Is Islam really a peaceful religion?

[Swedge]

Many religions have violence in them. Just because the violence exists in it's history doesn't mean that the religion itself is violent.

[Famous Mortimer]

Many religions have violence in them. Just because the violence exists in it's history doesn't mean that the religion itself is violent.

Correct. The people arguing that Islam is violent are not arguing that just because there is violence in its history. They are arguing that because its theology justified that violence.

[°Leprechaun]

Just saw this today:

Here's What Happens When You Compare Violence in the Quran to Violence in the Bible

http://news.yahoo.com/heres-happens-compare-violence-quran-210900952.html

Yes, but the problem with things like this is that the New Testament is violent, the question is to who is the violence directed. Christ suffered greatly, the crucifixion was no cake walk, and there's all the stuff that happened to Paul. Yes, the text is full of violence, but to my knowledge nowhere does the book exhort violence towards others.

The Old Testament is part of the Christian scripture, right?

[dead0man]

Many religions have violence in them. Just because the violence exists in it's history doesn't mean that the religion itself is violent.

Correct. The people arguing that Islam is violent are not arguing that just because there is violence in its history. They are arguing that because its theology justified that violence.

Nevermind their scripture, just look at the actions of people, and why they claim to be doing said actions.  If bad guy does bad thing and proudly claims before he does this bad thing that he is doing it for X reason, and many many thousands of old people, young people, men, women, healthy, weak, rich, poor, from a dozen different cultures all claim the reason they are about to do this horrible act is for X reason.  The rest of us should probably be concerned about X reason.

[SillyAmerican]

Just saw this today:

Here's What Happens When You Compare Violence in the Quran to Violence in the Bible

http://news.yahoo.com/heres-happens-compare-violence-quran-210900952.html

Yes, but the problem with things like this is that the New Testament is violent, the question is to who is the violence directed. Christ suffered greatly, the crucifixion was no cake walk, and there's all the stuff that happened to Paul. Yes, the text is full of violence, but to my knowledge nowhere does the book exhort violence towards others.

The Old Testament is part of the Christian scripture, right?

Yes, the Old Testament is part of the Christian scriptures, but not in the way you're thinking. The Old Testament supplies three important things: (1) an introduction to God and his chosen people Israel (and yes, their history and struggles), (2) the law under which we must operate in order to be able to have a relationship with God (and why we are simply unable to operate under that law, and need help), and (3) prophetic indications of the nature of the help that will be provided by God.

For some insight, read the following: https://carm.org/why-do-christians-not-obey-old-testaments-commands-to-kill-homosexuals

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Understand that "christians" and non-christians alike have trouble grasping and reflecting this idea, which is why it continues to play a big part in both the objection people have to "christianity" and the splintering of (and divisiveness within branches of) the christian church.

[SillyAmerican]

Many religions have violence in them. Just because the violence exists in it's history doesn't mean that the religion itself is violent.

Correct. The people arguing that Islam is violent are not arguing that just because there is violence in its history. They are arguing that because its theology justified that violence.

Nevermind their scripture, just look at the actions of people, and why they claim to be doing said actions.  If bad guy does bad thing and proudly claims before he does this bad thing that he is doing it for X reason, and many many thousands of old people, young people, men, women, healthy, weak, rich, poor, from a dozen different cultures all claim the reason they are about to do this horrible act is for X reason.  The rest of us should probably be concerned about X reason.

No. The whole point is that if you call yourself a Christian, you are a follower of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the New Testament, and if you call yourself a Muslim, you are a follower of Muhammad (pbuh and my Muslim friends) and the teachings of the Qur'an. Anyone can say that they are "Christian" or "Muslim", but what does that mean? I contend that it means you are trying to internalize and operate in accordance with your holy scriptures, in which case we should look to those scriptures for answers into why you do what you do (and/or why you should or should not be doing what you are doing). That's the only way to objectively evaluate the actions of a "Christian" or a "Muslim", the only way of getting at the truth of the matter.

Sidebar case in point: As a boy, Hitler attended Catholic church, and the Nazi soldiers had "Gott Mit Uns" (God With Us) on their belt buckles. From this, we can conclude that these folks were operating as Christians, right? Well, you might try to make that claim, but I'd ask you to explain to me how their activities, or what they were fighting to promote, involved loving their neighbors. A christian should be recognizable by the fruit of their lives, per Galatians 5:22 (NKJV):

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It's impossible to square Nazi activities with this scripture. It's impossible to square the activities of those who bomb abortion clinics with this scripture. It's impossible to square the activities of many who self identify as the christian "religious right" with this scripture. To be "Christian" means something.

The same goes for being "Muslim"; what that something is for the Muslim, that's the point of my question in this thread...

