Islam: Religion Of Peace?

[Didacus]

I wonder how the pro-islam people of phatmass have to say about the following 9 points.
 
Well explained reasons in my opinion as to why islam is not and never will be a religion of peace:
 
 

TheReligionofPeace.com



Ten Obvious Reasons Why
Islam is NOT a Religion of Peace




#1 18,000 deadly terror attacks committed explicitly in the name of Islam in just the last ten years. (Other religions combined for perhaps a dozen or so).


#2 Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, had people killed for insulting him or for criticizing his religion. This included women. Muslims are told to emulate the example of Muhammad.


#3
Muhammad said in many places that he has been "ordered by Allah to fight men until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger." In the last nine years of his life, he ordered no less than 65 military campaigns to do exactly that.

Muhammad inspired his men to war with the basest of motives, using captured loot, sex and a gluttonous paradise as incentives. He beheaded captives, enslaved children and raped women captured in battle. Again, Muslims are told to emulate the example of Muhammad.



#4
After Muhammad died, the people who lived with him and knew his religion best immediately fell into war with each other.

Fatima, Muhammad's favorite daughter, survived the early years among the unbelievers at Mecca safe and sound, yet died of stress from the persecution of fellow Muslims only six months after her father died. She even miscarried Muhammad's grandchild after having her ribs broken by the man who became the second caliph.

Fatima's husband Ali, who was the second convert to Islam and was raised like a son to Muhammad, fought a civil war against an army raised by Aisha, Muhammad's favorite wife - and one whom he had said was a "perfect woman." 10,000 Muslims were killed in a single battle waged less than 25 years after Muhammad's death.

Three of the first four Muslim rulers (caliphs) were murdered. All of them were among Muhammad's closest companions. The third caliph was killed by allies of the son of the first (who was murdered by the fifth caliph a few years later, then wrapped in the skin of a dead donkey and burned). The fourth caliph (Ali) was stabbed to death after a bitter dispute with the fifth. The fifth caliph went on to poison one of Muhammad's two favorite grandsons. The other grandson was later beheaded by the sixth caliph.

The infighting and power struggles between Muhammad's family members, closest companions and their children only intensified with time. Within 50 short years of Muhammad's death, even the Kaaba, which had stood for centuries under pagan religion, lay in ruins from internal Muslim war...

And that's just the fate of those within the house of Islam!



#5 Muhammad directed Muslims to wage war on other religions and bring them under submission to Islam. Within the first few decades following his death, his Arabian companions invaded and conquered Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian lands.
A mere 25 years after Muhammad's death, Muslim armies had captured land and people within the borders of over 28 modern countries outside of Saudi Arabia.



#6
Muslims continued their Jihad against other religions for 1400 years, checked only by the ability of non-Muslims to defend themselves. To this day, not a week goes by that Islamic fundamentalists do not attempt to kill Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists explicitly in the name of Allah.

None of these other religions are at war with each other.



#7 Islam is the only religion that has to retain its membership by threatening to kill anyone who leaves. This is according to the example set by Muhammad.


#8 Islam teaches that non-Muslims are less than fully human. Muhammad said that Muslims can be put to death for murder, but that a Muslim could never be put to death for killing a non-Muslim.



#9
The Qur'an never once speaks of Allah's love for non-Muslims, but it speaks of Allah's cruelty toward and hatred of non-Muslims more than 500 times.


#10



"Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!"
(The last words from the cockpit of Flight 93)

[Didacus]

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Top-10-Reasons.htm

[4588686]

Islam is, like all religions, a human creation. It's as peaceful or not as the people who construct the ideology dictate it to be (which varies by time and place). Obviously the points you listed are largely ignorant and, for lack of a better word, racist, but there's no need to get into the weeds about that.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Hasan

[4588686]

The point being that there isn't any need to get into the details since the question itself is a dumb one.

[NotreDame]

Islam is, like all religions, a human creation. It's as peaceful or not as the people who construct the ideology dictate it to be (which varies by time and place). Obviously the points you listed are largely ignorant and, for lack of a better word, racist, but there's no need to get into the weeds about that.

The point being that there isn't any need to get into the details since the question itself is a dumb one.

