as the New one.
For christians, the main person that should be taken example of is Jesus. For muslims - Muhammad.
Jesus did chase the merchants out of the temple etc, but in general was a calm guy. Forcible conversions, political use of religion, holy wars, killing apostates, etc it was all present in christianity, but they were introduced into it hundreds of years after Christ. In islam, they were present since higrah, they are connected with the person who created islam - Muhammad.
Now I don't want to say he's a bad guy. In his own times he was probably one of the more enlightened rulers. He did some wrong - but it was "normal" in his times. But some of the things he did can hardly be seen as good today.
Christianity can try to go back to the times of Christ. But isn't it a cognitive dissonance to hear that Muhammad is a great prophet and a wonderful man,
and at the same time to think that expulsions, slaughters, wars, assassinations, forcible conversions, destruction of temples of another religions etc are wrong? And these are the things Muhammad and the earliest muslims did. I guess most people don't think about it. Some will get to the point times have changed etc. But there always be some thinking that these deeds are OK as long as they are done in the name of God. Because thinking they are completely wrong would imply that Muhammad has done wrong things in the name of God, and would undermine islam.

Secondly,
for muslims, Al-Qur'an is truely word of God, existing since the beginning etc while in christianity, holy scriptures are INSPIRED by God. That's a huge difference, because it allows them to be read in a historical context and in the context of personality of the people writing them.

 

[Traitorfish]

Hummmmm, if we follow your logic, than since many more US American are killing other people than say New Zealander (and I am talking on relative terms also ie the killing done per capita), should we than conclude that the US culture is more violent than that of New Zealand?

Erm, yes? That's kind of obvious.
However, that has limited relevance here- culture would equate to how religion is interpreted, not it's inherent qualities, and it's quite true to say that Islam is more widely interpreted to be pro-violence than Christianity is.

 

[aronnax]

No. But if thousands of people did it, then yes. If more people blew themselves up in the name of KFC than any other fast food chain, one would have to turn a critical eye on KFC and consider the possibility that KFC is fomenting the violence.

A whole lot of people are blowing themselves up in the name of Islam. Most other religions in the world are not. I want to know why, and it's entirely possible that Islam itself is the cause.

Lets see Nine Crusades to the Holy Land, another 12 crusades to somewhere else, Medieval, Spanish, Portuguese Inquisitions, Reconquista, a few hundred thousand convert-or-die missions, centuries of Jewish persecution and blah, blah, blah all done in the name of the God, the cross, Christ, Jesus or Christianity. How quaint. It's entierely possible that Chrisitianity itself is the cause.