[Slander and/or Libel]

A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

[°Leprechaun]

Just saw this today:

Here's What Happens When You Compare Violence in the Quran to Violence in the Bible

http://news.yahoo.com/heres-happens-compare-violence-quran-210900952.html

Yes, but the problem with things like this is that the New Testament is violent, the question is to who is the violence directed. Christ suffered greatly, the crucifixion was no cake walk, and there's all the stuff that happened to Paul. Yes, the text is full of violence, but to my knowledge nowhere does the book exhort violence towards others.

The Old Testament is part of the Christian scripture, right?

Yes, the Old Testament is part of the Christian scriptures, but not in the way you're thinking. The Old Testament supplies three important things: (1) an introduction to God and his chosen people Israel (and yes, their history and struggles), (2) the law under which we must operate in order to be able to have a relationship with God (and why we are simply unable to operate under that law, and need help), and (3) prophetic indications of the nature of the help that will be provided by God.

For some insight, read the following: https://carm.org/why-do-christians-not-obey-old-testaments-commands-to-kill-homosexuals

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Understand that "christians" and non-christians alike have trouble grasping and reflecting this idea, which is why it continues to play a big part in both the objection people have to "christianity" and the splintering of (and divisiveness within branches of) the christian church.

The point of the link is that the Bible is more violent than the Koran.
The God of the OT is not a pacifist. Some Christians are pacifists, but they tend to be liberal Christians, the Amish are an obvious exception. Likewise there are Muslims who don't take everything in
the Koran literally, but like the Amish they are the exception. I still think that Muslims in the west are more likely to be for peace. The states that are majority Muslims give the other ones bad names. I don't endorse either religion, however, but I can see a big difference between conservatives and liberals in each.

[°Leprechaun]

Atheism has no scripture that endorses violence. While there are clearly bad atheists and there are clearly good Christians and good Muslims, at least atheists don't use God to justify bad behavior. It
is better, therefore, to believe in good than to believe in God.

[SillyAmerican]

A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

You think there's a hole in my reasoning? Where abouts?

You think I've moved the argument away from the original assertion? How so?

I think I've been pretty consistent, but I could be wrong...

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that there's currently something 'wrong with' (as it were) Islam that isn't as wrong with most other religions, but as with all else in religion this is historically particular and not because of some sort of inherently violent essence that the religion has.

[Sir Mohamed]

My opinion as a muslim: No, no religion is entirely peacefully. However, Islam needs an age of enlightenment. Christianity went through that already, and as a result, became less violent. Just think of all the religious wars in Europe in earlier centuries. They now learned that their lesson.

However, most muslims are peacefully. But it also depends on other factors. Especially the social environment. Islam is not everywhere the same. Saudia Arabia and other countries are very conservative and have different understandings of religion and with it a different understanding of family values and, for example, punishments. Most muslims raised in Western countries (or who lived there for a very long time) or larger cities, where the social environment is much more liberal, have a different understanding of religion and social issues.

[Slander and/or Libel]

A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

You think there's a hole in my reasoning? Where abouts?

You think I've moved the argument away from the original assertion? How so?

I think I've been pretty consistent, but I could be wrong...

As I've been saying from the outset, the idea that you can throw away the parts of the Bible you don't like for purposes of this discussion is specious reasoning. Many people have done violence in the name of Christianity throughout history, and they've cited scripture to do so. This isn't because Christianity is inherently violent, or that those people weren't true Christians, whatever that's supposed to mean. It's because there are multiple interpretations of religious texts. Yours is one. There are many that disagree with yours.

Let's take one example: the death penalty. Wouldn't a pretty literal reading of the New Testament argue against the idea that anybody ought to be using the death penalty? Yet substantial numbers of Christians in America support it. Does that mean they're not real Christians? No. It means that they've got a different view of things, and one I happen to disagree strongly with. But what it doesn't mean, certainly, is that I can wave their scripture in their face, tell them what it means, and then be satisfied that I've fully understood and encapsulated their religion for them.

Why do you think you can do the same for Muslims?

[Јas]

National Religious Affiliation and Integrated Model of Homicide and Suicide
Don Soo Chon
Homicide Studies, 26 March 2015

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://hsx.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/02/27/1088767916634407.abstract

[Famous Mortimer]

A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

You think there's a hole in my reasoning? Where abouts?

You think I've moved the argument away from the original assertion? How so?

I think I've been pretty consistent, but I could be wrong...

As I've been saying from the outset, the idea that you can throw away the parts of the Bible you don't like for purposes of this discussion is specious reasoning.

Tell that to the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant churches, who all reject Biblical literalism.

Biblican literalism is not the cornerstone of Christianity. Koranic literalism IS the cornerstone of Islam though.

