Show me the verse in the NT where it condones slavery. Not condemning does not mean condoning. What is your opinion on Muhammed marrying the slave girl Maria al Qibtiya? Did he 'free' her too?

ugh

Look, I think it's pretty obvious that if you choose Jesus, you can't choose Muhammed, and if you choose Muhammed you can't choose Jesus. You choosing Muhammed (maybe you don't, but it pretty much seems so) is very very strange (normal for a Muslim, but an atheist???).

I'm arguing Christianity 33AD is better than Islam in the 6th century. That's all there is to it. I'm even willing to admit the Crusades are unchristian. - But I do have to say you are weird, first saying that defending back is moral, but when it comes to the Crusades, no-no-no: Crusades & Jihad

I never said the NT condoned slavery. I also didnt mention Jesus when i said that too.

I have no views on Maria al Qibtiya, perhaps if you narrow down the question a bit further to what you are trying to get me to say?

I am not choosing Muhammed over Jesus though i certainly respect a man who fights for his people more than a man who gives up and dies for some abstract reason - in fact i find Jesus to be pretty pathetic all in all. The idea that someone cannot be both a prophet and a warrior leader is a bit weird to me. Whilst saints are not prophets it is certainly true there are several warrior saints - the idea you cannot be spiritual, moral and also a military leader is contrary to what is stated by Christianity itself.

There is nothing specifically immoral about a tax, especially not in the context it was usually used as a fee for protection by the Muslim state to none Muslims. What do you think the no bid contracts offered to companies like Halliburton in Iraq were if not Jizya by another name?

It was indeed normal to do this, the comparison to modern law and standards of morality is silly. It just wasnt immoral at all.

Where Islam went wrong is they didnt hide any of the personal history of the man and they didnt invent fairy tales of virgin births fathered by a god performing miracles all of which was borrowed from other cultures centuries after he died.

Sorry, discounting the OT doesn't work for this discussion. The "new law" of the NT is meaningless on this one. The slaughtering still happened...

The father of a girl sold his daughter to Mohammed for peace or money I don't remember. This girl her name was Maria The Copt (Maria the Egyptian). Mohammed accepted this 'gift' and had a baby with her, the baby (Ibrahim) died at age 1.

Hitler fought for his people too. What is this nonsense. Fighting for your people is not the problem. But I hope you agree with me, that there are certain moral/legal limits.

Yes in the OT there were prophets that fought. But the NT, via Jesus corrected this, and didn't fight. It's strange if a religion (Islam) comes after Jesus (while acknowledging Jesus as a important prophet) and starts fighting all over again. OK I appreciate your sincerity about Jesus. I want to ask you another one. Do you think Gandhi was a coward, and pathetic too?

What do you think happens with the poor people that can not pay the tax?

I don't know enough of Halliburton. I'm not a Halliburton-follower though.

So a divine religion (Islam), that brings a objective morality, is only a temporal objective morality? So marrying 6year olds is first allowed by Allah. But then because of the interference of men, marrying 6year olds becomes immoral? Do you believe man is more moral than Allah?

LOL @ Islam not inventing so called fairy tales. Telling sick people to drink milk and camel urine is pretty damn scientific huh? And they magically were healed? Yep, doesn't sound like a fairy tale.

Come on guys, arguing which religious text is more nonsense is an endless discussion.

Gandhi is overrated. Tbh i find him more pathetic as a racist than as a man who would not fight.

As for the saint warriors i was thinking more along the lines of Joan of Arc who we know actually existed.

As for Maria al Qibtiya, again, i knew the part she was a slave he freed and married, i have no views on it however. In the context of an age where most marriage was a matter of arrangement there isnt much to say. Would you prefer she be kept as a slave and work to clean the houses of the other wives he had?



This thread is pretty much a dead parrot right now, but its getting off track in any case. Just the concept that Christianity is all peace and loving whereas Islam is this crazy backwards cult of evil and violence is just laughable on the face of it.

Are you serious? Muhammed freed her? Maria the slave girl married him out of free will? Let's quit the discussion indeed. There's no way you in your right mind can be serious here.

Do you think Mary married Joseph out of free will? You cannot be serious?

It was rare to marry for love in that time, especially in that area and certainly to someone as important as Muhammed was. Marriages were arranged as if business transactions and I can think of many worse situations for a slave than to be sold to an extremely important and powerful leader who then frees and marries you letting you live in relative luxury.

Do you admit you changed your position?

I have not. In what possible way have i contradicted myself?

Obviously a little late on this, but this is the whole point of the freedom of religion the founders granted - not to tie in our national identity with one religion, but to ensure that each individual could secure their own religious identity regardless of what it is.

BTW I love it when Christians try to interpret the Koran.

"The Koran says right here that violence against all infidels is justified! It says it plainly!"
"OK, well the Bible says..."
"YOU ARE NOT UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT!!!"

You said Muhammed and the Quran is more moral than the Bible because it freed several slaves, and said freeing slaves is good. Did he 'free' Maria the Copt or what?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK7P7uZFf5o Context Context indeed. I would have more trouble with defending the OT than the NT.

But yes I will stop interpreting a sentence. Mein Kampf is not so bad too, but you have to see it in the context. The context of killing Jews.


Autocratic on a scale of 1 to 10 how moral would you view the OT, then the NT, then the Quran? And how peaceful would you view them?

