Islam as religion of peace

[Sirotnikov]

Azazel - pojalusta obyesni esli ya so svoim ogranichenim ruskim yazikom chegoto ne ponyal.

[Pekka]

Well.. I think Islam is as much about peace as Christianity for example. It depends very much how you practice it. All fundies suck butts, no matter what religion, and unfortunately they are everywhere and give perfectly good religions a bad name.

I do not believe in God who is about killing and destroying those who don't believe in him, or worships something else. I believe in God who loves everyone equally, no matter what religion, and who forgives our mistakes. People have different opinions, and other views are just as good as mine, or as bad as mine.

First of all, I don't get it, that why some religious types needs to judge others? Why is it their concern? THey should be glad 'well at least I'm a better person' or something. Also, if they want to help the other one to understand, they should be nice about it and not condenming.
Islam is huge, growing fast and is about to be the biggest religion (or is it already?), and all these hardliners are very dangerous to us westerners. If we can find out, that they want to spread Islam with force, and making us infidels pay, I say kill all of them (the fundies that is). Take no prisoners. Just pile'em up and torch the thing.

It's funny, it seems like Islam is in control in poor countries. So I don't know what it is in Islam and its ability to make poorer people into it. Every religion is dangerous, and every religion is about peace, depends how you look at it.

[Jac de Molay]

Religion, by its very nature, is oppressive and prone to violence. There's been very few times in history where various religions have coexisted peacefully on a large scale. Islam is no better or different

[Az]

Siro: On uj tochno luchshe obyasnit. Ya ne dumayu shto on eto imel v'vidu v'pryamom smisle.

[Bosh]

Islam is huge, growing fast and is about to be the biggest religion (or is it already?)

Catholicism tops a billion while Islam is just under a billion IIRC. And at the rate its going Pentecostalism will beat both of them in a few decades.

[yavoon]

yes but pentecostalism wont cuz projecting its rate over that large a period is impractical

[Az]

Pentecostalism????

[Ramo]

What people don't seem to realize is that the Arab world isn't the Islamic world. It's true that Islamism thrives in places like Saudi Arabia or Algeria. But most of the Islamic world is fairly secular, believe it or not. The countries with the four largest Islamic populations, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India (albeit Islam is a minority relgion in India) have all had women heads of state. Turkey, Egypt, Iraq are all large, secular, mostly Moslem states. The Iranian population is leaning towards secularlism even if its gov't opposes them. Most Moslems do not believe that it's ok to kill people because they're heathens.

[Shi Huangdi]

From the Koran:

"But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"

"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued," (9:29). "

[Az]

Ramo: I know that, but the other people are not showing that there is another voice.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Aro

Changing two words:

"Sure USA wants peace. And there will be peace when the whole world will be ruled by USA - see?"

Aro:
a)I'm not American
b)I'm against this war for it produces no good
c)I'm atheist
c)I'm somewhere between Green Party and Communist

Now how 'bout that?
Why I am against the way how the US acts? It all comes down to the fact that the world is divided in good and bad and nothing in between. That's the same kind of thinking that can be found in most religions, and very much in Islam.

Yet taking a look into the traditions of islamic law throughout history
there's little that qualifies to refer to Islam as a religion of peace. But it's not only the tradition - for tradition may change and christianity has had not a great record either. It's also the Koran. Again, some might say, the bible in some parts is bloodier than the Koran. Partially true, very partially though. This goes for maybe for those Christians who think the OT is still fully valid today and who rely much on it, yet you won't find Jesus Christ talking like that...
One of the major rules in all Islam is following the example of the prophet - even more than for Christians living according to Jesus' example. Now while Jesus was walking on lakes and partitioned bread, Muhammad was waging wars, telling his warriors to hunt and enslave all polytheists and last but not least annihilating a whole Jewish tribe (of course because they were treacherous...)

In all muslim countries defecting from Islam is either a crime or at least you're not safe anymore - why? Because Islam has been hijacked? No, Muhammad tells in several passages of the Quran that this is the worst crime of all and there's no mercy for those guys...
Ask ANY muslim, even the most peaceloving, what he thinks about defectors of the faith from a religious standpoint.

Of course we must acknowledge that there's peacful movements within Islam, like the Sufis but that doesn't mean that intolerant "versions" of Islam "hijack" the faith - it's all therer in the religious writings.

[monkspider]

Islam is one of the less-enlightened religions admittedly, but if it is the one that brings you closest to God, then there is nothing wrong with it.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Master Zen
As for tolerance, jews and christians were allowed to live in the Ottoman Empire without fear of discrimination. AFAIK they were not allowd to publically practice it or attempt to convert others but other than that they were not persecuted.
At the same time people were being burned at the stake just a few hundrends of miles west...

