Well Steven, I guess really the only sensible thing you could say is:
and then punch him in the cods.
(Koran 5:72)
They do blasphame who say:“Allah is Christ the son
of Mary.” But said Christ: “O Children of Israel!
Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord”. Whoever Joins
other gods with Allah-Allah will forbid him
the GARDEN and the Fire will be his abode.
(Koran 3:85)
If anyone desires a religion other than Islam,
never will it be accepted of him; and in the
Hereafter he will be in the ranks of those who have
lost all spiritual good.
Gum, do you think you understand Islamic doctrine better than Muslims do? Do you dispute that the doctrine which has been explained to you is actually Islamic doctrine? Your one-trick-pony (and uninformed) Muslim bashing schtick is really getting tiresome.
Islam is a big, 1400 year old religion, and the Koran and hadiths are sometimes contradictory. So when you ask, “What’s the Muslim belief on whether or not non-Muslims can go to heaven?”, how can you answer that? It’s like asking “What’s the Christian belief on whether or not non-Christians can go to heaven?” The answer is, of course, there are a variety of different beliefs because there are different interpretations. So, in the case of Christianity, for instance, you have some people and groups who are universalist and think that everyone will go to heaven, and you have others who say that those non-Christians who are good people will go to heaven, and others who say only Christians will go to heaven, and others who say only Christians of their own particular sect will.
It’s the same thing in Islam. There are and have been Muslims who say all good people will go to heaven, and others who say all monotheists will, and others who say only Muslims will, and others who say only Muslims of their own sect will. Some Sufi mystic has different beliefs than bin Laden. There’s way too much diversity to make statements like that.
Rome, 2007 :
“Your Holiness, I have a good new and a bad one”
“What’s the good one?”
“God just called. He wants to speak with you”
“That’s wonderful! How could I care about any bad new, then? What is the bad new, anyway?”
“He’s calling from Mecca, your Holiness”
Which is precisely the problem, since muslms consider christian scriptures as having been corrupted, hence not reliable.
Actually, he kind of made my point. (Or is that “kind have” 
)
The first quote shows how radically monotheist Islam is. Jesus is a special (in one way God’s favorite) prophet. He was born of the virgin Mary, untouched by Satan at birth, still alive in Paradise but he is not God. However the Koran continues on about how Christians are also People of the Book (scriptures,) and how their food is lawful for Muslims. So a Christian is not automatically doomed to hell. Now how God judges Christians who believe in the Trinity I do not know. I suspect it may have bearing on how they view Jesus, as the son who should be worshiped or as part of the One God who should be worshiped. But as I said, “Not my judgement call.”
In the second quote the question is, “What is Islam.” Well, according to the first Sura (chapter) Islam is believing in One God and doing good works. So, yeah, anyone who does not believe in God and causes mischief in the world (e.g. steals, murders) does not attain Paradise. It also has a bearing on Christians who believe faith is all that is needed for Heaven. Just believing in God is not enough. However it would also mean that an “savage” who believed in the “Great Spirit” and treated others according to the Golden Rule would get his Paradise ticket punched.
Realize that these are my personal views which I do not think are shared by Muslims of Arabic culture. I do not know about Muslims of the Far East where Koran only Islam (not giving hadith credence) is growing.
According to some of the Dead Sea Scrolls Paul aka Saul was called “The Wicked One” by the then head of the Jewish Temple, James (Brother of Jesus) The Rightous. (Taken from memory from a book about the scrolls by the one of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.)
Can’t find it now but someone had a collection of Bible quotes from Jesus that suggested that one should listen to Jesus and not what others said about Jesus.
“The God” as opposed to “god.”
The word has no gender and cannot be made plural (in Arabic.)
I suggest, Diogenes the Cynic, you start studying the koran for a couple of years and then come back to post something usefull.
Your schtick is not only tiresome, but also very ignorant.
On Hell:
“Those who invoke a god other than Allah not only should meet punishment in this world but the Penalty on the Day of Judgment will be doubled to them, and they will dwell therein in ignominy.” (Koran 25:68)
“Non-believers will go to hell and will drink boiling water” (14:17).
“…the unbelievers… shall have a great punishment in world hereafter” (Koran 5:34).
“We shall say: ‘Lay hold of him and bind him. Burn him in the fire of Hell, then fasten him with a chain seventy cubits long. For he did not believe in Allah, the Most High…’” (Koran 69:28)
“Would that you knew what the fire of Hell is like! It leaves nothing, it spares no one; it burns the skins of men. It is guarded by nineteen keepers.” (Koran 74:19)
[btw: Since I’m an atheïst, I don’t really give a flying doodah what the bible says, or doesn’t say about hell and the hereafter.
I’m more likely to end up fricking killed by islam, than by christianity, anyway]
[QUOTE=gum]
I suggest, Diogenes the Cynic, you start studying the koran for a couple of years and then come back to post something usefull.
Your schtick is not only tiresome, but also very ignorant.
[QUOTE]
Like I had said before, there’s a wide variety of beliefs about the afterlife and the final judgement in Islam, and you need to be careful about taking a line or two from the Koran and saying, “That’s the final word on that”. The Koran’s been interpreted a lot of different ways by a lot of different people.
I’d say, “I can’t seriously believe You really care what religion people hold while not making Your nature more clear. If You’re going to judge me for not knowing which magic door was the right one, well, it sucks to be me, but there’s not much I can do.”
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
[QUOTE=gum]
I suggest, Diogenes the Cynic, you start studying the koran for a couple of years and then come back to post something usefull.
