(January 8, 2015 at 2:51 pm)Cato Wrote: The Quran is supposed to have primacy, but Islam is not just the Quran. Also, if we are to be fair in a discussion of what the Quran has to say about peace why don't we unpack what it says about innocents, war against Allah, and those that corrupt the Earth. Non-muslims cannot be considered innocent. War against Allah is interpreted to mean anything deemed to go against Islam, including unfavorable political cartoons. Corrupting the earth contains such offenses as sorcery and a non-muslim man having sex with a muslim woman. Anyone care to guess at how peaceful the Quran suddenly becomes concerning this bunch?
But this isn't your biggest problem. If the Quran is a message of peace and is central to the Islamic faith, why should I consider its contents if it is incapable of influencing the behavior of some of its most ardent followers? All anyone is saying when they roll out the 'religion of peace' bullshit is that Islam is impotent and impractical as an ethical guide.
Our evolutionary gap filling leads humans to concoct religions. While it is fine to untangle the details it still does not change the root cause of religious violence, religion itself. Any religion, not just Islam. It is currently the biggest trouble maker at this period of history. But any time a religion points to a book to claim morality, it will always create divisions because no one ever agrees as to what the holy book says as far as what morality is.
All the books of Abraham were written in a very feudal tribal past and back then outside the ruling class towing the tribe line and protecting it was more a matter of life and death back.
The Koran is no more a source for human morality than the Bible or OT. It is merely an ancient book of myth humans falsely buy as divine. Jesus was a son of a god or even a prophet. Mohamed was not a prophet. Yahweh got his name from the Canaanite polytheism which is where the Hebrew religion splintered from.
Holy books are weapons no matter which one we are talking about. The only difference between the west and the east is that the west has had 200 years of a secular leash on religion. The east has yet to have it's own Jefferson and Paine.
