This question goes to our muslim friends. How did violience, vengence and jihad come to be interpreted and misused by so many extremists. In other words what particular passages of the Qu’ran gave this justified idea of violence to so many? I’m sure it was just a misunterpretation/misunderstanding by some bad apples just as with any other religion, just wondering wondering what may have sparked this idea.
thanks for the feedback
zatch
I disagree. (of course.)
If it’s merely misinterpretation, it doesn’t explain, why it’s so widely misapplied. The pope said it all… Mohammed commanded to spread by the sword. If the quran and it’s literal interpretation aren’t enough, consider that they read it in arabic, in which the passages develop a mind-numbing cadence.
Even the sufis… the peaceful muslims, still believe in the jihad. They still use swords to. Just on themselves to fight their inner non-believer. If you’ve never seen a sufi demonstration, they basically pierce their body with swords and other various instruments, while chanting, to fight the jihad of their body.
I am curious if there are even any muslims on the boards, moderate or otherwise. Perhaps we should invite the author of the article that was in the NY post?
Scythe,
One must also not neglect the Christians spread their beliefs the very same way for quite some time. And have even done so the the Muslims.
if you really want to know,perhaps you should actually read the qu’ran?
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/index.htm
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/HolKora.html
disclaimer:i did not actually read the qu’ran on these sites,and cannot assure there accuracy.i just got those links today.but it seems acceptable.
I suppose “misuse” is in the eye of the beholder. But I’m sure the vast majority of muslims see the violence towards those who disagree with them as an incredible misuse and misinterpretation of the qu’ran. Their are over a billion muslims and we don’t have nearly that many doing these crazy things, so while it’s widespread it’s not even a significant percentage to the population. (feel free to tear into that one). We hear alot more about the extreme ones because peacful muslims= boring news.
The same misinterpretations come from extreme “Christians” they just don’t generally kill, yet they too go againest their faith when they become overly extreme and “devout” and think nothing of being hatful judgemental and condeming people.
SO in short i wanted to know specific quotes that gave this idea to so many muslims to feel it’s alright to kill someone who doesn’t agree with your faith or downgrades it.
p.s I’ve seen posts by muslims on hear so,yes, their are some.
Easier said then done bud. I’ve read bits of it but i can’t flip through a 800 page holy work on a long weekend, i work and have a kid. Hence i came to the forum to find an educated muslim to help shed some light on the subject. mmkay?
That’s such crap… the christians never used violent means as a main method of propagation. They used it against the faithless in some renditions, but even then… you have a hard time backing that up with scripture.
Zatchari:
I’ve been over this time and time again… if that were the case, we’d see more people like this brave individual,
nypost.com/postopinion/opedc … _dabul.htm
The problem is, when you speak against Islam… even if you are a muslim, the penalty is death. Like the recent Sudanese editorialist (who was muslim) but criticized the link between Islam and violence and was beheaded…
You’re obvioulsy forgetting about the middle ages, when if you weren’t christian the exact way the higher ups wished then you would most certainly be killed. Not to mention that their are still a few extreme christians who do things like blow up abortion clinics. And all of these extremists i’m sure could’ve backed it up with scripture and felt completly righteous in doing so.
Again their are well over 1 billion muslims in the world and if even half of them were this extreme then the world would be in much worse shape and they’d most likley rule most of europe (the extremists)
I am at work right now, and I work with a man named Hussain. He is from the middle east and is a devout muslim and prays 5 times a day, including at work.
He has told me that he thinks it is lame to force any one to be muslim or anything. We talk about world affairs from time to time, and he knows a lot more then I do about many global issues.
I used to work with another muslim man, who was more devout, but he was not preachy, and was just another dude at work.
The media portrayes the extremes because peaceful muslims are boring for news worthyness.
There are still many many extreme christians in the world, just like there are extreme muslims.
Think about this. Killing is not just done by bombs, killing is done by other means. Many devout christian CEO’s in america have no problem wrecking havock on poorer parts of the world by industry, and it’s unsafe labor etc that also kills.
poor people working themselves to death in unsafe conditions is just as deadly as terrorism. The end result is near death. But the Christian CEO’s killing is more disguised, because it extracts energy from the people before it kills them.
Many extremists kill, they just carry it out differently. But in the end, god said it was ok to BOTH groups, because they are his people.
- Abortion Clinics: The bible has no moral law against abortion, but it does against murder which is the killing of the innocent… Fetuses are innocent because they haven’t yet had a chance to commit evil.
The question isn’t, “are fetus’ human”, it’s “where does the deliniation of life begin”? Since both sides are hyper-partisan, they refuse to examine this situation critically. The abortion doctors for all intents and purposes in my opinion are murderers. I think there is scientific proof that the line of life begins at 11 weeks… the baby becomes active and has brain and heart activity.