"Without fear of discrimination" could work sometimesin those areas where mot yet muslims had settled.
But generally in the Ottoman empire this includes:
-Being forbidden to build a new church
-Forbidden to ride on horses
-Discrimination before court; the word of a Christian or Jew was worthless against a muslim, like always in history of islam; although the Ottoman bureaucracy tended sometimes to deal with care this was actually AGAINST islamic law. Want to get rid of your Christian neighbor: Accuse him of "disturbing your prayer" or "trying to make you defect"...
-Discrimination in clothing; stigmatizing yellow and blue signs, bells or turbans; wearing precious cloth was under capital punishment in 16th/17th century

[Bosh]

Pentecostalism????

Yup, its huge and getting bigger, especially in Africa, Latin America and Korea.

Pentecostalism has become the fastest growing segment of Christianity. "It is growing at a rate of 13 million a year, or 35,000 a day. With nearly a half billion adherents, it is, after Roman Catholicism, the largest Christian tradition" (Christian History, "The Rise of Pentecostalism," issue no. 58, vol. XVII no. 2, p.3). In addition, the largest church in the world (the Yoi Do Full Gospel Church) is a Pentecostal church in Korea, pastored by David Yonggi Cho, with a weekly worship attendance of 240,000. Two Pentecostal Churches in Buenos Aires attract together 150,000 each week (ibid.).

They're the ones who're into speaking in tongues.

"But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"

Pagans are people whose religion isn't based on the relevations of a prophet of god, which according to Islamic theology is pretty few people. And the context of the statement is the specific pagan tribes that Muhammad was fighting.

In all muslim countries defecting from Islam is either a crime or at least you're not safe anymore - why?

That's the case just about nowhere except Saudi Arabia.

[Sirotnikov]

Siro: On uj tochno luchshe obyasnit. Ya ne dumayu shto on eto imel v'vidu v'pryamom smisle.

chestno ya toje podozreval shto eto ne imelos v'pryamuyu. no bilo zabavno tak ya yemo tak i otvetil.

ya tebe skazhu - ya ruski sleng i mat pochti ne znayu. bolshinstvo ponimayu esli slishu - no vot sam tak razgovarivat ne umeyu.

ne povorachivaietsa yazik skazat chegoto po ne literaturnomu yaziku.

moy ruski iz razgovora v semye i iz knig. semya visoko obrzovanaya. knigi seryoznie. poetomu matyukat ne umeyu kak sleduyet.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
"Without fear of discrimination" could work sometimesin those areas where mot yet muslims had settled.
But generally in the Ottoman empire this includes:
-Being forbidden to build a new church
-Forbidden to ride on horses
-Discrimination before court; the word of a Christian or Jew was worthless against a muslim, like always in history of islam; although the Ottoman bureaucracy tended sometimes to deal with care this was actually AGAINST islamic law. Want to get rid of your Christian neighbor: Accuse him of "disturbing your prayer" or "trying to make you defect"...
-Discrimination in clothing; stigmatizing yellow and blue signs, bells or turbans; wearing precious cloth was under capital punishment in 16th/17th century

The question is Wernazuma, were Jews and Moslems treated beter than this in Christian states fo the time? What rights did Jews have in Cahtolic courts in Austria? were they even included in the same courts? And what Viennese would have had a Jewish enighbor in 1600? Did they not have to live in the ghettos?

NOBODY, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY, had the type of religious toleration we have today in 1600. And the level of relegious toleration we have today is the result of the humanist, universalist Enlightenment. When someone says that islam was more tolerant that Christinaity of toehr religions, all you have to porve is that the penaltes in life a non-muslim would incur in Muslim states was less than the penalties non-christians would suffer living in Christian lands. Just judging by the Jews, it is hard to view pre-enlightenment Europe as any better, and easy to view it as worse than the Ottoman empire.

[Shi Huangdi]

"Pagans are people whose religion isn't based on the relevations of a prophet of god, which according to Islamic theology is pretty few people. And the context of the statement is the specific pagan tribes that Muhammad was fighting."

Maybe, but i still think the pasage indicates, along with he fact that the religion's founder was a conqurer who spread his faith by the sword, casts doubt on Islam's status as a religion of peace.

[GePap]

And how did Christianity spread?

Had not the late Roman emperors made it the state religion and crushed any competitors, it would hardly have become the religion of Europe. Have you ever studies how many germanic tribes, like the Saxons, were Chritianized? It was not just by monks. The accusation that the religion was spread by war could also be levelled against Hinduism, which as the religion of the Aryan warriors that decended upon India.

Also note that the biggest Muslim state in the world is Indonesia, a place no Muslim armies ever touched. In fact, islam in places like Indonesia and Malaysia are the result of local conversions after contacts with Muslims traders.

