@ MysticKnight
You have provided a number of quotations from the Koran which speak of peace. That is neither here nor there. All of the Holy Books are full of contradictions.
I would describe all the Holy Books as collections of literature written by barbarians, for barbarians, about barbarians.
Now barbarians sometimes have some fine noble thoughts and they also express bloodthirsty xenophobia often enough. An example from the Jewish OT: In the Torah there is a noble exhortation to treat foreigners kindly because "you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt." And yet the OT is the most xenophobic literature I can think of.
As for the contradictions in the Koran, I do not know much about it, but I have read that Muslim scholars employ something called the law of abrogation to sort out these contradictions. Basically, a saying which is chronologically later abrogates (cancels out) an earlier saying. My source maintained that the violent passages urging war against unbelievers come later than the more peaceable sayings. NB. The Koran is not arranged chronologically in the order in which Gabriel supposedly dictated the passages to Mohammed; instead it is the dumbest literary arrangement ever seen, starting with the longest chapter (sura) and moving to the shortest one.
The important question is not what Mohammed did as a historical figure, although I do believe he led military expeditions. The important question is what Muslims think he did and see as an example for themselves.
In my OP I quoted the Bukhari Hadith, the passage in which the Jewish men were to be killed in spite of having surrendered. Among the Sira (biographies of Mohammed) is the Sirat Rasul Allah of Ibn Ishaq, which describes the same event in gruesome detail:
The captives were taken into Medina. They dug trenches in the marketplace of Medina.It was a long day, but 800 Jews met their death that day. Mohammed and his twelve year old wife [!] sat and watched the entire day and into the night. The Apostle of Allah had every male Jew killed.
I truly believe that most Muslims living in the western world are peaceable folk. However, that kind of teaching can produce a cultural contamination even on some of the people influenced by western culture, and even higher numbers among those living in their traditional homelands outside the ambit of western liberal ideals.
This morning I was listening to an interview with an academic who has studied "lone wolf terrorism" like the two recent attacks in Canada. He mentioned that polls indicate that 50,000 Muslims in the USA and UK approve of suicide bombings. Fifty thousand is a small but significant percentage of the total number of Muslims living in these nations. The academic noted that only about 500 of those would actually engage in a suicide bombing. However, I am left wondering if the others, perhaps do not want to commit suicide but would willingly engage in lethal attacks on their neighbors if they thought they could get away with it.
As for Muslims living outside the western world here is a page with a whole host of poll results. To cite only one, in Saudi Arabia, the benighted home of Wahhabi Islam, 92 percent believe the fucking barbarians of ISIS conform to Islamic values.
You have provided a number of quotations from the Koran which speak of peace. That is neither here nor there. All of the Holy Books are full of contradictions.
I would describe all the Holy Books as collections of literature written by barbarians, for barbarians, about barbarians.
Now barbarians sometimes have some fine noble thoughts and they also express bloodthirsty xenophobia often enough. An example from the Jewish OT: In the Torah there is a noble exhortation to treat foreigners kindly because "you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt." And yet the OT is the most xenophobic literature I can think of.
As for the contradictions in the Koran, I do not know much about it, but I have read that Muslim scholars employ something called the law of abrogation to sort out these contradictions. Basically, a saying which is chronologically later abrogates (cancels out) an earlier saying. My source maintained that the violent passages urging war against unbelievers come later than the more peaceable sayings. NB. The Koran is not arranged chronologically in the order in which Gabriel supposedly dictated the passages to Mohammed; instead it is the dumbest literary arrangement ever seen, starting with the longest chapter (sura) and moving to the shortest one.
The important question is not what Mohammed did as a historical figure, although I do believe he led military expeditions. The important question is what Muslims think he did and see as an example for themselves.
In my OP I quoted the Bukhari Hadith, the passage in which the Jewish men were to be killed in spite of having surrendered. Among the Sira (biographies of Mohammed) is the Sirat Rasul Allah of Ibn Ishaq, which describes the same event in gruesome detail:
The captives were taken into Medina. They dug trenches in the marketplace of Medina.It was a long day, but 800 Jews met their death that day. Mohammed and his twelve year old wife [!] sat and watched the entire day and into the night. The Apostle of Allah had every male Jew killed.
I truly believe that most Muslims living in the western world are peaceable folk. However, that kind of teaching can produce a cultural contamination even on some of the people influenced by western culture, and even higher numbers among those living in their traditional homelands outside the ambit of western liberal ideals.
This morning I was listening to an interview with an academic who has studied "lone wolf terrorism" like the two recent attacks in Canada. He mentioned that polls indicate that 50,000 Muslims in the USA and UK approve of suicide bombings. Fifty thousand is a small but significant percentage of the total number of Muslims living in these nations. The academic noted that only about 500 of those would actually engage in a suicide bombing. However, I am left wondering if the others, perhaps do not want to commit suicide but would willingly engage in lethal attacks on their neighbors if they thought they could get away with it.
As for Muslims living outside the western world here is a page with a whole host of poll results. To cite only one, in Saudi Arabia, the benighted home of Wahhabi Islam, 92 percent believe the fucking barbarians of ISIS conform to Islamic values.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
