whiteflag
The Fly
whiteflag said:
And lest I be accused of taking this verse out of context, the verses before this one talks about a proclamation that according to God all treaties with pagans had become null except with the pagan groups with whom Mohammed had some sort of political or military alliance. And those people were safe only as long as they were loyal.
What's the justification for this verse of the Koran?
Amna,
Open your eyes.
I did explain the context. The context is that God told Mohammed to announce that all treaties with pagans except the ones that were the most useful to Mohammed were nullified.
I read all of that sura from beginning to end. I could post the entire thing and it would make no difference.
Jesus allowed for no violence. None. Zip. Period. Nada. No exceptions. No excuses. No justifications.
Mohammed gave permission for violence. It does not matter what the circumstances are or what the rules are, or how honorable people are told to be or how much patience and all the other BS that was stipulated.
War is allowed. Therefore it can be abused by people and they can justify themselves religiously which is the worst sort of justification and causes the greatest viciousness. No truly peaceful religion would allow the opening for such abuse or cause such confusion. The allowance of even the least amount of violence is a FLAW. It is one that easily exploited by religious men who are angry and frustrated.
And it will always be until the history of war in Islam's name, including Mohammed's military campaigns, is repudiated by Muslims. Until that day there will always be a culture that will produce people like UBL and the name of Islam will drip in blood.
The war in Islam and the peace in Islam cancel each other out. Like a positive number and a negative number. Islam is like a person that speaks out of both sides of its mouth and ends up saying nothing much and confusing most of the people listening. (The Muslims who would not resort to violence under any circumstances are far outnumbered) It is a religion of situational morality. There is no law in Islam which doesn't have an exception. The Koran and the hadiths have exemptions for lying, stealing, killing and war. Islam says to have patience but it gives permission in some cases for people to give up on patience and non-violence. This is a weakness that must be acknowledged.
Muslims must stop trying to explain why the permission for war is not really a bad thing because all they are doing is making excuses and blaming other things instead of changing the confusing environment that unreformed Islam creates for Muslims like UBL and the suicide bombers.
As for the Koran being read in its original language. I could write a book of lies tommorrow disguised as a holy book, and if people were still reading it in the original language many years from now would that make any difference? What kind of logic is this claim about the Koran? It means nothing at all. Thousands of books are read in their original language. What matters is the message. The message of Islam is all over the map and in many cases incoherant. Even in its original language, the Koran is incomprehensible. It lacks any background or context and it is arranged in no order other than length of sura. Meaning if one wants to know what was going on and when it happened, they are entirely dependent on the contributions of human (fallible) scholars to provide the code (the context and time of "revealation") needed to decipher it. It was humans who gathered the hadiths and decided which ones were the most authentic and then wrote the commentaries which represent the true origin of the Islamic faith as it is known today. It was humans who decided to burn all but certain copies of the Koran. Thousands were burned.
Noone can just sit down with the Koran and read it and understand what the hell is going on and why without any other material or traditional knowledge provided by humans. In contrast, the Bible comes with all the material needed, context, times, commentary, the works. No Christian who has a Bible is dependent on any scholar to tell us what it is saying or how we are supposed to understand it. The New Testament presents a morally consistent message with only two exceptions and a happy, moral spiritually fulfilled Christian life can be easily derived from it with no other education in the Christian religion. The life built in this way will be consitent with the lives of other Christians. The New Testament passes the real test of any Holy Book, "Does it work?" with flying colors. Western civilization based upon its moral teachings is the most wildly successful, dynamic, creative and inclusive civilization ever known. The NT has given birth to countless humanitarians and non-violent movements the world over. Its values have crossed into the lives of the believers of other religions, like Gandhi, who found the blueprint for his non-violent movement in its pages (though it was the Gita that first inspired him.)
And in case any one should doubt its influence. The birth of our current civilization coincides with the advent of the Bible becoming widely available to all people in the 1500's. Its like an incredible power was unleashed as soon as the common man could read the Bible in his own language. In other words, whatever mistakes in the translations or what ever corruptions of the text, these have been proven insignificant to the success of the Gospel in the lives of billions and billions of people.
All this and its message on non-violence, patience, love and othe rmoral admonisions etc is consistent and allows for no exceptions under any circumstances. A Christian in crisis is allowed to act no different from one in a good situation if they want to be obedient to Jesus who was always consistent in all situations.
And no, Amna, I do not believe that anyone who denies that Jesus died on the cross can truly respect him or the people who believe in him. I think that someone who leaves it an open question is more respectful than the one who totally denies it. The death of Jesus, in all meekness and piety has inspired such incredible goodness and love in the world and has saved countless lives through the practice of non-violence. His death is the source of the power of Christians to overcome the worst possible situations. When we die for what we believe in, we see the Cross, and we know we are not alone. There is no more serious and unequivocal example of the power of love and non-violence in all the world.