(June 5, 2018 at 8:58 am)MysticKnight Wrote: But I don't approach like any other book because it's a book like no other. Per it's paradigm, it clarifies itself but needs us to reflect.
Yet here you both are not reflecting and then blaming Quran for the dumb conclusions you and terrorist come up with about it.
MK, so you're going No True Scotsman fallacy on me. The obvious issue here is, there is never any consensus on who trully understands the Koran. To a moderate Muslim in the West, the Islamic State don't understand Koran. To the Islamic State, Shias butcher Koran. To both the Shias and the Sunnis, Ahmadis don't understand Koran. And to the Ahmadis, the Islamic State is distorting the Koran.
This is why it is problematic to define Islam by the actions of its adherents, and better to define it by the contents of the Quran, which each of these sects holds as foundational to their faith.
So when it comes to religious violence, there is a direct line that can be drawn from a verse that says "beat your wife if you fear disobedience" (verse 4:34) to the actual action of hitting one's wife. Similarly, a verse that directs you to fight the Jews and Christians until they convert or pay a heavy tax (9:29–30) can directly be connected to the actual action of fighting Jews and Christians until they convert or pay a heavy tax. No one is saying that those who don't hit their wives aren't faithful Muslims. But those who do it aren't being un-Islamic in any sense. They are acting in accordance with the verse that allows it.
In the same way, while it is clear and obvious that all Muslims are not violent jihadists, it is also true that all violent jihadists are Muslims, and use plausible interpretations of scripture to justify their actions.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"