Quote:
Originally Posted by PR_Glen
So there isn't acts of intolerance, isolation and violence in the old testament and torah by comparison? is that what you are implying? Because that would be blatantly false.
The truth is all forms of religions are written in absolutes and are removed of tolerance for a reason, they are trying to recruit by division to obtain more followers. The stupid part is the fact that people today, even the ones who follow no religion, can use others beliefs for reason to hate them by cherry picking their texts and in the process form their own form of religion of non believers instead. All your missing is a book and a hang out every sunday.
I instead choose to let people be who they are and my only enemy are those whom attack me--which, so far, has yet to happen.
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It's perhaps safe to say that the Old Testament may as well be the worst book ever produced, on so many levels. I am sure none of us would be glad if the world would run based on the Old Testament, or if there were organized groups that live according to it and put it into practice.
It also includes a great deal of violence, however, there are two important points from the doctrinal point of view:
1) the violence included in the Old Testament is not prescriptive (aka it's not explicitly codified as something you should do and emulate in your regular life)
2) more importantly, The old testament has been abrogated by the New Testament
One can have all the objections in the world towards The Church, they are an incredibly hypocritical, destructive and thieving force throughout the history. However, from the doctrinal point of view - one would probably find it hard to object to the core content of the New Testament, to something like ten commandments. It is actually the core of what we in the western civilization understand as morality, many may have never realized that.
A great deal of the world, however, at this stage, 1400 years since its inception, runs based on an entirely different moral and belief system - the Islamic doctrine.
If I understand well, the other part of your reply refers to people who use someone else's religion as a point of division. I completely agree that this is not right, after all one of the essential liberal values is freedom of conscience and religion, everybody can practice anything as long as it doesn't threaten the freedom of others.
However, if you tried to apply this liberal value to the doctrine of Islam, you will find one crucial and essential issue.
What we understand as a definition of religion would be say a certain belief and set of rules that extends to its followers. Christianity deals with how to he a good Christian, Hinduism how to be a good Hindu etc. So it's logical that a person that is not familiar with the Islamic doctrine may ask - why should the doctrine of Islam be of any interest to us, if we are not a part of it?
The reason why is since we are in fact a part of the doctrine of Islam. That is the one, crucial difference, its doctrine extends to you, to me, to everybody outside of it. A great deal of the doctrine of Islam, in fact about a half of it, is concerned with not how to be a follower of Islam, but how to deal with the Kuffir aka the unbeliever and how to spread Islam.
The Kaffir can be treated well (especially if he is of value for Islam or if Islam is too weak to rule over him) or he can be treated very, very badly. According to the doctrine of Islam, a Kuffir can be relegated towards the second class citizen status with little to no rights (dhimmi), he can be deceived and lied to, he can be enslaved, raped, tortured, killed.
The Kuffir (unbelievers) are seen as "the worst of creatures", Allah "hates the Kaffir", and the world that is not ruled by Islam (Dar al Harb - "The house of war") is seen as a world ruled by dissent and as an opposition.
How does one call a system that plots on how to deal with its opposition and achieve power and dominance? That is a political system.
So the doctrine of Islam is different to any other religion. Because it is not a religion, it is also a political system, and it is the political part that that has made Islam successful.
In fact it's only those outside of Islam who define Islam as a "religion" - if you'd go to the Middle East, and asked on the street, and if you received a honest answer, it is likely it would be that Islam is a complete way of life.
"I instead choose to let people be who they are and my only enemy are those whom attack me--which, so far, has yet to happen."
This is again you seeing this through a western prisma, do onto others as you wish they would do upon you - The Golden Rule. This is the morality a westerner applies to the world, he treats all humanity the same.
No such thing exists in Islam though, there is pluralistic ethics - different moral rules apply to different groups - there are different morals applied to the believers (Ummah), and different moral rules on how to treat those outside of Islam (Kuffir).