But really, who are we kidding? Before that point (from the point of conception) that fertilized zygote IS human. it’s not going to transform into a giraffe, or a zebra. The callous destruction of humanity is horrible.
Now all that being said, it neither excuses the abortion doctor (who is misguided) nor the abortion doctor killer. The abortion doctor killer [b]IS NOT Christian, as their is no Christian LEADER or DOCTRINE, that backs up his actions.
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the middle ages. The muslims were FAR FAR more efficient in killing non-believers even during the middle ages. Very few christian countries took part in the Inquisition, and it’s main effects were felt in Spain, where they were trying (once again) to deal with the muslim influence the country felt. Did you know that when the muslims took over Spain they changed the name to Al-Andalus? Just like they changed the name of Constantinople to Istanbul. Even disregarding all of the above evidence though, THIS WAS THE MIDDLE AGES. The christian religion by and large has no modern doctrines for this behavior. Whether it be by cherry picking, or conforming to modern society, the christian religion in MODERN FORM, is less violent than Islam.
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I’m sure they could have, but the point is they would REALLY have to search to back it up, and according to modern christian doctrine, take things out of context. The same is not true of Ancient Islam and Modern Islam. Read the criticisms of Islam from Scholars who’ve lived under it.
Ibn Warraq, “Why I’m not Muslim”
emilio abdul, nypost.com/postopinion/opedc … _dabul.htm
great critical article of the religion.
Why ignore the evidence? My guess is it’s because it proves relativism is crap.
They are about to rule much of Europe, your ignoring the evidence.
Sudan: Fundamentalist muslims slaughtering the other muslims, and non-muslims.
Nigeria: Fundamentalist muslims regularly firebombing christians and their churches.
Thailand: Has HUGE problems with fundamentalist muslims. Last month over 6 banks were bombed simultaneosly.
Malaysia: Just had a coup, to install a muslim ruler. One of the party members stated; “We do not want a democracy, but an Allahcracy!”
The problem IS worldwide. It’s just like Professor David Selbourne stated;
READ IT THIS TIME.
Scythekain:
I strongly suggest that you read the linked Wikipedia article below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_other_religions
I’ll quote one section that is particularly relevant to this discussion:
One may certainly find passages in the Koran that seem to advocate violence towards unbelievers and the forceful spread of Islam; one may also find passages that seem to forbid this. Which passages are emphasized and which are downplayed depends on circumstances in life outside of Islam itself, I would say. And certainly history seems to bear me up on this.
If Islam is manifesting a considerable degree of violence these days, we must nonetheless recognize that that has not always been the case, and ask ourselves why the religion is being interpreted now the way it is. Obviously, that is not the only interpretation possible, because it is not the only interpretation that has historically occurred. So what is leading to all of this anger, all of this hostility, and so to the interpretations of the Koran that feed on anger and hostility?
Those are the questions to ask ourselves.[/url]
Wikipedia is great for general information, but they have a severe liberal slant, especially in this case.
I’ll quote one section that is particularly relevant to this discussion:
This was after they had been conquered and beaten down, and even though they didn’t ALWAYS do forced conversions on these conquered peoples, they did force the dhimmis to pay the Jizya in order to practice their beliefs in extreme privacy so as not to offend the Muslim sensibility.
And before mohammed’s death he personally slaughtered THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of jews and christians. There’s one event in a biography written shortly after that time, where mohammed lined up hundreds of jews in medina and beheaded them.
That’s not what Dhimmi means.
Even though wiki is liberally slanted some truthful info is still available
*Where are they getting their stats from? is 51% most? It also is a problem of sources… are the muslim historians citing these numbers? If so we must remember what muslims think of non-muslims…
Under the conditions above, it’d be better to convert than to remain a criticized member of an ousted society. That’s what many chose to do.
According to the qu’ran, everyone is BORN Muslim, and they reject Islam and choose one of the other religions, and even if they didn’t explicitly, force conversion to Islam (like was the case with the two publicized reporters who converted at gunpoint) life in a Caliphate (which your article describes as the living state, which is life under Shari’a law, demanded of any muslims.
So what they were expempt from the Zakat! The Zakat was FAR FAR fairer than the Jizya, which basically left them with nothing.
Conversion was discouraged under the Ummayad dynasty… wow… ONE WHOLE DYNASTY. And even he didn’t stop the persecution granted under Sharia law though:
here’s an important bit that equates to the above… remember everyone is born muslim than converts through apostasy to another religion:
Much is known of the history of Islam, but it’s implications to modernity are widely ignored…
perfect example of the persecution… They had grown tired of having all their monies sent to the Caliph, so they decided to band together to try and convert… the Muslims found them more useful paying the Jizya and being repressed.
