It is fundamentalist views that make people who would otherwise be good people do bad things. When you believe your community has a god-given right to some land, it seems there is no limit to the terrible acts you can attempt to justify.
With Jewishness, Jewish identity is often inseparable between the religion and the ethnicity: while it is possible to criticise for example the Jewish religion or Zionism without being xenophobic, it seems that Jews are especially singled out for truly xenophobic comments, including of course the veiled kind. Islam is of course a religion and in no sense an ethnicity, so to be accused of be xenophobic because of criticism you made about Islam would be absolutely ludicrous.
I consider myself left wing but that does not mean that I tolerate religious totalitarianism. I think it is utterly unhelpful for you and others to resort to "left vs. right" rhetoric in such matters.
It doesn't matter if people to choose to be a certain way or not as long as it is legitimate: any bigotry of legitimate lifestyles is intolerable.
The best predictor of a person's religion is knowing the religion of the person's parents, so in a sense, it is largely innate.
As I've already said, the Christian bible plays far more emphasis on the New Testament, not the Old.
One textual study has shown that the bible does contain more violent passages than the quran, but that is because the bible is longer. As a percentage of passages, the quran is twice as violent: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.co...ble_quran.html
But this does not take into account that Jesus in the New Testament told his followers to not commit acts of violence:
"When they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first." - John 8:7
"But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also." - Matthew 5:39
"Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels? How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?”" - Matthew 26:52-54
Whereas the qur'an by contrast says:
"Be not weak hearted in pursuit of the enemy; if you suffer pain, then surely they suffer pain as you suffer pain." - quran 4:104
"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement." - quran 5:33
"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them." quran 8:12
Apart from the quran, the early imperialistic wars started by Muhammad and continued by his followers up to our own times make it clear that Islam is a religion of violence.
People forget about history... Islam was initially more tolerant than Christianity. Islam tolerated non-believers, as long as they paid their taxes and treated them as equal as the Islam believers, while Christians killed and decimated the non-believers (did we forget Crusaders?). "Saladin", the Islam warlord was greatly respected by even the Christians for his tolerance and generosity.
He even offered to pay for the surrendered Crusaders himself:
But I mean, they believe in the same God, so this is kind of pointless. Neither are as tolerant as say, Buddhism. But I'm not saying that those religions are "bad", they do serve their purposes and they do have good in them. We should be trying to improve them and make them more tolerant, and not just have a war over it.
Last edited by Singu; 01-21-2017 at 11:15 AM.
Christianity began with Christ, Islam began with Muhammad. Muhammad was responsible for more deaths in his own lifetime than Christ, that is indisputable. Again, Christianity in its core teachings specifically tells its followers not to kill, whereas Islam specifically orders its followers to kill, even in the case of "heretics". What self-described Christians and Muslims do is another matter entirely.
So? Stalin also believed in Jesus.
You still seem to fail to take on my point. If the New Testament account is accurate, Jesus chose to martyr himself, and specifically told his followers not to fight and kill on his behalf. He certainly did not do what Muhammad did, which was order the deaths of people in his own lifetime, including waging wars and condoning terror, and founded a "religion" that expects its followers to kill and terrorise on its behalf.
In France recently, a teacher was murdered for showing cartoons depicting "Muhammad" in a class on free speech.
When President Macron upheld France's commitment to free speech, the governments of several Muslim countries started a boycott of France. A typical claim was that Macron was not respecting freedom of belief which I found ludicrous, especially considering that someone had just been murdered simply for showing cartoons.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54683738Political leaders in Turkey and Pakistan have rounded on Mr Macron, accusing him of not respecting "freedom of belief" and marginalising the millions of Muslims in France.
On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested, for a second time, that Mr Macron should seek "mental checks" for his views on Islam.
Has Erdogan denounced the murder yet? He has the wrong order of priorities in my view.
I am think I am correct in saying that France respects freedom of belief more than any "Muslim" (i.e. Muslim-majority) country on Earth. Sadly, most of them are not democracies so some of these boycotts at least can not be said to represent the wide population in any way.