Anyone who wants a good picture of the real Islam can look at the Taliban. The Taliban is basically a movement spearheaded by religious students called talib; these Afghanis are mostly from the Pashtun areas in the E & S of the country, but they were educated in traditional Islamic schools located in Pakistan. The members of the Taliban by and large are well educated and are well versed in Islam. Current reports reveal that the Taliban are killing all the Christians they can find, including anyone who has a Bible app on his cell phone. Christians living in smaller towns or rural areas are fleeing to even more remote places in an attempt to find safety. Overall, the church in that country is attempting to 'go underground' as quickly as possible. The Taliban control the largest opium production operation in the world, thanks to the poppy fields of Afghanistan. They rationalize this as ethical behavior since they export the drugs to the nations of their enemies, such as the USA.
Wasn't that what the USA and UK did to China which set off the Boxer Rebellion? Seems what goes around, comes around. So there is a God who punishes nations. .
To say that the Taliban are representative of Islam is on par with saying that the Westboro Baptist Church is representative of Christianity.
are westboro church folks known for sawing into pieces and executing people? I'd like to know if there is an instance of them doing that
No, and I’m glad you brought that up, as it makes my point that much stronger: the Taliban are even more different from the average Muslim than the Westboro Baptist Church is from the average Christian.
The run-of-the-mill American Muslim is not nearly as well schooled on Quranic studies as are the violent Muslims of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Nigeria, Libya, etc, etc.
Reading the Qur’an is not going to magically make someone a killer. I’m sorry but that’s just absurd. Have you read the Qur’an? Words like “mercy” and “forgiveness” occur constantly. The violent passages are few, and they pale in comparison to what one finds in the Bible. It is true that violence is a serious problem in some Islamic societies, but if one thing is certain beyond all reasonable doubt, that fact is not a result of the Qur’an. If the Bible doesn’t turn Jews and Christians into homicidal maniacs (a big “if” once you start thinking about history), then nor does the Qur’an.
The Middle East and North Africa are the epicenter and home of Islam. The universities (such as the one at Cairo) that teach Islamic studies train their students to interpret the Quran by the "rule of abrogation," that the later verses overrule the earlier ones. And for whatever verse we abrogate and cast into oblivion We bring a better or the like of it; knowest thou not that God is powerful over everything? -- Sura 2:106 And when We exchange a verse in place of another verse -- and God knows very well what He is sending down -- they say, 'Thou art a mere forger!' Nay, but the most of them have no knowledge. -- Sura 16:101 When Muhammad began to dictate the Quran, it was at a time when he and his band of followers were weak, and the passages teach peace and tolerance. As time went on, Muhammad's group of followers grew into a small army whose raids preyed heavily upon Jews and peace-loving Christians; this is reflected in the passages Muhammad dictated, for they become more and more aggressive and intolerant. (Unlike the Bible, the Quran is not arranged chronologically, which makes it difficult for Christians to spot this fact if they read it.) Islam teaches that all "infidels" (including pagans, the Jews, and the allegedly 'polytheistic' Trinitarian Christians) are to be sought out and either converted, killed, or forced to pay a "jizya" (protection money) as a sign of their submission to Islam. They also teach that the Quran cannot be properly understood without reading it in Arabic and also reading the associated Hadiths. Followers of Islam and of Muhammad have carried out over 39,000 deadly attacks since 9/11/2001 (less than 20 years). How many deadly attacks have been conducted by people who claim to be acting in the name of Jesus Christ? Any at all? There really is no comparison.