 

Why are the points ignorant and why is the question dumb?  Perhaps you could expound on your own opinions rather than calling another persons arguments racist and dismissing them out of hand? 

[Didacus]

He is avoiding the difficult of impossible questions as usual.

 

Lets see one of his comments a little closer shall we:

(snip)... It's as peaceful or not as the people who construct the ideology dictate it to be (which varies by time and place)... (snip)

 

So... did Mohammed give a peaceful construct to islam?  He is the founder, he beheaded people for insulting him personally.  He is THE example to follow in islam...

 

I have a very difficult time seeing a man of peace in his example; anyone who sees a man of peace in Mohammed is either an idiot, a liar or insane.

[4588686]

Why are the points ignorant and why is the question dumb?  Perhaps you could expound on your own opinions rather than calling another persons arguments racist and dismissing them out of hand? 

 

 

If you don't understand why the assertions contained here are ignorant then I don't really know where to even begin.  As for why the question is an abjectly dumb one it is because it is predicated on a basic conceptual incoherence.  Islam isn't a real thing.  It's a social phenomena created by people.  It's not some static, Platonic form that exists independently of human beings.  It can't be peaceful or non-peaceful.  It's like asking if 'North Dakota' is happy.  It's an incoherent question and a basic category error.  

Edited March 22, 2014 by Hasan

[NotreDame]

If you don't understand why the assertions contained here are ignorant then I don't really know where to even begin.

 

I felt the same way when I was having to explain to you why medicare wasn't a single-payer system, but I nonetheless took the time to patiently explain it to you anyway.

[4588686]

He is avoiding the difficult of impossible questions as usual.

 

Lets see one of his comments a little closer shall we:

 

So... did Mohammed give a peaceful construct to islam?  He is the founder, he beheaded people for insulting him personally.  He is THE example to follow in islam...

 

I have a very difficult time seeing a man of peace in his example; anyone who sees a man of peace in Mohammed is either an idiot, a liar or insane.

 

 

Right.  And he died a long time ago.  He didn't leave a completed Qur'an and the first biography of him was created about a century after his death.  There isn't that much known about him as an individual.  As with Jesus, what we have is a fragment record constructed by a subset of followers after his death.  The record of him that was constructed long after his death can be, and is, used to justify a wide variety of actions.  

[4588686]

I felt the same way when I was having to explain to you why medicare wasn't a single-payer system, but I nonetheless took the time to patiently explain it to you anyway.

 

 

Not interested in getting into this.  I responded in substance to the important question you asked.  

[beatitude]

I wonder how the pro-islam people of phatmass have to say about the following 9 points.
 
Well explained reasons in my opinion as to why islam is not and never will be a religion of peace:
 
 

 

 

The very first point announces, "18,000 deadly terror attacks committed explicitly in the name of Islam in just the last ten years. (Other religions combined for perhaps a dozen or so."

 

How can you consider this a well-explained reason? Where do these numbers even come from, and what counts as 'a terror attack'? Do you really believe that adherents of all the world's many other religions - billions of people - have only committed 'perhaps a dozen or so' such crimes between us in ten years? Think about that. A dozen attacks among billions of people. Or is it more likely that the author is ignorant of any violence outside the community that he chooses to zoom in on, and also possesses the not-uncommon tendency to assume that any killing committed by a Muslim must be religiously motivated?

 

The other points are similarly logically unsound (if violent infighting is proof of a religion's lack of peacefulness, for example, then Christianity is in serious trouble - we've certainly done a good line in burning and beheading each other and God knows what else...). They're also factually inaccurate (i.e. the idea that 'none of these other religions are at war with each other' - he obviously has never paid attention to what supporters of the BJP have done to Christians in India in the name of Hinduism, to give just one example.) But lack of logic is not the real problem with that list.

 

As a Christian, Jesus is the source of all peace, 'the peace the world cannot give'. No one has peace except from Christ. I have to ask, how exactly do such websites - which seem to single out Muslims as specially violent in the way other people aren't - further that peace? If I want to know a person, I go and sit with him or her face to face. I don't go to a website that will tell me all about how violent they are. There are many sites that do this, some of which do it to us. A quick Google search will bring up pages of anti-Catholic stuff listing everything from paedophilia to the Inquisition to the Magdalen laundries as proof of the inherently vicious nature of this faith, with plenty of biblical quotations and sayings from saints to 'prove' what they're saying is true. I don't want people to treat that sort of dehumanising thing as representative of me, so why would I do it to other people?

