What?
Are you saying, definitively, not your opinion, but Mohammed’s opinion is that an infidel/unbeliever/polytheist should NEVER be harmed unless it is in direct defense against an attack.
In other words, death to the infidel is a COMPLETE FALSEHOOD?
No, I mean it would be a scary place to live.
What is that supposed to mean? That almost sounds like you are saying it is OK to make war against Polytheists?
I can only give you my opinion and the opinions of scholars.
As you’ve been presenting it, yes it is.
There are lots of places that would be scary to live in, and only a few of them are Muslim. So why are you so obsessed with the Muslim ones, particularly since you don’t live in any of them?
It means that the surahs you keep quoting are part of a declaration of hostilities between two polities. It wasn’t a “hey you, individual Muslim, go out and find a random individual unbeliever to kill” command. It was a “we, the Muslims of the city-state of Medina, are now in a state of open conflict with the polytheist rulers of the city-state of Mecca” declaration. It was, in other words, a war, and in war the two sides (and the combatants of the two sides) fight each other until one or the other wins or a truce is declared.
Are you asking me if I think the Medinans’ declaration of war against the Meccans was justified?
Ok, it is almost 11AM here but I stay up and sleep all day many days. So I may not have time for a response, although, I will be here for another short while, not a long while.
1- If those are wartime passages and wartime passages only, if that is truly what those passages mean, then I am interested in learning more, learning abut how I am wrong or how I may be wrong. Can you provide any objective account that says that? because all I can find on the internet are anti-Islamic web sites or Muslim apologist websites.
2- Mohammed was a bandit right? Mohammed was a slave trader right? Mohammed owned slaves, right? can you see how, if all three of these statements are facts, I find it very very hard to believe that Mohammed was a man of peace or that Islam is a religion of peace.
3- I thank you for hanging in there and talking with me about this. I realize that my position and my opinion of your religion must be very frustrating. I realize that for me to equate you and most people like you, most muslims, to equate you to these negative topics is rude and frustrating to hear. Please understand, my problem is with some fundamental problems I see in in the Koran and that perception is born out by how I see life is in countries that have a strong tradition of Sharia Law, as in, Laws from the Koran.
And now he’s completed the classic SDMB trifecta, as though his earlier “accomplishments” in this thread weren’t clear enough for you folks.
Hey Monty! Thank you for your comments. It is nice to know that you are - still - paying attention.
Get some rest, I’ll still be here! 
Here are some not-too-expensive scholarly works on the subject of Muhammad’s life and warfare in Islam:
The First Muslims: History and Memory
Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought
The Islamic Law of War: Justifications and Regulations
Yes, but that was true of all the leaders of all the factions in the Medinan/Meccan war. Caravan raids, carried out by Meccans, Medinans, and their respective allied tribes, were mostly how such conflicts were waged.
Same thing with slavery (and I note that Muhammad said more about improving the lot and treatment of slaves than Jesus, who also lived in an environment and culture of endemic slavery, ever did).
Because Muhammad and Islam represented an improvement over the status quo in 7th Century Arabia, particularly when it came to the interminable intertribal conflicts that were being waged.
I honestly appreciate that!
(Though just to nitpick shari’ah isn’t really “laws from the Qur’an” - there are a lot of sources of Islamic law beyond just the Qur’an. :))
Does it apply to Hindus? Yazidis? Atheists? Zoroastrians?
1 and 4 are modified by 2 and 3, and can’t be understood without them. As modified, they seem like pretty standard “defend yourself” and “treat those who surrender with mercy” kinds of teachings.
And probably quite-forward thinking for their time; compare to the (much older) excerpt from Psalms above, where there’s no mention of mercy or surrender for those who cry for help or turn and run - only extermination.
No, no, no, and no.
Actually, while I don’t speak for him, I think you may have misunderstood what he meant.
I suspect he’s saying that while your arguments can be fairly described as stupid and offensive, more appropriate terms would be “banal” and “trite”.
Theoretically yes, but in practice, no to any of them.
The Zoroastrians are one of the protected and recognized religions of Iran, the Muslim conquerors of the Asian sub Continent accorded Dhimmi status to Hindus, and I’m not aware of the Yazidis getting treated differently than other religious minorities in Medieval Iraq.
As for atheists, they’ve never really been an organized group and while openly professing to be one in ancient times would certainly not have been a good idea, since their was basically a society-wide denial of their existence, so long as you never raised a stink nothing happened to you.
Obviously, Muslim extremists don’t feel that way and do favor them being exterminated but historically, other Muslim groups not recognized as Muslims because of when they came about, such as the Ahmadis were, to the best of my knowledge treated worse.
Aisha or Tamerlan might be better to spread light on the subject.
And yet a billion Muslims do not kill infidels, and you refuse to take that into account.
“Islam orders believers to kill infidels.”
But that doesn’t happen; the huge majority of Muslims have never killed anyone.
Why do you keep ignoring this fundamental fact?
Why? Because it doesn’t fit his prejudices.
I didn’t know a roll of the eyes were a rebuttal to a religious concept of war ingrained in Islamic cultures since the inception of the religion.
Did the culture make up Jihad and Islam is ancillary? Really?
Or is it that peaceful Muslims ignore the call to Jihad and have re-framed it into a (historically incongruous) “spiritual struggle?”
Jihad has always been interpreted (up until very recently) to mean a call to religious war against non-believers, hasn’t it? Is there a shred of intellectual integrity in you to acknowledge this?
You keep rolling your eyes at ugly truths and eventually you attain the blindness you seek.
Nope and nope. I suggest you read the two books on the subject that I recommended upthread.
Physician, heal thyself.
Then let’s re-phrase it as a “call to militarism in defense of Islam.”
Which, per the Muslim Brotherhood and numerous other Islamist organizations, can be interpreted as anything but defensive.
Characterize it as extremist or radical, but it is a concept borne of Islam and one which has specifically been used to justify violence against others.
It still does so, even today. Which is the problem. Not to be erroneously blamed on “culture.”