Well first off it's worth highlighting that the Taliban has no cohesive Islamic theology. The Taliban started as a Deobandi movement, but has increasingly aligned with the much more violent Jihadist Salafism of al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist groups. So not even all of the religious students that founded the Taliban agree that the Taliban of today is "real Islam". There is a simple question to ask: If the natural conclusion of the Quran is Violent/Jihadist Salafism, why did those Salafist movements only arise post-fall of the Ottoman Empire, and only become mainstream post 1990? Further, if the natural conclusion of the Quran is Jihadist Salafism, why do less than 1% of Muslims (around 10 million people) buy into it? Even if we say all 10 million Jihadist Salafists are well schooled, there are a lot more than 10 million well schooled Muslims in the world. Why don't the people of Afghanistan agree with the Taliban's religious views if they are the "real Islam"? The reason is because Jihadist Salafism is not just a religious movement, it's also a political movement, and that political movement has only been relevant in the modern age. It arises out of the Islamist political movement. Islamists promote the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state, a revanchist response to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Those Islamists traditionally aligned with the Salafist school of thought, which is a much more literalist, hard-line conservative school of thought that focuses on a literal application of Sharia Law (as we would expect of modern Christian Fundamentalists in favour of the creation of a Christian theocracy). Historical Salafism (now called 'Purist Salafism') is entirely focused on applications of the law, and opposed to any interest in politics, as it's seen as a distraction and mechanism for perverting Islam. Islamists, needing a literalist branch of Islam in favour of political participation reformed Salafism into what we now call "Activist Salafism". Activist Salafism identified to properly live in accordance with Sharia, the political process must also be Islamic and guided by Sharia. When peaceful means of changing the political system were unsuccessful, especially due to political repression from the increasingly secular political movements of the Middle East, such as the newly dominant Ba'athism of Syria, Iraq and Egypt (did none of these groups, or the people who voted for them study the Quran?), and the increasingly wary monarchies fearful of Islamist overthrow (did none of the monarchs or their state theologians study the Quran either?), they turned violent. Violent Islamism needed a new violent interpretation of the Quran, and so from that Jihadist Salafism was born. Jihadist Salafism rejects democracy, and asserts the Quran teaches violence and jihad is the only way to advance the cause of Allah. This teaching is entirely new to the 20th century, only pops up post 1960, and really only exploded 30 years ago. Where some people thought Salafism was incompatible with such an extreme and novel position, they conveniently found a near-dead Islamic heresy protected by the royal house of Saudi Arabia - Wahhabism. Once Islamists needed a religious justification for violence, this almost unknown religious sect exploded in popularity, because it advocates the execution of both non-Muslims and Muslims who violate Wahhabi doctrines. Why a fringe sect of radical Islam that had been denounced for 300 years was suddenly found persuasive to a bunch of politically active students in the 60's is anyone's guess, but it might not be because they all discovered the "real Islam" at the same time. All of that is to say that maybe Islam is more complex than the doctrines of the Taliban. Iran also had an extremist fundamentalist movement come out of their Universities - it's very different in character to the Salafist beliefs of the Taliban. Syria (and later, Egypt) - those being the supposed epicenters of Islam - had a political movement born out of its Universities, and it was secular in character. Turkey had its movement come out of the military, not the schools, but it's probably unfair to say they were all uneducated in Islam. Their movement is also completely separate from the Taliban's character. The Gulf States have had very little political or religious reform, and so in many ways could be seen as the historical political application of Islam - no one could look at the UAE and think it's a mirror of Afghanistan right now. Just because the Taliban confirm your conception of what the Quran teaches doesn't mean you should discount the other 97% of the Islamic World who are nothing like Afghanistan, nor discount the popular resistance to the Taliban both historically and in the upcoming civil war and rebellion we're about to see over the next few years.
I guess David Coresh and the Branch Davidian would have considered themselves representative of the 'truest' form of Christianity, just as the Taliban may consider themselves the 'truest form of Islam. Extremist nutters always think themselves the epitome of the movement, whatever the movement is, be it Islam, Christianity, Animal Welfare, Vegetarianism, Right to life, Prohibition or Anti UHT Purer Ice Cream Storm Troopers. The mindset goes with the hightly focussed enthusiasm.
This seems a well researched and thoughtful reply. Could it be that what we are seeing in Islam is a sort of mirror image of the Reformation in Christianity. In the Reformation a form of extremism was resisted and a divide opened up in which the extremist faction was forced to re-think it's extremes in a 'counter reformation', bringing in it's own reforms. In Islam currently a violent extremist element has gained some popularity, which is forcing the Islamic world to re-evaluate and re-affirm it's core principles. WE await the resultant outcome of this 'back to front' 'Reformation' of Islam with a considerable degree of trepidation and only limited amounts of optimistic anticipation. Which form of Islam will prevail I wonder. At what point will peace loving Islam 'believers' see peace loving Christian 'believers' as allies rather than enemies and vice versa? At what point will violence using Islamists be resisted by violence using 'Crusaders' in full scale war and vice versa? .