 

I know that some people will be very quick to jump to the caveat, "But we aren't criticising the people, we're criticising the religion!" - even though this is also a logically unsound argument, because if the religion makes people violent, then their behaviour should be criticised. I have come to see the flimsiness of that caveat through my own experiences in the Holy Land, where I live for much of my time. I live in Bethlehem, a mixed Muslim and Christian city, with Muslim and Christian neighbours. When I talk about those neighbours to people who feel that the best way to approach fellow human beings is through sites like religionofpeace.com, I hear a dismissive, "Oh, if they're peace activists, they're not really Muslims, they don't know what their religion teaches" - apparently without any sense of how arrogant and even dehumanising it is to tell someone whose faith is the wellspring of their peace activism that their understanding is not 'real'. That you know who they are better than they know themselves and you know their faith better than they do because you copied and pasted some bullet points from the Internet.

 

I am a candidate with the Jesus Caritas Fraternity, a secular institute founded in the tradition of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, like the Little Sisters of Jesus and the Little Brothers of Jesus. It is a special responsibility of all the members of the wider Jesus Caritas community to pray for Muslim people daily. A third of the Little Sisters and Little Brothers are constitutionally bound to serve in Muslim countries, because Brother Charles began his work in the Sahara and he felt a particular affinity with the people there. They were in part responsible for his conversion from agnosticism. A big part of our spirituality, no matter whether we're in Muslim countries or somewhere else entirely, is simple neighbourliness: our prayer involves being present with people in their ordinary lives. The people who compile sites like religionofpeace.com are not present with the people they're writing about, in any sense - they aren't talking to Muslims, they're talking about them. There's no compassion in that and no peace. I think it is a better use of time, instead of asking whether this religion or that philosophy is peaceful, for us to ask whether we ourselves are.

[NotreDame]

Not interested in getting into this.  I responded in substance to the important question you asked.  

 

Of course you wouldn't be interested in getting into it, lol. 

 

And you call assertions racist and your in explaining why you go on to call them ignorant, all without addressing any of them.   There's no substance there in your reply and don't try to pretend there is. 

 

This is becoming a bad habit with you.  You smear someone by calling their assertions racist and/or ignorant (or some other personal assertion), then you start getting evasive and if things don't go your way you just leave the thread. 

I'm going to mass.  I hope by the time I'm back you've managed to start playing nice.

 

[4588686]

Of course you wouldn't be interested in getting into it, lol. 

 

And you call assertions racist and your in explaining why you go on to call them ignorant, all without addressing any of them.   There's no substance there in your reply and don't try to pretend there is. 

 

This is becoming a bad habit with you.  You smear someone by calling their assertions racist and/or ignorant (or some other personal assertion), then you start getting evasive and if things don't go your way you just leave the thread. 

I'm going to mass.  I hope by the time I'm back you've managed to start playing nice.

 

 

I've responded to the aspect of the question that I am interested in debating.  Beatitude has provided a very patient and through response to the particulars of that pretty vile article.  I have provided a substantive response to why it is a category error and fundamentally incoherent.  You've twice now refused to address the conceptual foundation of this question and instead tried to redirect into the dicta, which is just going to be a huge mess.  Even if all of his factual claims were correct, and they certainly are not, his assertion/question is fundamentally confused.  As I have pointed out.  Do you have anything to say about that?

[Lilllabettt]

The idea of Islam as "the religion of peace" refers to the word, Islam, an Arabic word denoting submission to the Divine Will. In Islamic theology this submission of will and intellect is the only source of authentic peace. Hence Islam as "the religion of peace." The peace refers to inner tranquility of the soul.

 

Mohammad was a warrior and made war as his profession. In this he was not unlike the Kings of Israel.

 

 

 

[4588686]

 

 

Mohammad was a warrior and made war as his profession. In this he was not unlike the Kings of Israel and Hasan.

 

 

Fxd.