The Problem With Islam, In A Nutshell
A commenter at the WaPo put it quite concisely:
carol24
There's violence in both the Koran and the Bible, but the ideologies are very different. Jesus taught, "Love your neighbor," "Turn the other cheek," and "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Muhammad taught, "Force your neighbor to submit and if he doesn't, cut off his head and rape his wife." And he not only taught it, he did it himself. And he is Islam's perfect man.
Islam requires adherents to fight until all submit. This is why Islam has given us 1,400 years or murder, rape and terror in its name (the Crusades was the Christian response to Muslims coming to towns and piling up Christian heads) and why there are deadly Islamic terrorist attacks all over the world every day (close to 30,000 since 9/11), why Muslims are burning people alive today in cages and selling women as sex slaves and marrying off little girls and teaching Jew hatred. Serious reform is going to be difficult, as the price for suggesting reform, criticizing Islam, or leaving Islam is death.
Eric Allen Bell piece on Islam and not tolerating deadly intolerance and a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/the-information-age-will-be-the-death-of-islam/
Amy Alkon at December 29, 2015 4:26 AM
Maybe we could/should make our decision based on what they teach in their schools?
I mean these kids are the ones that will be the future right?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901769.html
Bob in Texas at December 29, 2015 7:07 AM
Islam, like its stablemate, Judaism, came into being and developed as the sociopolitical order of the society that spawned it. Jesus and the Romans blew up the Judaism social order model - Jesus by disrupting the theology and the Romans with the diaspora. As a result, Judaism was forced to adapt to being a religion and not a sociopolitical system. Even Israel is not ruled by Judaic law but by democracy. Law takes precedence over religion.
Christianity started as an outsider religion and developed its theology under those conditions. It never reached the point where it was the dominant sociopolitical system (social, perhaps - political, no) - even under the umbrella of the Catholic Church the existing order held sway. Christianity adapted itself to the existing order (Christmas instead of Saturnalia and other winter solstice festivals, Halloween instead of Samhain, etc.).
Islam has never had to adapt. Since its ascendancy, it has generally been the dominant religion and social order in the Middle East.
Even early Christianity was forced to deal with separate civic institutions. The Inquisition was not allowed to carry out sentences for heresy, but had to surrender the convicted to the civil authorities to carry out the sentence - a practice it inherited from the Jews (Jesus was tried and convicted by a Jewish religious tribunal, but executed by the Romans since the Jews were not allowed to execute anyone under Roman rule). The inability of the Inquisition to carry out its own sentences was perhaps an accommodation to enable the Church to keep its hands unbloodied, but nonetheless set the stage for the Western tradition that Church and State were separate entities with separate spheres of influence. Subsequent fights between kings and popes over appointment of bishops, taxes, etc. helped to further that separation.
The pope was never venerated as a king or emperor. Even when Charlemagne established the Holy Roman Empire, he was the emperor and the pope was the pope. The offices of religious head and head of state were not combined until Henry VIII formed the Church of England and made himself the head of the church.
On the other hand, the early caliphs, the "rightly guided" caliphs were by definition religious leaders as well as civic leaders, a practice that was carried over into the Umayyad and succeeding caliphates.
Even when the Church held sway, intellectuals were able to prove doctrine wrong. Heliocentrism succeeded the Church's mandate that the Earth was the center of the galaxy, despite stiff opposition from the Church. Evolution is the accepted scientific doctrine of human physical development.
Islam does not allow a mechanism to "correct" religious orthodoxy. If the imam says the sun revolves around the Earth, the it must be so. There can be no disagreement. When the imams were willing to accede to science, all was well. Then fundamentalism became the dominant theology in Islam and all dissent was heresy.
Conan the Grammarian at December 29, 2015 2:38 PM
When dealing with Islam, perhaps we should remember the Biblical verse in which Jesus said that he came not to bring peace, but to bring a sword.
mpetrie98 at December 29, 2015 9:14 PM
The philosophical foundations underpinning Christianity and Islam are different.
The Jews in Judea were looking for a military messiah who would deliver them from the Romans. Jesus claimed to have come to deliver them from evil, just not the Roman variety. He went against the popular clamor for him to lead a Maccabee-like rebellion and instead claimed to have come in peace, which is why many Jews rejected him as the messiah - no delivery from the Romans = not the messiah. Jesus' self-proclaimed mission was to open the gates of heaven that the Jews believed had been closed since Adam and Eve and by doing so, redeem mankind. Raised as a carpenter, Jesus began his teachings with the underclass - fishermen, tax collectors, carpenters, etc. His teaching of an afterlife and dismantling of centuries of Talmudic law and tradition went against the prevailing orthodoxy of the Jewish ruling class and so they undertook to destroy him.
Mohammed's mission was to bring the word of Allah to a desert people that lived by strict rules that enabled violent tribes to get along in a harsh environment that forgave no mistake. The word of Allah had to be just as strict as the desert and the social code that kept the tribes from killing each other - lest it be dismissed as weak. A message of peace would have gotten Mohammed laughed out of the caravansary. Mohammed went on to become the caliph, a religious, military, and civic leader of an expanding empire. Since the Arab ruling class was fractured by city, Mohammed was able to divide and conquer in spreading his religion, rallying followers in Medina with little interference from the city's rulers before marching on to Mecca where his teachings had been initially greeted with hostility. Raised as a merchant, Mohammed was fluent in dealing with power structures and and gained influential followers from the city's trading elite.
Conan the Grammarian at December 30, 2015 6:05 PM
mpetrie98: "When dealing with Islam, perhaps we should remember the Biblical verse in which Jesus said that he came not to bring peace, but to bring a sword."
Yep, I think that is exactly the type of situation that Jesus was referring to in this Bible passage.
His "turn the other cheek" doesn't apply when dealing with those who wish us dead.
charles at December 30, 2015 10:39 PM
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