Is Islam a religion of peace , or is it inherently violent ?

[Adalbertus]

Mohammed was the founder and first leader of a soon-to-be world empire. You don't conquer a world empire by accident.

[Al B. Sure!]

and of course what was a major reason for the Muslims' success? Religious minorities around the Byzantine Empire (Coptics, Nestorians, Monophysites, etc.), persecuted by the Byzantines for years, sided with the Arabs.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Lord Nuclear


What the hell do the Maccabees have to do with any of this?

If you read more attentively you'll see it was a response to the charmingly named Albert Speer- you'll surely appreciate the irony in my request.

In any case, for Speer's elucidation, the Monophysites (and by the way, the Copts were accused of Monophysitism, so putting Copts and Monophysites is redundant) and Nestorians were not religious minorities, they were Christians who did not adhere to the prevailing orthodoxy.

It also helped the Muslim Arabs that many Arabs living in the Middle East happened to be Nestorian and Monophysite Christians who could translate the Greek and Latin classics into Syriac and Arabic.

As for persecuting religious minorities, it's not like Christianity has a monopoly is it? It's not even as if Christianity has a monopoly persecuting its own dissenting sects, as any cursory glance at early Muslim history would tell us.

[Al B. Sure!]

Wernazuma:

you mentioned the Almohads and the Seljuks. both were barbarian muslims who conquered established and tolerant Arab Muslim kingdoms in Spain and the Middle East respectively. I think their actions were more telling of barbarian violence than Muslim violence.

[Wernazuma III]

Oh, the intolerant Africans and Turks as opposite to the peaceloving Arab nation?
But well, take al-Hakim, then. Or even the prophet, may God be with him. The reasons given for the massacres of the Banu Qurayza are pretty thin. Seems like a *slight* over-reaction to me. It's basically been "with us or against us and if you're against us, we'll use force and kill you all."
Islamic tolerance was strongest always in those parts, where they still were only a small conquering elite. Tolerance often soon ended, where muslims got majorities and nuclei in an area.

[Wildbore]

What gives anyone to judge anothers religion. Its safe to say there are extremes for any ideology.

[problem_child]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
for a religion thats 1400 years old, and has stretched over lands from Morocco to Indonesia, and Bosnia to Nigeria, ANY generalization is likely to be wrong.

Could this be because Islam is a relentlessly expansionistic and imperialistic religion that conquored and subdued its way through hundreds of cultures throughout Africa and Asia and parts of Europe, from Morocco to Indonesia and from Bosnia to Nigeria, the many diverse ways of life practised by the peoples of these lands exterminated forever when the Islamic armies of conquest came knocking, forcefully converting and enslaving untill the vast unmittigated monoculture of chauvanism, backwardness and nature-hatred that we today know as the 'Islamic World' came into being.


'Islam' means 'Peace'. That my friend, is what we call Orwellian Irony, like Freedom is Slavery.

[problem_child]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
all religions get manipulated by secular goals. Many of the highest religious leaders of all major religions have at one time or another been corrupt, awful people.

For example, several Popes during the early to middle ages were essentially warmongering Kings bent on conquering and destruction of rival nation states.

It annoys me when religion-apologists do that,

Religions are irresponsable. If it's not the religions fault when sh*t happens, then it's not to the religions credit when sh*t is washed away either. Can't have it both ways.

[problem_child]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


as someone who follows a text based tradition (Judaism, in my case) i dont think you can judge a religion by sitting and down and reading its core text, without taking into account how that text has been interpretated at different times and places. Ive seen too many people read the Hebrew bible, and then attacked a "Judaism" they found there, that bears no resemblance to any Judaism Ive ever seen. Religions are living entities, even when based on texts, and NO text has meaning without interpretation. And theres no reason to privilege so-called "literal" interpretations.

See, prime example of what I was talking about in my last post. So a passage in The Religious Text says that:

'People who don't follow The Religion are beneath mention, they are unimportant, the fingernail of one Follower is worth the lives of a thousand Non-believers. It is alright to kill, rape and enslave them because they are not important to God like we are, or because they are foreign, or homosexual, or because they are women and therefore inherently Lesser etc etc'

So you mention some passage like this when a Follower is busy bragging about how they have higher morals or are more civilised or decent or whatever cr*p it is this time, and in response the Follower will tell you something like:

"Oh but that's just some book, yes it says 'The Book of This Religion' on the front, and yes we Followers call it sacred and read it every day and stuff... but it doesn't actually represent our beliefs or our point of view, even though we read prayers from it and study every day and place it at the centre of our faith."

You see, far as I'm concerned all religion are Transendental Nationalist Egotism, full of the hypocracy, inconsistancy and lack of responsability common amongst the personality types that lead them.

[Ancyrean]

First of all, there is a difference between the message and spirit of Quran and the practice of Muslims today.

