Does the Koran condone/prescribe violence?

[Jojo]

One more thing.

In answer to the question “what will happen in the future as regards this current upsurge in militant islam?”

I think it’ll just die down like it usually does, until next time. Which is not to say it won’t be a bumpy ride until then.

[istara]

Incidentally, it is commonly feared by most people that the Burj Al Arab will be the prime target if a terror group was to try and take out a symbolic target in Dubai. Oddly, there are hardly ever terror warnings here - that we are informed of - whereas there have been several high alerts in Bahrain.

[Aldebaran]

@KidCharlemagne

… Would a reasonably objective reader of the Koran conclude that it prescribed violence?

Not if the reader uses a copy with Tafsir (exegeses) included and takes the effort to read actually what is said insterad of picking out sentences at will and neglect previous and following = context.

Is it pretty clear that jihad is meant to be an actual war rather than an “inner war?”

No.

How does the Koran compare to the Bible in this respect? Does Christianity come off as more tolerant?

Not if you read the OT and take everything what is in it literally.

Advise: If you want to gain understanding of a religion, never read the Holy Books of any religion without making the effort to gain insight in context and exegeses.
Salaam. A

[Aldebaran]

For those who have difficulties to make the distinction between Hadith and Al Qur’an I can give you a replica of a post I made about it in an other thread (about the history of Al Qur’an)

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=219860&page=2&pp=30
POST # 42

@Aldebaran

I have to clarify first of all something about the sources:

The problem with everything considering the history of early Islam is that we have to rely completely on the hadith for our information since there is no other source avaiblable.
The first obstacle is that the traditions (hadith) about the Prophet and what happened after he died weren’t transmitted with the goal to write history.
They were transmitted because people admired him and wanted to preserve his deeds and sayings (and in addition the deeds and sayings of his close companions and their adventures).
This implies that they were transferred with a religious goal and background and from a religious point of view, not a historical one.
The next obstacle is to take into account that there was over time almost inevitably some colourful painting added to certain events/stories.

Yet the good news is that one can’t escape the fact that beneath all that (and the study of the hadith makes that clear) one can discover a reflection of historical events.
So when you cut off the religious context and the fact that the Prophet was the admired example, you can read in those thousands of stories a historical report.
Add to this that these - at first oral transmitted - traditions were gathered and studied on very intensively by different people and selected and selected again on their reliability. The chain of transmitters for example - named Isnad - was subject of scrupulous investigation.
If you examine hadith, you shall often find slight differences in the details of reporting on the event, yet the story itself doesn’t change.

Salaam. A

[Alan_Owes_Bess]

This board is probably the wrong place in which to address such a question as I suspect there are probably only a very small number of people who have actually taken the trouble to study the Koran and the Hadiths. I don’t wish to blow my own trumpet, but I am one of the few people who have studied the Koran on this Board. Alde, who has already put his 2 cents in, is another.

A good source would be study reviews of the Koran, preferably by someone who has no particular axe to grind, either for or against it.

I have provided a link to a brief, but pretty accurate, review of Islam’s most admired book by an atheist:

An atheist Reviews the Qur’an

Actually, that particular site also contains a wealth of other material, including commentaries on the Hadiths and descriptions of Muhammed’s career activities, for which he is still admired by so many.

There are many other sources that can be easily found on the net on the Koran and its impact on various world communities.