Sharia law makes is repressful for the muslim… It’s WORSE for the non-muslim. If you murder a non-muslim, it’s the same as murdering a slave. The same goes for “adultery” laws, whether you are muslim or not. If a woman is raped, it’s considered adulterous and she is killed… even to this day.
“find”, as if it were really that challenging? You forget two things:
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The quran is the WORD of Allah. The violent passages, were spoken and commanded by god. When Allah states in the Qu’ran; “It’s better to be dead than to be humiliated”, it brings into clarity their violent actions when the cartoons criticize the connection between violence and Islam, and the Pope’s criticisms as well. They would rather die in battle with deemed “persecutors”, than deal with the criticism of their religion.
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The qu’ran may as well be the Mein Kampf… But at least Hitler was subtle in the mein Kampf… when the qu’ran isn’t telling you to kill the infidel it’s telling you how lowly they are, comparing them to apes and pigs.
I say the opposite is true… a moderate muslim has to work to maintain a truly peaceful version of Islam. As Ibrahim Hooper** stated, “We want the USA to be a Caliphate, ruled by Sharia law”
There is no middle ground, even for those muslims that aren’t currently strapping bombs to their chest.
** (Ibrahim Hooper is a director of CAIR.)
Those are the passages that are taken out of context, it only forbids violence if the infidel submits to the muslim, and stops trying to openly mock Allah, by practicing thier perverted religion.
What history? From beginning to today, Islam is FILLED with violence against non-muslims… they even violently fight each OTHER over their violent CORRECT interpretations of the quran. The Shi’a And Sunni are not fighting each other over land… they are fighting each other, over who has the correct plan for leading Islam. They both believe in the violent political expansionism in the Qu’ran and the Sunna (hadith.)
So you’re now building a lie upon your previous lie… tell me when ANY muslim empire was NOT being violent towards non-muslims? it’s when they were pushed back (in self defense) by other conquerors, be they christians working with ghengis khan, or be they mad men, like Vlad the impaler.
Only extreme military actions have kept Islam as small as it is. Had Charles Martel not stopped the muslims in 686 the Christians would’ve been sacked… there would be no moon landing, and there would’ve been no USA. Do you understand the implications I’m making and how truthful they are?
Islam is a political expansionism religion PURE AND SIMPLE.
How about if you are right and I’m wrong…
Why is it so easy to misinterpret the quran?
Why do so many modern day muslims take a violent interpretation (which is hardly anything new… )
Did you know it was the muslims in Barbary that were responsible for the slave trade? And that they were also behind all of the pirate acts? Another thing that Muslim empires are incapable of doing is producing anything new… anything that came from a muslim empire, was absorbed from the empire they conquered. As soon as there was nothing left to absorb, they had to start stealing… Just like the prophet did, and laid out in the hadith, and his biographies (which are followed as part of sharia law.)
The USA marines were started to stop the muslims … on the shores of Tripoli.
And here you are LYING, and trying to say that a violent interpretation of the quran is a new thing.
Drop the lies and learn history.
scyth,
Just wondering if you have a job or children or anything. How do you have time to post 50 gigantic posts everyday? must be nice to be in front of a computer all day
In other words, what’s said here conflicts with what you believe. Got it. That was the point, though. Anyway, everything said in that article agrees with more scholarly sources I have read and studied. It was just convenient and available on line, hence the link.
You’re confusing military, political, and religious force. Certainly it was after the Muslim armies had conquered the area in question – how could it be otherwise? How otherwise would Muslims be in any position to forcibly convert anyone? The point is, though, that while the armies did engage in political conquest, and they did this in order to spread the word (and “for the glory of God” or some such) – and while this in itself may be reprehensible and I am certainly not trying to defend it – the fact remains that forcible conversion to Islam was not the norm in these early days. If it has become the norm today (which is debatable, but the very fact it is debatable and not obviously wrong shows that things have changed), then something is making that happen which is not contained in the Koran, the Koran being a constant between the two periods.
“Pay the Jizya” is correct, “in extreme privacy” is not. However, let us agree that Medieval Muslims did not come up to the standards of religious toleration encompassed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Nonetheless, there is a lot of open space between that standard, and the endemic religious violence of which you accuse Islam.
Documentation?
Actually, never mind. The statement is absurd, for the simple reason that there weren’t “thousands and thousands” of Jews and Christians living in Arabia, and Islam did not spread beyond Arabia until after the Prophet’s death.
Mohammed was not a pacifist by any means, but the kind of religious pogrom you are suggesting did not happen during his lifetime.
