I haven’t read the whole Koran, but have read a good portion of it.
I’ve also studied it quite a bit.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Islam (as a religion), is a little too quick to see violence as a solution to solve problems (see below link and/or pick up your papers on any given day).
I don’t see Judiasm, Christianity or ANY other religion on the planet acting or doing the violent - yes violent things associated with Islamic.
Am I right. Is Islam at it’s heart a violent religion, in spite of what it says about peace?
That was then, this is now. The Christians have toned it down over the years.
They haven’t killed anyone outright in the USA for nearly 400 years now, if you consider the Salem executions the last outburst of church-sanctioned murder.
Islam is not a violent religion. Humans are, however, a relatively volatile lot. And the chief religion in the Arab lands is Islam. Could just as easily have been Christianity, Judaism or Shinto–a rough and tumble society will find a way to show that God is on its side.
I find that statement dubious, at best. If you had studied the Qur’an quite a bit, then you certainly would’ve read the whole thing. After all, it’s really not that long.
Then you’rew woefully ignorant of History.
Nope. You’re not right. And it’s its heart, not it’s heart.
What about the Japanese cult that tried to poison a subway full of people ? As far as Christianity goes, the Christian countries have more power; they use air strikes, not terrorist strikes. There’s also plenty of violence in Israel from the Jewish side.
Yes; monotheisms are violent by nature IMHO.
Maybe; I think they are just less honest. Part of our enthusiasm for killing ME people may simply be a religious hatred of Muslims, but nobody’s going to admit it out loud.
The anti-abortion fanatics are killing people right now. Plus, there’s plenty of religiously motivated anti-gay violence. Then there’s violence towards children; “spare the rod and spoil the child” and all that.
A matter of one’s perspective. What happened prior to those centuries? And what “aggression” inspired the Inquisition?
The most overtly fundamentalist Christian US President in generations has invaded and occupied a Muslim country which had not aggressed against the US. But that is not considered in the OP’s thesis, which amounts to a claim that aggression and violence are only what other people do, not you.
Clothahump, when Christianity was the age Islam is now, there’s no question it was a religion of violence by the OP’s usage. But even then it would be more accurate to say that it was a religion often used by its extremists to rationalize violence even though most of its adherents were as peaceful and normal as anyone else. Is that not true of Islam today?
Hmmm – lotsa problems with this statement. It happened just up the road from where I live, and I’ve read about it quite a bit. It’s a complex situation but:
1.) It was just over 300 years ago, not 400. They had the tercentnary in 1993.
2.) It’s not a parallel to the other cases being bandied about here – the witchcraft trials weren’t part of any religion vs. religion conflict
3.) The cases weren’t even religious on one side – these were civil cases where people thought they were being physically harmed by other parties, and were bringing charges against the supposed attackers for that reason. It wasn’t because of religious beliefs, although their religios beliefs certainly directed their tyhinking abvout who could be doing the hurting,. and how.
4.) Even given their assumptions, the witches should never have been convicted and hanged, as even the court condemning them decided less than a year later. It was the decision to take as valid “spectral evidene”, which never would have been done except for the hysteria.
As regards the OP, I’ve read the Koran through three times, and have an entire shelf devoted only to Islam. But I certainly am far from properly understanding it, and I know that I can’t see it from “the inside” as a believer does. There are certainly violent and intolerant passages (or at least they appear so in my translations), but I can pull out similarly intimidating passages from the Old Testament, and sayings that seem bizarre from the New Testament as well. The real question is how the believers view the world and interpret these passages themselves. And in that I have no doubt that there is a very broad spectrum, with the extremists getting all of the attention right now.
Seems all major religions are violent. They want to grow and are competing for the same pool of people.Its a business and wants to grow.We want to get rid of violent religions ,lets outlaw them all.
Nothing, pretty much. Muhammed himself led a jihad against the Byzantines not long before he died. The battle of Yarmuk, which ended in a decisive defeat for the Byzantines and marked the first major wave of Muslim conquest outside of Arabia, took place only a few years after the Prophet’s death. Islam was hostile to Christendom from the very beginning.
Sounds to me more like the Arabian empire was hostile to the Byzantine Empire. Empires try to conquer one another, it’s what they do, regardless of their respective religions.
Which of course shows the problem with blaming any political behavior on a religion. To what extent were they inspired by the religion, and to what extent are they purely economic/political actions by religious people, justified after the fact by religious rhetoric? More recent history has shown us that religion is not necessary for a nation or people to try to conquer their neighbors and committ atrocities against them.
First off, you might want to add a noun after “Islamic” or change it to “Islam.”
Second, you must have missed the parts of the Bible in which God orders the Israelites to, for instance, go kill every man, woman, and child living in the nation of Amalek, down to the baby born yesterday, for something their ancestors did. (Samuel ch. 15, I believe.) You may also have missed medieval pogroms in which Christians murdered Jews for being “Christ-killers,” this time blaming the victims for something someone ELSE’s ancestors did.
However, it is very obvious that religion often intertwines with politics, and telling religious motives apart from mundane ones is often impossible. And I’m not at all sure if it’s important whether or not religion is the primary motive or a rationalization before, during or after the fact. It still remains a critical factor.
No matter how you look at it, Islam has a long history of conflict with Christendom, and during the first several centuries of Islam’s existence the aggression was pretty much all one way.
There are those who theorize that Islam originally evolved as an instrument of Arab imperialism. I’m inclined to agreed with them.
I’m not sure what you consider “outright,” but several Catholics died and lost many houses to fire when Protestants rioted against the Catholic desire to bring their Douai-Rheims bibles to school instead of using the Authorized Version. (Riots occurred in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Louisville although deaths may have only occurred in Philadelphia and Louisville.)