Your schtick is not only tiresome, but also very ignorant.
I don’t take ‘a line or two’ from the koran.
Sadly, I feel it my duty to study the damn thing.
I suggest you do the same.
Here’s a start: http://www.maghrebonline.nl/koran/nl/
I’m sure there are English/Arabic translations as well.
Oh.
Before you start nagging about ‘translations’, I’m learning Arabic as well.
bup, I don’t understand your post.
I’ve read the Koran, but thank you, and congratulations on learning Arabic. The Koran says what it says, and that was fixed 1400 years ago and can’t change, nor can the hadiths. What can change, though, is how people interpret the words of the Koran, and how they decide to apply those worlds to their lives right now. And Muslims have interpreted it differently throughout history.
Some Muslims have an interpretation of Islam that leads them to do pretty horrible things, in the middle east, in the Netherlands, and elsewhere…and the Islam that’s practiced by the killers of Theo van Gogh, and the Saudi religious police that wouldn’t let girls out of a burning building, and the people who crash planes into the World Trade Center is a really nasty religion, and the people who do it are intolerant and evil. But that’s just one interpretation of Islam. You gave a good example of this fact in another thread, with the case of Nasr Abu Zeid, the Egyptian professor who was forced to seek asylum in the Netherlands because of his religious views and his comments about the Koran. Certainly his persecutors are a good example of those people I mentioned before. But Dr. Abu Zeid is also a Muslim. As he puts it:
So while Islam has people like his persecutors in it, it also has people like him.
And what do you think would happen to him if he shares his thoughts with other muslims?
[thanks for bringing up Salman Rushdie. Between the latest trendy islam atrocities I nearly forgot him.]
I’d say “whoa best prank ever, I’m gonna get you back, those gates are getting TPed*”. Then throw a flaming bag of hellhound poo up through the trap door, and then snicker in my eternal gnashing of teeth.
Not much else you can do or say. You had the misfortune of being born in the Evil Universe**™****
*TP = toilet papered
**For those who might take it wrong. I do not mean Islam is evil, but a God who punished honest people following what they thought is the truth.
It depends which other Muslims he shares it with. That’s my point. You can’t assume that just because someone is a Muslim he’s a fanatic terrorist. In fact, these Islamic fundamentalists, their big target isn’t the west, it’s Muslim countries, and a lot of the people they’re killing are other Muslims who don’t agree with their interpretation of Islam.
Thanks, but Johanna already covered this most capably.
I was responding to the OP.
Read this.
By Professor Afshin Ellian, who was born in 1966 in Tehran and is now in hiding and under police protection.
The film Submission has not been shown since 2 November 2004.
In fact, the film is under an informal screening ban. This ban has been decreed not by any authority but by islamic criminal groups threatening terrorist acts. In 2005 in the Netherlands the producers do not dare show a ten-minute film to the public because the safety of their production company cannot be guaranteed. We are beginning to regard this as normal in the Netherlands as elsewhere. Actually, why are we fighting for freedom of expression for artists and journalists in autocratic countries like Iran when the situation in the Netherlands is starting to look suspiciously similar?
Fortunately the Satanic Verses are being republished here, but is that really still feasible? Hasn’t the book become like a lighted cigarette in a powder keg? Free speech is in danger of being increasingly restricted by invoking “Islamophobia” and “racism”. And some intellectuals have already capitulated. For example, the opera Aisha was called off in Rotterdam in 2001, because the wife of the Prophet was depicted on stage. The production had to be cancelled because a number of actresses felt threatened. Recently a columnist on the national daily NRC Handelsblad, Hasna el Maroudi was forced to abandon her column because of threats of violence from the Moroccan muslim community. What has happened to civil courage? Why do we hear nothing from the publishers, artists, media and colleagues of people who have capitulated about the consequences of this voluntary capitulation?
We should expect civil courage not only from those who are threatened, but also from those around them, their publishers, producers, colleagues, etc.
I have encountered political-religious intolerance before. I know how it begins, how it develops. Let no one say that we are in the grip of Islamophobia or racism. Believe me – they are very different. Luther was not a Catholicophobe. He was critical of the church. Voltaire was not a religiophobe. He was simply critical of the intolerant manifestations of religion. Should the Reformation have been warded off on the grounds that Luther “must not stigmatise all Catholics”?
Intellectuals themselves are increasingly calling for self-censorship and politically correct reporting of intolerant tendencies. Has this country lost its appetite for freedom? Has the country where Pierre Bayle and John Locke published their books become a land of veiled opinions?
No one is trying stigmatise or lump together all the adherents of a particular faith. To repeat that constantly that is a malicious allegation. But what must be maintained is the opportunity to criticise religion freely, even if that upsets the radicals.
In the Netherlands of all places we have tradition to uphold. We would have found it unacceptable in bookshops had refused to sell the Satanic Verses. This matter is no longer a local affair. We must overcome our fears through a form of international solidarity. Now it is the Netherlands that needs such solidarity. Therefore I believe that the matter should be internationalised.
An international committee must be set up to administer the film Submission and make it available to everyone (who wishes to show it). In this way the ban on showings can be circumvented. A democratic culture cannot function without civil courage. So let us show courage and lift the ban on the film Submission.
*Professor Afshin Ellian
Professor of Social Cohesion, Citizenship and Multicultural Studies
Leiden University - Faculty of Law *
Which reminds me:
Where are the feminists protesting islam?
Where are the liberals protesting islam?
Are they as chickenshit scared as the Dutch government?