[Famous Mortimer]

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that there's currently something 'wrong with' (as it were) Islam that isn't as wrong with most other religions, but as with all else in religion this is historically particular and not because of some sort of inherently violent essence that the religion has.

You acknowledge that Islam is different but you refuse to consider that those differences might be caused by it's different beliefs.

Western liberals defending Islam have such odd reasoning.

Why do you assume "all religions are equally violent"?  It's such a bizarre notion.

Do you think the Mayan religion that called for human sacrifice was just as a religion which rejects human sacrifice?

Do you think that anything that calls itself a religion automatically happens to default to a certain level of violence? or do you think it's just a gigantic cosmic coincidence that Islamic doctrine and Christian doctrine are exactly equal in levels of violence?

[Blue3]

A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

You think there's a hole in my reasoning? Where abouts?

You think I've moved the argument away from the original assertion? How so?

I think I've been pretty consistent, but I could be wrong...

As I've been saying from the outset, the idea that you can throw away the parts of the Bible you don't like for purposes of this discussion is specious reasoning.

Tell that to the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant churches, who all reject Biblical literalism.

Biblican literalism is not the cornerstone of Christianity. Koranic literalism IS the cornerstone of Islam though.

The Qur'an explicitly says that not all of it is meant to be taken literally.

[ingemann]

My opinion as a muslim: No, no religion is entirely peacefully. However, Islam needs an age of enlightenment. Christianity went through that already, and as a result, became less violent. Just think of all the religious wars in Europe in earlier centuries. They now learned that their lesson.

I had mostly decided to leave this debate, but you bring some interesting points up. But I think it's more important to look at the difference in historical context

One elements I have thought much about are the different ways most Christians and Muslims see warfare. The Christian perspective of warfare are not only now but also historical much more secular in justification, while Muslims more often justify it more with religion. Some of this are the experience with holy war. When Christians think about holy war, they mostly think about the Crusades (even if there was other), while Muslims mostly think about the early expansion of Islam. The Crusades was ultimative a complete failure, the early expansion of Islam on the other hand was a great success. This ultimative give a quite different perspective. It doesn't help that the most successfull conflicts for Muslims with the non-Muslim world have to large extent been lead by Islamist organisation, while secular Muslim states have been humiliated in most conflicts wit the west. Sadly this mean that what the Arab world need are the humiliation on the battlefield of ISIS and AQ. These organisations need to lose face, just as Arab nationalism lost face with their conflicts with Israel and the West.

It doesn't help that when Muslims look at the Arab World today, the Gulf Sheiks are rich and powerful, while the secular Arab states do quite poorly. While this is because of the formers oil, it still create a image of the Gulf States being rewarded for staying true to Islam.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I think it's more complex than that, Muslims in these years are adopting a less regional version of Islam, but that's not necessary positive because Saudi Arabia have in many way affected the new international Islam which are growing. Young Muslim women in the west are more likely than their parent to wear hijab as example.

Also when we look at the Muslim groups in the west, compared to how many they are, the number of young men who takes to Syria to fight their number are incredible. As are the people with extremist opinions. But yes they're a minority, but they're a significant minority (in Denmark as example likely around 10-15% of Danish Muslims are salafists or worse).

[Slander and/or Libel]

A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

You think there's a hole in my reasoning? Where abouts?

You think I've moved the argument away from the original assertion? How so?

I think I've been pretty consistent, but I could be wrong...

As I've been saying from the outset, the idea that you can throw away the parts of the Bible you don't like for purposes of this discussion is specious reasoning.

Tell that to the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant churches, who all reject Biblical literalism.

Biblican literalism is not the cornerstone of Christianity. Koranic literalism IS the cornerstone of Islam though.

I said not one word about biblical literalism. I was merely saying that acting as though the Old Testament doesn't exist is faulty reasoning.

[Stranger in a strange land]

A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

You think there's a hole in my reasoning? Where abouts?

You think I've moved the argument away from the original assertion? How so?

I think I've been pretty consistent, but I could be wrong...

As I've been saying from the outset, the idea that you can throw away the parts of the Bible you don't like for purposes of this discussion is specious reasoning.

Tell that to the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant churches, who all reject Biblical literalism.

Biblican literalism is not the cornerstone of Christianity. Koranic literalism IS the cornerstone of Islam though.

The Qur'an explicitly says that not all of it is meant to be taken literally.

Just out of curiosity, which Sura says that? Not that I doubt you, but it's puzzling that if the Quran says it's not all to be taken literally, why do Islamic apologists invest so much effort in attempting to prove that, for example, the story of Noah's Flood is literally true or that a physical barrier forms between salt water and fresh water?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that there's currently something 'wrong with' (as it were) Islam that isn't as wrong with most other religions, but as with all else in religion this is historically particular and not because of some sort of inherently violent essence that the religion has.

