Robert163, you’ll find an extended answer to your OP in A World Without Islam, which makes the case that Islamic terrorism has much more to do with geopolitical grievances than religion per se. A world without Islam, in which much of the Middle East would presumably be Eastern Orthodox or something instead of Muslim, probably wouldn’t look very different than the one we live in. Which makes plenty of sense. After all, every religion in history has been enlisted in committing acts of great violence. Most Muslims today and throughout history are and have been peaceful, regular folks who poop, love their kids, and enjoy their holiday meals.
Nor do I. The problem is that the bad ideas in Islam need to be addressed and criticised. But it’s nigh on impossible to criticise those ideas, or to suggest that Islam contains bad ideas which other religions don’t, without people trying, often deliberately, to misrepresent you by portraying your criticisms of Islamic doctrine as a criticism of all Muslims.
The idea of using Palestinian christians as a counter example actually comes from sam harris.
Does it? I’ve seen it on a few blogs, but never attributed to him.
I might give it a read
but you are ignoring the fact that the Koran/Mohammed specifically call for slavery, war, and other forms of violence.
Not only that, most evangelicals would rather not be reminded about what Jesus said regarding how they should treat the poor, where they should pray and how they should refrain from judging their fellow man. They are much more comfortable invoking the OT eye for an eye retribution against those they disapprove of.
It’s a looooooong debate, almost 3 hours, but Harris did raise the point somewhere in the first half of the video. It was a debate with Cenk from the Young Turks
3 hours? Blimey! Might save that one for Sunday 
on this we are in complete agreement
One could almost accuse you of ignoring the fact that the OT calls for the same things.
Both the Koran and the OT requires its readers to commit genocide in the name of the god they are marketing. By any standard, a religions whose holy scriptures commands you to murder those of different faiths can justly be called violent. This makes both Christianity, Judaism and Islam violent religions.
From what I understand the Bible has more violence in it, but it is also a much longer book, and just looking at percentages you would find that the Koran has more violence per page. So you can make the case either way about who is more violent, depending on your preference.
If you look at history I think Christians have probably killed a lot more people, but the Muslims are having a good run lately. The jews are of course trailing in the totals but if you look at how few they are and the fact that they’ve only had a country of their own for a few decades, they too are pretty good at violence.
Obviously all three religions are games of genocide, but it CAN be tricky to figure out which ones manage to be the most violent. I’d probably go with a score sheet that shows kills per believer and year, but that’s obviously very simplified.
The Eastern religions really suck at this. Haven’t been able to find a single buddhist sutra that encourages you to kill anyone (except your own ego). And even though the Gita has a lot of warring in it, it turns out that this is some sort of symbol of how to conquer your own inner demons in the search for enlightenment and connection with the godhead. It’s weird. The god(s) of the western world are obviously total cunts compared to their eastern colleagues.
Yes, after about 20 minutes however it is just debating the same thing over and over in circles. Harris says, look at the text of Islam ,it is much worse than christianity, and Cenk keeps saying well, so and so christian did so and so, and Harris says yes but did the text command them to do so and then Cenk gets excited or laughs and tires to give yet another example of a christian acting badly…
except that the message of Jesus is pacifist and directly contradictions (but does not outlaw) the barbaric extremes of the OT…
Well the I will accuse you of ignoring the sermon on the mount and pretty much 99% of everything Jesus had to say. His message was pacifist. It is not possible to spin it in any other direction. Whereas Mohammed not only called for war and slavery and violence, he participated in the same acts.
So who’s ignoring stuff now?
You have an interesting definition of the word “most.”
The Koran also contradicts its own aggressive passages elsewhere, and (some) hadiths directly contradict the Koran as well. Welcome to revealed religions 101, dude.
The point seems to be to be able to not change or even examine your own behaviour one iota while still enjoying a self-satisfied feeling of be-quoted righteousness and innate moral superiority over your fellow man.
so we are in agreement that the Koran has it’s own aggressive agenda?
Jesus is pacifist…but Christianity is not. Why do you give Christianity a pass, but condemn Islam? Do you seriously imagine that all Christians are pacifists, just because Jesus said they should be? Yoo hoo? Thirty Years War? Albigensian Crusade? English Civil War?
Religious faiths are not intrinsically anything. Both the Bible and the Koran emphasize charitable giving, and both emphasize smiting the ungodly. The two are absolutely indistinguishable in terms of an objective reading of the holy texts.
Historically Christians have been less willing to live side-by-side with followers of other faiths than Muslims have been. Muslim cities often had Jewish and Christian quarters: Christian cities less often had Jewish quarters, and never (or almost never – I know of no examples) Muslim quarters.
Islam has been less violent than Christianity, and, in fact, has suffered more than Christianity has suffered – from invasions from the east. Genghis and Tamerlane did things to Islam infinitely more hellish than anything Islam ever did to Europe.
I don’t know that I can, nor do I know if I would even make that argument. I have seen it repeatedly claimed that honour killings are just as common among at least rural Arab Christians as Muslims - so for example plucked from a fruitless if very quick and dirty internet search for numbers: Arab Christians are a small minority today in places like Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories, but they account for a proportionate share of those killings, experts say. From a very general article here. The justification for why it might be every bit as common is that minority communities tend towards a defensive insularity that regards crossing boundaries as a threat to family and communal identity. Certainly Christianity is every bit as patriarchal as Islam. Meanwhile it is claimed that the practice is almost unknown in a few Muslim countries like Oman ( may just be uncommon and un- or under-reported however ).
But I very strongly suspect there are no really good statistics to back up the above quoted assertion. Fact is good statistics about honour killings are hard to come by, period - activists generally assert they happen far more commonly than is reported. Rather it is much more likely anecdotal observations and while they may be very well-informed ones, it is also entirely possible it could come from a biased perspective.
So again, I don’t have numbers. My point in bringing it up is just to show that however common it is or not, it does happen, it seems to happen for much the same reason as in Muslim families and you have to hang that commonality on something. Shared Abrahamic traditions or some other cultural explanation? Whichever - the point is that people can manifest the same ugliness everywhere. Cast stones if you must, but don’t assume a black and white view of the world.
Well I personally agree, and in fact I would go much further and say that Jesus specifically condemns the OT, but that’s not the mainstream Christian view or dogma. I would also say that the teachings of Jesus are actually not correctly depicted in the Bible, and that basically what is called “Christianity” has very little to do with what Jesus taught. Basically Jesus does not equal Christianity. Jesus was an enlightened master, like Buddha, and Christianity is a violent religion that has very little connection to him.
So yes, the message of Jesus was excellent and non-violent, but unfortunately that is not what later became the religion of Christianity. And nobody is accusing Jesus of being violent as far as I can tell.