Well by all means, take your mother/sister/daughter to ISIS and explain the errors in their ways. When you’re done move on to the 80 or so other terrorist groups based around Islam.
In the mean time explain why the UK had to guard Salman Rushdie because a fatwa was issued against his life. Add in various cartoonists. Lather rinse repeat.
Let me save you the trouble. You CAN’T.
Religions are not violent. People are violent.
Because people are horrible, violent assholes.
Just DID.
How does that in any way address what I said, much less contradict it?
Khomeini was an egotistical authoritarian asshole whose un-Shia-like ruling philosophy was heavily influenced by the non-scholarly Sunni Islamists. And those who committed violence over the cartoons were just as unschooled as Bin Laden and the Taliban.
The Koran is not violent; it’s an inanimate object.
All the time…in self defense. (Don’t try to pretend that killing in self-defense is not “violence,” and that’s the word you chose to use.)
So, as with most any religious text, a believer can come away with whatever interpretation they wish - that the Law of Moses must be upheld, or that it can be waived arbitrarily (possibly only by Jesus, of course). The passages certainly appear to contradict one another.
Or, it could be that the story is a later interpolation, as is commonly thought.
Yes, reading the words as the author intended is the only correct interpretation. Anything else is some form of apologetics.
I said Jesus was a total pacifist and I was wrong and I admitted it. You claim, in terms of violence, Jesus and Mohammed are exactly the same. Clearly the are not. But you can’t or won’t admit that.
Really?
I’m don’t think Mohammed would join ISIS. I don’t know well enough of any of the specifics to say. But I would hope he would not. You said for his time and day he was a moderate and a reformer. Based upon that criteria I doubt he would join ISIS. Also, his desire to not harm non- combatants * and his desire for peaceful relations after the fighting was done, would not align with the principles of ISIS or Al Queda.
But
There is another set of criteria. The Thief, Murderer, Slave Capturing, Slave Owning, Misogynist, Warlord set of criteria. So to say that Mohammed would of stood on the side of peace is as flawed as saying he would of joined ISIS.
Which means no one has the correct interpretation of any text. Right?
Or do you think we can really know what the author intended? Hell, the Constitution was written fewer than 250 years ago, and even though we have a ton of contemporary writing and annotation, we still argue about the “Framers’ intent” friggin constantly.
We see through our own lenses, not the lenses of any author. We cannot see through their eyes.
That would depend upon the passage in question, would it not?
“Wives, obey your husbands and stand in submission to him”
Where is the confusion? What is difficult to interpret about that?
“My kingdom has many houses”
Yes, that is a bit ambiguous and nothing more than colorful language really.
How do you determine the authorial intent of the Word of God and not rely on your human interpretation of it?
Because, in terms of their attitudes towards violence, they are the same.
Really.
Except he did stand on the side of peace, and demonstrated it numerous times. Particularly considering the environment he had to live in (which you’re trying to blame him for).
The people involved in the skirmish in Mecca were all armed men of fighting age organized into an attacking force. They were combatants by even the modern definition, not innocent civilians who were only trying to protect their homes. You keep trying to avoid this comparison, but (again) do you also give the German soldiers fighting for Hitler a pass and consider them victims of US violence because they were only defending themselves after their country was invaded in the latter parts of WWII?
Okay.
What does it mean, in terms of day to day living, for a wife to obey her husband and stand in submission to him? If I’m a wife who is reading that, what, specifically, am I supposed to do?
I avoided it because it was baseless and inaccurate and not worth spending my time on.
We invaded Germany because Germany was trying to take over all of Europe. Invading Germany at the end of the war was necessary to stop the war.
Mohammed invading Mecca was not necessary. He had been expelled many years previously. Hostilities had stopped. Fighting had stopped. Mohammed restarted the war with an unnecessary violent invasion.
As with most of your examples, your example here is revisionist and inaccurate. As to all of your other comments, nothing I can say that I have not already said over and over and over and over again.
Well, that, we don’t know. Because it did not say. But what we do know, and what it did say, is for wives to stand in submission to their husbands. Actually, making a statement like that and not giving any follow up directions is a bit problematic. It leads to confusion and unequal application. But that wives are supposed to submit is unequivocal.
Why was invading Germany necessary to stop the war? At the point where Germany itself was invaded, it had long since been stopped from trying to take over all of Europe.
Yes, you’re right, fighting and hostilities had stopped. But it wasn’t Muhammad that restarted the war, it was the Meccans, who broke the treaty and attacked Muhammad first.
Since the Meccans had shown themselves to be untrustworthy and militarily aggressive (just like Germany in World War II), why was it illegitimate for Muhammad to prosecute the war to enough of a conclusion to prevent Mecca from doing that sort of thing again, but perfectly okay for the US to prosecute the war against Germany to enough of a conclusion to prevent them from doing that sort of thing again?
Well this I do know. Women should not be preachers. The bible says they are not allowed to speak in church.
Meaning that interpretation is essential to effect any kind of understanding of scripture and what scripture commands. Because how am I supposed to submit to my husband if I don’t even know what it means to submit to my husband?
Well, actually, you’re right. But that doesn’t make Mohammed justified in his actions. it just makes the invasion of Germany immoral.
Yo have a funny set of Logic, my friend.
Define militarily aggressive. Be specific.
Take that up with Paul or with Mohammed or Moses.
Your criticism here is good reason to abandon the book entirely. Nothing more.