You acknowledge that Islam is different but you refuse to consider that those differences might be caused by it's different beliefs.

Its different beliefs, and you're (willfully?) misreading what 'historically particular' means. Religions, sociologically speaking, don't have their essence--if they do have an essence--primarily on the level of doctrine.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not a liberal, and admitting that there are serious problems with a religion but refusing to engage in mean-spirited essentialism about it is not 'defending' it.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I didn't say that.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Reductio ad absurdum.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

An interesting idea, but no, I don't.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What?

[Famous Mortimer]

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that there's currently something 'wrong with' (as it were) Islam that isn't as wrong with most other religions, but as with all else in religion this is historically particular and not because of some sort of inherently violent essence that the religion has.

You acknowledge that Islam is different but you refuse to consider that those differences might be caused by it's different beliefs.

Its different beliefs, and you're (willfully?) misreading what 'historically particular' means. Religions, sociologically speaking, don't have their essence--if they do have an essence--primarily on the level of doctrine.

This is where we come to a fundamental, unbridgeable difference of opinion.

I will say though, while I think the idea that doctrine isn't the essence of religion is dumb in and of itself, I find it particularly bizarre that someone who is devoutly religious would put such an argument forward.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that there's currently something 'wrong with' (as it were) Islam that isn't as wrong with most other religions, but as with all else in religion this is historically particular and not because of some sort of inherently violent essence that the religion has.

You acknowledge that Islam is different but you refuse to consider that those differences might be caused by it's different beliefs.

Its different beliefs, and you're (willfully?) misreading what 'historically particular' means. Religions, sociologically speaking, don't have their essence--if they do have an essence--primarily on the level of doctrine.

This is where we come to a fundamental, unbridgeable difference of opinion.

I will say though, while I think the idea that doctrine isn't the essence of religion is dumb in and of itself, I find it particularly bizarre that someone who is devoutly religious would put such an argument forward.

Of course there are senses in which doctrine is the essence of (at least some) religion(s). But 'does this religion have attributes that make its devotees more violent?' is a sociological question, as much as people may prefer to shoehorn it into being a philosophical one, so for those purposes the essence of a religion if it even has one is its social function. (In this respect that you might very well conclude 'there are elements of this religion's doctrine that have XYZ bad social outcomes', but there would be ways of changing doctrine (or, in religions like Islam that are leery of the idea of 'changing' doctrine, reframing or reemphasizing it) that would leave the religion's social function intact and thus keep it recognizably the same religion.) There are also, obviously, ways of being devoutly religious that don't manifest as a fixation on or even particular interest in doctrine. There are plenty of people who think that being devoutly religious inherently means being obsessed with doctrine, but in my experience such people are almost universally either not religious and not genuinely interested in understanding why one would be, fundamentalist Protestants, or very certain types of Catholics (most notably those who want so very badly to be fundamentalist Protestants). Most Jews or Hindus, or even other types of Catholics, would find the notion curious at best and offensive at worst.

But I wouldn't expect somebody who reduces Bernie Sanders's issues with black voters to 'the blacks are too poorly educated to know what's good for them' (whereas whites who vote against Sanders are voting in their rational self-interest) to understand that religion is complicated and that starting with the presupposition that everybody in the world is culturally Protestant and working out from there is not actually the best way to understand it.

[Famous Mortimer]

Why MUST the issue of violence in Islam be discussed from a sociological point of view? Why can't it be discussed from a doctrinal point of view?

Because you're uncomfortable with the answer when it's done that way, that's the only reason.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why MUST the issue of violence in Islam be discussed from a sociological point of view? Why can't it be discussed from a doctrinal point of view?

Because you're uncomfortable with the answer when it's done that way, that's the only reason.

No, it's because violence occurs socially, is a social consequence, and is part of a religion's social context, not some cute hypothetical or gotcha issue. I'm not 'uncomfortable' saying that there are deeply disquieting aspects with the way Muslim doctrine gets applied in situations of conflict and with the fact that it's constructed in such a way as to make it easy to do that, that's clearly a serious problem and I've said things that concede as much in this thread twice so far. I just didn't use the apparently all-important word 'doctrine' so you assumed that I couldn't possibly have meant or implied it. The one who's completely unwilling to even approach discussing the issue through a lens other than his preferred one is you, because you're uncomfortable with any discussion of anything that doesn't result in people like you coming out as manifestly the best people in the world who have all the answers. Religion, racial politics, sexual politics, everything that people care about at all on anything more than an immediate material level, all has to be bent into service to Atlas Forum user WillipsBrighton's need to feel like youngish nonreligious white men from the Northeastern United States are masters of the universe who can explain it all. It's not even that you're mulish about this one issue, it's a ridiculously salient and consistent feature of your posting history on practically any subject of interest.