It should also be noted that Western Christians are generally to blame for the fact that Egypt and Syria so entrenchedly muslim: it was the Crusaders that destroyed eastern christianity in just a couple of centuries, were about 400 previous years of Muslim rule had failed.

[C0ckney]

The meaning of religion is in the eyes of the beholder.

Evil people will twist a religion to suit their agenda. They will use it to justify suicide bombing, or they will use it to justify going to war.

Good people interpret religion in a peaceful manner.

The religion is irrelevant, really. People only use it as a tool to justify their actions. Without religion, something else would be used to justify violence.

i think sava has just made his first ever post that i agree with.

[Bosh]

NOBODY, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY, had the type of religious toleration we have today in 1600.

China? The Ming dynasty treated religious minorities well including Muslims and Nestorian Christians and even a few Jews IIRC. And 1600 the government was too weak to annoy anyone too much.

[Worthingtons]

i think sava has just made his first ever post that i agree with.

I think Wernazuma has just made the first ever post I agree with

But let's keep on the Islam issue, Christianity has not been on trial on this thread, it's Islam we should be discussing - If Islam stripped the freedom of Christians and good Jewish people in thier states then it doesnt change regardless of what Christians did in thiers.

[red_mustard]

Islam is a ****ed up religon. Have any of you ever actually read the Koran? Anybody who keeps up this political bullshit "Islam is peaceful" line is full of it. The Koran teaches Muslims to CONQUER and KILL all those who do not see things THERE way.

Personally I think all religons are **** at this point in life. But I think islam is a flaming bag of ****.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by GePap
The question is Wernazuma, were Jews and Moslems treated beter than this in Christian states fo the time? What rights did Jews have in Cahtolic courts in Austria? were they even included in the same courts? And what Viennese would have had a Jewish enighbor in 1600? Did they not have to live in the ghettos?

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not defending anyone particularily.
I was just pointing out that even in those cases which are always mentioned as the shining examples of islamic tolerance at a closer look weren't so much tolerant, whether it be muslim Spain, the Turks or Indian islam. Sure, there were some more tolerant epochs but the tolerance was never based theologically and it was always religious lawmen and koran interpreters who were strictly against it.
And it's always the same thing: comparing the relatively most peaceful episodes of islam with the most sick of Christianity like the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition. I could come up with equally terrible examples in the muslim world.

And about the rights of Jews and Christians before court: I'm not sure, but I'd say they had more. Not only in the Ottoman empire most conversions to islam happened when people were brought before court for converting meant that their word counted or that their punishment was less severe. Also it could help if accusing your neighbor to convert beforehand.
And this court discrimination is rooted in the Sharia and there sinmply IS NO Islam without the sharia. Thus this discrimation also took place in muslim Spain and everywhere else. From a strictly Islamic view a society that does not base its law on the Sharia is not muslim and its ruler a defector.
Just one example: The UN charta of human rights was not signed by many muslim states and especially religious muslim thinkers complained that it was rooted in the Christian culture and developed a catalogue of "human rights in Islam" as based on the sharia. Read it, it's extremely odd to our eyes

NOBODY, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY, had the type of religious toleration we have today in 1600. And the level of relegious toleration we have today is the result of the humanist, universalist Enlightenment.

Closing on the topic from a historical stance: Christianity in its early phase was strictly non-political, it was even forbidden for them to hold an office in the early days. During the conciles and with the development of the church, and even more by the embracement of Christianity as "official religion", this radically changed. By making Christianity more apt for "carrying a society", it has come often to extremely repressive solutions which can be paralelled almost exactly the solution the islam gave.
But Islam on the other hand was from its very origin a political and social system meant to carry society. Muhammad himself dedicated many verses in the Koran on law and how to treat the non-believers.
Enlightenment was somehow "easier" to embrace for Christianity because you could always alter the tradition or skip parts of it. Bible interpretation could come to the conclusion that especially the bloodier and less enlightened passages of the OT were "overruled" by the coming of Christ.
Muslims would have to ignore the very word of Muhammad or at least to do a very twisted interpretation to reach the same thing. The only way to overrule a Koran verse is by another Koran verse which was revealed in a later period of Muhammad's life and this makes the religion even more warmongering and intolerant (the later verses center much around the fight against Mekka and the polytheists and several jewish tribes).

There are a few Islamic philosophers (especially in India) who try to seperate "eternal truths" of Islam and "time related" words of Muhammad and thus try to make their religion more open to change and go with the time, but these are marginal attempts to make the muslim society change from a theological perspective, all other attempts are strictly secular and lack any theological argumentation.
There's no bigger groups following the ideas of those thinkers and anyone who follows today's islam - which has clearlynot theologically merged with enlightened philosophy slamic law- and claims that Islam is a peaceful religion is flawed in his view.

