Shots fired in Dallas of mohammed cartoons.

[Minimalist]

I had to save that one D-P.  Bound to use it somewhere.

[vorlon13]

I see Michael Moore and Fred Phelps as both being scripture cherry pickers, and hardly different from each other at all.

Just sayin' . . . .

When scripture contradicts itself everywhere, you have to be a cherry picker to some extent. 

Or perhaps you might go by majority rules, where if there are more verses that say X, they outvote the verses that say Y? 

Maybe a pecking order?

Jesus outranks Habbakkuk

Habakkuk outranks Melchizedek

etc.

[Hatshepsut]

I'll have to admit sky, wall, floor is a pretty good one. I prefer on my side with my head under the covers and eyes closed.

[DeistPaladin]

I'll have to admit sky, wall, floor is a pretty good one. I prefer on my side with my head under the covers and eyes closed.  

That's actually a good place to be. 

I looked for the Bloom County cartoon where Oliver Wendell Jones advocates for this place where one can securely contemplate the enormity of space. This cartoon also seemed appropriate for the OP topic:

[Hatshepsut]

Berke Breathed was pretty good comix in the 80's & 90's. I think I avoided most of the "crotchety" thing that can bedevil you when you start getting old. I see a lot of "young people stuff," new conventions my gut doesn't understand. I don't always "agree" with it, but I can accept that the world is always changing and parts of the stuff I grew up on have gone out of fashion. It has to be that way, or we'd be stuck waving down horse-drawn coaches forever.  

Which is why I can't understand why Islam is still having such a time of extricating itself from the 7th century. There are lots of progressive Muslim scholars who want to modernize this religion but are muzzled whenever they try.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Berke Breathed was pretty good comix in the 80's & 90's. I think I avoided most of the "crotchety" thing that can bedevil you when you start getting old. I see a lot of "young people stuff," new conventions my gut doesn't understand. I don't always "agree" with it, but I can accept that the world is always changing and parts of the stuff I grew up on have gone out of fashion. It has to be that way, or we'd be stuck waving down horse-drawn coaches forever.  

Which is why I can't understand why Islam is still having such a time of extricating itself from the 7th century. There are lots of progressive Muslim scholars who want to modernize this religion but are muzzled whenever they try.

Muslims seem to be generally super-conservative Southern Baptists but without the baptism part.

[DeistPaladin]

Which is why I can't understand why Islam is still having such a time of extricating itself from the 7th century. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Islam fairly enlightened during that time, comparatively speaking? It seems like a more moderate strain was prevalent at that time that at least allowed for scholarship and the preservation of Greco-Roman learning. The modern fundamentalist strain took hold somewhere around the 12th century. 

[Minimalist]

My favorite Outland/Bloom County

[Hatshepsut]

Muslims seem to be generally super-conservative Southern Baptists but without the baptism part.

If observant, they show more self-discipline with respect to religion than conservative Christians do. After all, they have to abstain from food and water in daytime during Ramadan, a whole month. And pray 5 times a day.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Islam fairly enlightened during that time, comparatively speaking? It seems like a more moderate strain was prevalent at that time that at least allowed for scholarship and the preservation of Greco-Roman learning. The modern fundamentalist strain took hold somewhere around the 12th century. 

Islamic scholarship had a high point around the 9th to 13th centuries, I think, having to do with their cultural contacts with Byzantium and India. This was during the caliphate of the Abbasids in Baghdad, ca. 750-1250. Achievements in mathematics and astronomy are noted here. But the initial period of conquest, the Umayyad period, ca. 630-750, was pretty chaotic and warlike. Kind of a simplistic summary, the best I can do in 50 words. I tend to associate fundamentalist resurgence more with the Wahhabi sect in 18th cent. Arabia than with the earlier Abbasids or Ottomans. You may want to consult the historians rather than take my word on these things, opinion varies.

However, with respect to government and social structure as opposed to science, I think Islam is still struggling to come to terms with the modern world, which was basically imposed on them after World War I. Christianity went through those struggles earlier, during the Reformation and 17th-18th century "Enlightenment" era. The Christians are unlikely to develop anything resembling Islamic State today, even in the event of a government's collapse. There are also relatively progressive Muslim lands, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, and Bosnia among them. These countries are threatened by ultra-Islamist parties or insurgencies right now. We have the "lost opportunities" in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt which once had forward-looking governments that failed, often with help from Western meddling related to oil and shipping interests.