What we’re seeing is largely a response to modernity and colonialism. Take the secularists, for example (Egypt post-1952, Kemalist Turkey, Ba’athist Syria and Iraq). They saw how feeble the Ottoman Empire had been against the Western powers, especially in the years leading up to, and including, WW1. They saw nationalism as part of the antidote to that imbalance. This involves being unified a single set of ideals. In Syria and Iraq especially, with their very diverse populations, this ideal could not be Islam. (The Ba’ath Party was founded by a Greek Orthodox Christian-turned-atheist Syrian, Michel Aflaq.) That’s where secularism came in. Then, a lot of the industry in those countries was foreign-owned. Those parts of the world had gone from living basically in the Middle Ages to being important centers of modern industry in only a matter of decades, with all the societal damage such rapid change typically brings. The idea was that the foreign ownership of these industries was “colonial rule through a back door”, and the preferred solution was to nationalize these industries and share the profits with the citizenry as a whole, hence the “socialist” aspect of this ideology. The net effect of the application of this ideal would be the lifting up of the Arab Islamic world as a whole, by releasing all the untapped potential of the whole people, men and women alike (improving education and opportunities for women was always a prominent component of the Ba’athist agenda). When pan-Arab nationalism became unachievable, this school of thought turned their attention to more local/regional goals, giving us the secular regimes of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq (among others). However, an ideology built around the idea of something other than Islam being the unifying idea of Islamic societies, didn’t sound very Islamic. So there was a traditionalist backlash, first in Iran (of a Shi’ite variety), then elsewhere in the Sunni world, with more and more ties to Saudi Arabia. The Ba’athist and secular response to fundamentalism was usually quite harsh, at times outright brutal, and this helped to discredit their ideas in the minds of the young. So basically what you’re seeing is a dual-axis, low level civil war going on across the Middle East and beyond: one axis being Sunni vs. Shi’a, the other being secular/modernist vs. traditionalist/fundamentalist. All of these groups consider themselves to be true to the Islamic heritage. You have to be very careful when quoting these sources in English translation. A lot of it is misinformation. All of the readily available English translations of the Hadith either come out of or are sponsored by Saudi Arabia and reflect an extremist viewpoint. Saudi-sponsored translations are littered with derogatory references to Jews and Christians that occur nowhere in the text. They are imported from extremist commentaries that were all but irrelevant to the broader Muslim world less than a century ago. If you’re going to read the Qur’an in English, use the Arberry or Haleem translations, or the relatively new Study Qur’an edited by Nasr. Most of the rest are not particularly responsible translations and intentionally reflect an extremist viewpoint. This is not the kind of subject where you can just Google sources, find a few quotes, and think you have an accurate picture of the subject. You have to pay attention to what Muslim scholars themselves have to say, and what their training has been. I will put a lot more weight on what someone trained or teaching at Al-Azhar has to say than anything that comes out of Saudi Arabia. If you buy the notion that the extremists are truly representative of Islam, then you are succumbing to at least one aspect of their ideology, for that is exactly what they want you to think, and how they wish to be seen. Don’t give them that legitimacy, by ignoring the history of Islam, or the broader Muslim world as it exists today.
I am saying that Islam is a violent, hatred-filled religion/political movement (combined), and it has been so for many centuries. This violent behavior is not new. Read of the Muslim incursions into Europe, of rapes and murders and taking plunder, of kidnapping people and selling them as slaves. Violent subjugation by the followers of Islam litters our historical landscape. The claim that this is something new is extremely myopic. Ever hear of the Barbary Pirates? Muslims enslaving and murdering sailors, seizing ships and booty, against the 'infidels' in the name of Allah. The fledgling USA was obliged to sail into the Mediterranean and fight against those Muslims in the late 1700s in order to restore law and order to the high seas. That is just one example of many.
I am not going to wade into the previous arguments but I would like to address this a bit. It is very true that Islam was initially spread by the sword, unlike Christianity. After conquest of areas it was spread by oppressive policies with the semi regular killing of the infidels. It has or maybe it was born with a culture that is diametrically opposed to Western culture and it is crazy to invite in large numbers of people who come from a culture that you have been at war with basically since it first appeared and one that has a totally different value system as you do.
So the facts just don’t matter to you, then. Got it. By repeating such nonsense, you’re actually helping to spread the very extremist ideology you claim to deplore. I hope someday you realize that.
I think that is a very uninformed and puerile comment to make. The vast majority of Muslims are like the rest of us. They are not concerned with spreading Islam by fear and violence. They want to get on with their everyday lives likes us. Such as when is the car insurance due, can we afford to get a new carpet, we'd better get the children new school uniform for next term, I think we'll change gas supplier these bills are too high. I encounter lots of Muslims in my everyday life and they are nothing like the Taliban. Many Muslims will tell you that the Taliban twist the teachings of the Quran to justify their own actions. Of course, we could randomly pick verses from the Quran to point out how evil Islam is. We could equally find verses in the Bible that would paint Christianity in a very bad light.
What you say is very true. But the truth still is that Islamic Culture is vastly different than Western Culture. It is some form of cultural imperialism to think that all people can and or should adapt to Western norms. It is a slog and tough for them to adapt and adjust to our culture. Combine that with a history of violence between us it is easy for the mal adjusted from the foreign culture to find violence and a hatred of the other to be a lifeline to explain their problems.
Actual studies done in the US have shown that Muslims assimilate more easily than other immigrant groups. In my own experience that’s been quite true. Islam is no more a match for secular modernism than Christianity is, and hyper-mobile capitalist society is just as toxic to the stability of traditional Muslim communities as it is to traditional Christian communities.