Question for Muslims

[mralstoner]

Is there any real difference between extreme muslims and Old Testament Israelites/Hebrews/Jews as far as religious matters go? I think they are twins but the Islamic doctrine is less racist.

Christians follow the example of Christ. Christ was not a violent man.
Muslims follow the example of Mohammed. Mohammed was extremely violent.
Actions speak much louder than words.

But if you want a scholarly answer ...

Robert Spencer -- Bible and Qur'an: equally violent?
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/03/bible-...olent.html

God mandates ethnic cleansing?

Besides passages apparently celebrating warfare and ethnic cleansing as sanctioned by almighty God, the books of Moses also contain other passages jarring to modern sensibilities. God commands, for example, that Sabbath-breakers be put to death ...

But is the Bible really enjoining violence, both against nonbelievers and believers who commit sins deemed worthy of capital punishment? This question cannot be answered by an evaluation of the text alone, for that text does now and has never in history stood apart from the way believers have understood it and acted upon it. From that perspective, the arguments of Peters and D’Souza, and the many others who have said essentially the same thing, founder primarily upon one central fact: there are no armed Jewish or Christian groups anywhere in the world today who are committing acts of violence and justifying them by referring to these texts. Indeed, throughout history, these texts have never been taken as divine commands that either must be or may be put into practice by believers in a new age. All these passages, after all, are descriptive, not prescriptive. They nowhere command believers to imitate this behavior, or to believe under any circumstances that God wishes them to act as his instruments of judgment in any situation today...

In short, the consensus view among Jews and Christians for many centuries is that unless you happen to be a Hittite, Girgashite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite, these Biblical passages simply do not apply to you. The Scriptures records God’s commands to the Israelites to make war against particular people only. However this may be understood, and however jarring it may be to modern sensibilities, it does not amount to any kind of marching orders for believers. That’s one principal reason why Jews and Christians haven’t formed terror groups around the world that quote these Scriptures to justify killing civilian non-combatants...

But the Bible has made people commit violent acts – hasn’t it?

... certainly Christians have committed violent acts in the name of Christianity. But have they done so in obedience to Christian Scripture and the teachings of the various Christian sects, or in defiance of those Scriptures and teachings? During the Crusades, it became customary for those who joined the effort to be referred to as “taking up their cross,” echoing Jesus’ statement: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).

But on its face, of course, this says nothing about war or violence of any kind, and has been understood throughout history as referring primarily to the Christian’s struggle to conform his life to the demands of the Gospel...

The fact that he must instead resort to the physicalization of passages about spiritual warfare only makes more obvious the fact that can have no recourse to any Christian martial tradition, or doctrine of warfare against and conquest of unbelievers.

In Islam, however, the situation is quite different.

... in contrast to the Bible, the Qur’an exhorts believers to fight unbelievers without specifying anywhere in the text that only certain unbelievers are to be fought, or only for a certain period of time, or some other distinction. Taking the texts at face value, the command to make war against unbelievers is open-ended and universal.

So, Islam has very direct, open-ended and universal calls to fight unbelievers until they submit to Islamic rule. Christianity and Judaism have nothing like that. You really have to warp Christian doctrine to interpret marching orders from it.

But, once again, go back to my first point. Actions speak louder than words. Read the biography of Mohammed (Sira), he was a terrorist, pure and simple. And Islam commands Muslims to follow his example (in over 90 verses). Comparisons with Christ are utterly ridiculous. (No, I'm not a Christian).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirat_Rasul_Allah
"In the first two centuries of Islamic history, sīra was more commonly known as maghāzī (literally, stories of military expeditions) ..."