When someone says that islam was more tolerant that Christinaity of toehr religions, all you have to porve is that the penaltes in life a non-muslim would incur in Muslim states was less than the penalties non-christians would suffer living in Christian lands. Just judging by the Jews, it is hard to view pre-enlightenment Europe as any better, and easy to view it as worse than the Ottoman empire.

Again, I'm not defending anyone, so I don' really see the point of always making the comparison to Christian history.

But if you wish: After the Jews were expelled from Spain and later from Portugal some went to the Ottoman Empire because they felt culturally more close to this world than to Europe. But a good deal - even more - went to the Netherlands, where they had clearly more rights.
And again, I have to correct on more view: Some think that before 1492, muslim Spain was a multi-kulti society and then the evil Spanish came and expelled all non-believers introducing the Inquisition. It's not so simple. From the 12th century onward, Jews started to prefer living in Christian Spanish kingdoms than in muslim Spain - and considering the "tolerance" of christian Spain this must have meant something... And all the actions of the Christians after 1492 clearly equal those of the Almoravids since the 13th century.

[Wernazuma III]

BTW., it's really weird to find myself disagreeing with GePap, while Rothy agrees with me (though I probably don't agree with him in what he agrees with me, at least not in the solution)
[paranoid]What's all these tiny animals doing on my computer table staring at me? [/paranoid]

[Patashu]

I think Islam is a 'peaceful' religon through the fact that it tries to conquer everyone else, leaving only one religon, thus peace.

[Aro]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III


Aro:
a)I'm not American
b)I'm against this war for it produces no good
c)I'm atheist
c)I'm somewhere between Green Party and Communist

Now how 'bout that?
Why I am against the way how the US acts? It all comes down to the fact that the world is divided in good and bad and nothing in between. That's the same kind of thinking that can be found in most religions, and very much in Islam.

...........................

Of course we must acknowledge that there's peacful movements within Islam, like the Sufis but that doesn't mean that intolerant "versions" of Islam "hijack" the faith - it's all therer in the religious writings.

I know, Wernazuma III , and I agree with your comments. This was a little joke... You know, I simply couldn't resist...

Religion is just like every other human invention, system of beliefs, ideology, technology, nation... Can be a comfort, a secure place, or may be death for many. That's the "human" way.
But I still believe in the humanity. I'm an optimist (in fact, I play tenor saxophone in a band called "The Optimists" )... I know good people and bad people from any nation or culture, following every religion, from poor countries or rich countries, with or without money or education...
And certainly I don't want to be ruled by the Islam now, in its fanatic forms. But part of my family was burned by Christians in the 16th Century, in Portugal... and later (17th and 18th century), here in Brazil.
I was educated as Christian, my ancestors were jewish people from Portugal, Spain and Holland, my wife is descendant of Arabs (she's not muslim, but her ancestors were). When we have a little fight at home, it's like a Middle East crisis.
Be tolerant, guys. It's the only way.
Oh, and maybe a girlfriend (or boyfriend) from another belief or culture could help. Sex and love can do wonders for mutual comprehension...


Note: Please, be tolerant with my bad English, fellows...

[muxec]

That's the case just about nowhere except Saudi Arabia.

Being disagree with the ruler is dangerous in all dictatures.

poetomu matyukat ne umeyu kak sleduyet.

Ja nikogo ne materil po russki krome DinoDoca da ito v drugoi teme. Ya skazal chto odna moja podruga umerenno-musulmanka i ona govorit, chto gosudarstvennyj islam ne est' nastojacchij islam. Raznica kak mezhdu nastojacchim Judaismom i SHASnikami v knessete.

[muxec]

Do you think, that internet can be a religion?

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by GePap
And how did Christianity spread?

Had not the late Roman emperors made it the state religion and crushed any competitors, it would hardly have become the religion of Europe. Have you ever studies how many germanic tribes, like the Saxons, were Chritianized? It was not just by monks. The accusation that the religion was spread by war could also be levelled against Hinduism, which as the religion of the Aryan warriors that decended upon India.

Also note that the biggest Muslim state in the world is Indonesia, a place no Muslim armies ever touched. In fact, islam in places like Indonesia and Malaysia are the result of local conversions after contacts with Muslims traders.

It should also be noted that Western Christians are generally to blame for the fact that Egypt and Syria so entrenchedly muslim: it was the Crusaders that destroyed eastern christianity in just a couple of centuries, were about 400 previous years of Muslim rule had failed.

Comeon Gepap, think, can't you see the obvious difference here? Christianity and Islam were both spread by the sword; however in Islam it was actually the most holy prophet himself and the founder of the religion who spread his religion by the sword. The people who forcefully spread Christianity were people claiming to be following Jesus; not Jesus himself.

[Az]

oh, so Pentacostalists are the ones who converted half of S.Korea already!

ugh, scary.