So criticize those specific Pakistani Muslims – those views are certainly worth criticizing, just like the views of most Christians at the times in history in which most Christians held very similar views. Polling shows that American Muslims are more tolerant of homosexuality, for example, than some American groups like evangelical Christians and Mormons: American Social and Political Attitudes | Pew Research Center
That sounds to me like it’s something about the country and culture/society of Pakistan, and not something about Islam, that drives these sorts of attitudes.
Do you see what you did, Harrkev? You forced Superdude, a friend and noted jerk (still buds SD?) to get all rational and nice. This isn’t his way, which you’d know if you weren’t new. but you made him play against type, like Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West. Are you satisfied? Does this make you happy?
I strongly suspect that if Mecca had been invaded by the Christians the Muslims would have come up with the notion of a holy war first. Circumstances make holy wars, it’s nothing inherent in Christianity.
OK, I think this is very clearly not true. Ramira pointed out correctly above that medieval Muslim states were generally more tolerant of non-Muslim religions than Christians were of non-Christians, and she also made the case (which I’m not qualified to comment on) that Muslim states were more tolerant of Muslim heresies than Christian states were of heretical Christians. To the extent that’s true, there are clear theological reasons for that. The reason Christian states persecuted Christian heretics were because you can make a very good case for doing so based on Christian scripture and tradition. (St. Augustine famously made that case, and I think if you read his argument you’ll be impressed by how strong it is, even if you disagree with his conclusions). Likewise the reason (well part of the reason) Muslim states tolerated Christians, Jews, and Sabaeans is because there’s explicit religious instruction for doing so. Ideologies do matter, and that includes religious ideologies.
Different Christian and Muslim states treated various groups differently, some better and some worse, and they all had leaders who claimed to have religious textual support for their actions. IMO, if one spends a little effort, one can find textual support in religious texts for almost any position, including directly contradictory ones, and history (in my understanding) bears this out.
Very true. We ought to cast aside the ghosts that still haunt organized religion. But what is lost must be “replaced” in some sense. It holds much power to fear a god. In the secular West, what are we replacing the fading crescent of religious dogma with? Without it, we rely on the rational choice of peace. We are not always rational creatures. Religion ought to teach us to avoid conflict, as any true follower of Jesus (or Muhammad) would tell you.