According to the material you posted, yes, it is.
The above implies a “protective” relationship.
Of course. And that’s neither surprising nor unusual. But it stops well short of what you were accusing Islam of practicing.
No. That is not so. In fact, there is a severe difference made in Islamic law between a person who has never converted to Islam, and a person who has been a Muslim and left the faith. Apostasy (the abandonment of Islam) is punishable by death according to most interpretations. Being an infidel from the get-go is not. Obviously, then, not everyone is “born” Muslim, or every infidel would be an apostate.
Simply untrue. What is true is that the Zakat tended to be lower than the Jizya, and also that it was (technically) voluntary, sort of like tithing in the Catholic Church. But it is nonsense to suggest that the Jizya “basically left them with nothing.”
There was no set rate for the Jizya. The only reference to a monetary amount that I can find set it at 48, 24, or 12 silver coins, depending on affluence, with women, children, the poor, hermits, the disabled, and mendicant monks being exempted, according to Abu Yusuf, although what the value of a silver coin was in terms of buying power is unclear. What is clear, though, is that no mass exodus of non-Muslims from Muslim lands occurred, and that is what we would expect were infidels being either forcibly converted or hit with truly crushing taxation of the kind you suggest.
You’re clutching at straws here, dude. Generally speaking, conversion was not discouraged. (When it was, it was for economic and political reasons not religious ones.) Toleration, however, and the forbidding of forced conversion, was the norm.
All I can say here, is that you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. There are passages in the Koran that, placed in context, advocate peace, mercy, and compassion. It is no effort to find such passages. It is also no effort to find the other kind. And violence against infidels, merely because they are infidels, is forbidden.
Unless, of course, you consider taxation to be violence. In which case we have a whole other discussion to pursue.
Oh, I imagine for the same reason it’s so easy to misinterpret the Bible or the Baghavad-Gita, both of which have been used to justify both war and peace. Religion is inherently complex and lends itself to justify conflicting impulses.
Ah. That is indeed the question. Let me suggest a few answers.
The Shah of Iran
Saddam Hussein
The House of Saud
Assad of Syria
The rulers of Kuwait
The Taliban
The curent President of Pakistan
Israel
What do all of these regimes have in common, at least at one time in their existence?
Answer: They were all supported by the Western powers, against the will of their neighbors, and, with the exeption of Israel, also against that of their own people. This includes the Taliban and Saddam, both of whom the U.S. later overthrew.
Why were all of these regimes supported by the Western Powers? Well, again with the exception of Israel, all of them were supported either because they provided or continue to provide favorable economic deals to the West, or for geopolitical reasons, or both. (I am frankly unsure just why we support Israel, so I won’t speculate on that.)
In some cases, notably that of the Shah, not only did we support a tyrant, but we overthrew a democratic government to put him in place.
The Jizya was certainly more of a burden than the Zakat, but either one pales in comparison to the dire economic impact of Western policy on most citizens of Muslim countries.
In short, Muslims living in the Middle East have ample reason to hate our guts. And that being the case, and religion being so important in their lives, they naturally have much incentive to find passages in the Koran that encourage their rage.
And that, very simply, is the answer to your question.
One final matter. Accusations such as lying do not merit a response. Don’t bother with them in the future.
I type 100 words per minute.
navi:
read “why I am not muslim” by Ibn Warraq, he cites all of his sources. (none of which I can recall now… I borrowed the book from the library.)
The problem is your definition of religion… Islam is less a religion and more a political expansionist idealogy.
If Ghengis Khan walked into a cave and claimed divine inspiration he would still have followers today, and we would also call that a religion… even though most of Khans ideas were nothing but expansionism, and ultra-violence… Khan and Mohammed were kindred spirits of sorts. The only difference is, that Mohammed united his warriors under god, and Khan didn’t… Khan united his people under himself.
Why do I get the feeling that typing so fast stops you from thinking?
Are you a child on fire?
You are being eaten alive by rage.
Never mind me, others here are praying for your soul and do everything to calm you and give you guidance.
In return you spit into their face.
Not to put too fine a point on it, ravencry4all, but that’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it? You’re probably among the top 3 most vitriolic posters @ ILP. I’ll bet your blood pressure is higher than 99% of the kids your age.
So much hate so young. 
the problem with people like you is they tell you openly they want the death of israel, the death of america and they hate you… and you try to understand why.
You DON’T UNDERSTAND HATRED.
So am I on your list for posting the facts about Islam? Because I’m not being PC(owardice) enough?
It’s amazing that this has to be posted.
It again proves my point that we live in an age of more talk than action.
If you just read about how Islam was formed the question will be answered.
precisely why the majority of people in “the west” do not understand Islam.