The problem with the Muslim world today is there's not enough distinction between the teaching of Quran and the practice of Muslims. In that practice, tradition (often parochial) often passes as Islam itself. Many values which are in fact based on tradition are thus protected by the guise of religion.

The result of this unfortunate situation is that non-Muslims, not having the luxury, the will, the time or the effort or any combination of these to make a comprehensive study of the religion itself, take the disagreeable practices of Muslims as Islam itself. The more dramatic of those practices drown out the positive sides of the religion itself.

On top of this, if you have a generally distorted perspective of history, you can author comments like the following:

Originally posted by problem_child
Could this be because Islam is a relentlessly expansionistic and imperialistic religion that conquored and subdued its way through hundreds of cultures throughout Africa and Asia and parts of Europe, from Morocco to Indonesia and from Bosnia to Nigeria, the many diverse ways of life practised by the peoples of these lands exterminated forever when the Islamic armies of conquest came knocking, forcefully converting and enslaving untill the vast unmittigated monoculture of chauvanism, backwardness and nature-hatred that we today know as the 'Islamic World' came into being.

I guess you are totally clueless about Islam, already hate it despite whatever anybody has to say for it, and therefore usually regard the topic from that narrow prism. You give the impression from your comments that you think the 'Islamic World' (quote marks imitated) is a monolithic body that can be subjected to yet more reckless generalisations such as:

'Islam' means 'Peace'. That my friend, is what we call Orwellian Irony, like Freedom is Slavery.

From where you stand, I don't see how there can be any kind of healthy debate.

[Wernazuma III]

Ancyrean, I know it's not directed to me, just let me make some remarks.

Originally posted by Ancyrean
First of all, there is a difference between the message and spirit of Quran and the practice of Muslims today.

That's a problem of most religions at most times of history. Most of us would agree that there's a difference between the message of the bible and witchhunts or even crusades. But that doesn't free religions from responability. Of course, there's always a range between very liberal interpretations and times and brutal ones, depending on economic conditions, general brutalization after /during wars etc. But it's often something from within religions that is the focus and religious issues canalize hate and violence. Thus I can't hear anymore, that wherever violence happens, religion is "taken hostage" or simply "abused" by society. Religion is part of a society and not simply a tool used and twisted by it.
It is always very easy in discussion for muslims to push away topics they don't like by saying: "This is not islam". Well, I know many muslims don't support violence from a religious viewpoint, but the ways, they deal with it can most often be subsummed in 2 sentences:
"But hey, look at Christian history."
"I'm muslim, I don't like violence and intolerance, so it must not be part of islam" (I've often heard denials like "that must be a lie. this cannot be in Quran.", even after I showed the very verses)
Honest reflection has to analyze the internal elements in a religion that may lead to fundamentalism, hate and intolerance.

The problem with the Muslim world today is there's not enough distinction between the teaching of Quran and the practice of Muslims. In that practice, tradition (often parochial) often passes as Islam itself. Many values which are in fact based on tradition are thus protected by the guise of religion.

That's in many parts true. But it's nonetheless also true that Wahabits and fundamentalists go back to the very roots of what islam "is", namely Quran, sunna and hadith. It's not like in the Catholic church, where, after so many centuries, you'd have to dig very deep sometimes to find the bible. It's just too easy, again, to say "this is not islam". This is not MY islam maybe, but that's a bit muslims have a difficult time with as there can be only ONE islam. That's part of the problem in internal discussion.

The result of this unfortunate situation is that non-Muslims, not having the luxury, the will, the time or the effort or any combination of these to make a comprehensive study of the religion itself, take the disagreeable practices of Muslims as Islam itself. The more dramatic of those practices drown out the positive sides of the religion itself.

The problem is that we're not discussing the overall islam, but it's affintiy towards violence here. Otherwise, I fully agree that there are many positive sides too.



I agree about the rest of your post.

[Al B. Sure!]

problem_child:

are you an angry atheist or are you singling out Islam (which means submission, not peace, by the way) as bad but not Christianity?

[Whaleboy]

You know I read every word on this "debate" and I was going to come up with one of my typical responses, but I thought to myself; "what's the point?". The quality of the arguments is appalling, the prejudices on one side and the non-engagement on the other is ridiculous. The very question is bull**** and the arguments equally so. I'm just a little concerned that people here actually take this **** seriously.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
The very question is bull**** and the arguments equally so. I'm just a little concerned that people here actually take this **** seriously.

I'm sorry, but why do you thin discussion about this topic is superfluous. I mean, independant from the diverging positions?

[Whaleboy]

Because the question is ridiculous. Is violence inherent to a given position, to a given religion? Best described as comedy. A serious question would be "is violence, under certain circumstances, consequent to a property of a given religion", which of course is an interesting debate, and not designed to have the undertone of Muslim-bashing or atheist-bashing. Whether it's inherent or not is quite probably the most stupid proposition with stupid counters I've seen for a long time, and I see a lot of stupid propositions and counters.

Again, I'm worried that people take this seriously .