Are you saying married women are slaves? Or to get more accurate are women married in arranged marriages slaves?

Also i wasnt specifically referring to her, but she was turned from property to a free citizen. Do you think the slave he freed and then adopted as a son was also denied free will?

Again, stop judging things in context to modern standards. Women of all sects of the time were second class citizens.

Not to mention you havent even proven that she didnt choose to marry him after she was freed.

My point was WTF is the OT, the Koran or even the NT doing in the discussion at all? You just randomly blurt out some baby killing bs and I commented on it.

Since you brought it up, What about womens rights in the Muslim faith? Instead of talking about what happened in ancienct history, lets talk about now.

Lets talk about womens right through the majority of Christian history compared to Islamic history. Not really... but your side wouldn't fair to well.

No, let's talk about now. Past history is not pertinent to this discussion, but you just keep throwing up strawmen because there is no defense for the Muslim position on gay rights or womens rights or childrens rights.

This whole thread has been about "rights" to build, and if everyone's rights are not addressed, then you are condoning the treatment of these groups by muslims. Please show me a gay mosque, I can show you some gay churches.

So quit tap dancing around my question or continue to ignore it. It's out there!

I don't really know. The NT probably above both of them slightly due to the emphasis on peace. But it's an awkward question because I don't believe that any of them provide a valid framework upon which to base one's morality, which imo is kind of the point.

But more broadly, Christians always roll their eyes when atheists and so forth argue using a literalist interpretation of the Bible. But then when arguing against the Koran, they suddenly see the usefulness of literalism. And it's pretty clear why - reading something and taking it literally is easy to do. Trying to put it into some broader cultural/historical context and working with that is considerably harder. That would take the kind of research that most are not willing to do.

400 years ago it is pretty clear that Christians were taking many of the extremely violent, prejudiced, morally repugnant portions of the Bible very seriously. The West had an enlightenment. On one hand it led to generally less religion. But many scholars operating under a new cultural and intellectual climate went through the process of articulating Christianity within the framework of that new climate. And in the end we have most Christians rejecting literalism, and believing the old ways to be simplistic. Most of the populations of the Muslim world were not privy to that outburst of Enlightenment thinking, and literalism remains more popular there. But to see Christians trying to take a literalist stance on the Koran and then rejecting the claims of moderate Islam as being handwaving is just too strong of a parallel to ignore.

So all the nations in the world today that tax people are immoral? The Muslim nations protected people with different beliefs and allowed them to live there and practice their own religion. In return, they collected a tax which was on a progressive tax system so that people only were asked to pay what they can afford. If people refused to pay taxes then, or refuse to pay them now, there of course will be consequences. This is not immoral. In fact, look at how nice and free these Muslim nations were!

Your objection to Islam was just that the religion calls for violence. It was shown that the verse you had in mind does not do so and is not interpreted or followed as a call to violence by non-extremist Muslims. So why do you still object?

If you want my take, it's because you're upset that the Muslims took over your country some time ago. You think this is biasing your judgment somehow? It's time to get over it, imo. Religions and nations went to war and took over lands back then. They all did it, doesn't make one more evil than another.

You can not seriously try to judge people from centuries ago based on your values today. It's just a dishonest tactic. Do you think Christianity is exempt from this -- do you believe that early Christians didn't do anything that was normal then, but you would find immoral now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critici...Muhammad#Aisha "Colin Turner, a professor of Persian language and Islamic history, states that since such marriages between an older man and a young girl were customary among Bedouins, Muhammad's marriage would not have been considered the least improper by his contemporaries.[32]"

I mean, do you think Jews are an immoral people? Afterall, the OT clearly supports slavery and stoning a bunch of people. Jews don't do this anymore (at least, not that I'm aware of). Back in the day, it's the way things were done and no one thought it was odd or immoral. But times change and people adapt. To judge present day Jews on the stonings in the OT would be wrong and I don't think you actually do it (or do you?).

Not to me but...

The Torah is just as immoral as the Quran imo. Though i dont know the Quran as well, there is no criticism you have made itt that cant be made against the Torah. It has different monetary rules for non Jews. They used genocidal war to create their kingdom. They had brutal and barbaric laws and penaltys for wrongs. What i dont get is why you aren't critical of Jews for reforming their religion in the same why you are of Muslims.


As far as the NT. By my interpretation you cant separate the NT and OT unless you accept Jesus didn't want people to uphold Jewish law. Which if you ask me is wrong, i think Jesus wanted people to uphold the Law.

Going by what modern Christians teach i would say the NT is more moral. Although i think it can be less moral on the salvation and after life stuff depending on your views.


You have dogged most of the posts i have made to you so i didn't expect a discussion, but alright.

What Muslims are we talking about first. American Muslims? Or are you going to pull out your strawman of using the most ardent middle eastern Muslims.

I need to know because if we can use different modern countries then there are some Christian nations that have some pretty brutal treatment verse gays and women.

But if its just the US then i would say Christians and Muslims have about the same treatment of gays and women. Only since Muslims dont hold as much power to change unjust laws in the US as Christians i would hold them less responsible for the mistreatment of gays under the law.

Overall i agree with your point anyway though. I agree by numbers gays and women are more oppressed by Islam then Christianity in the modern world.

nh

heres the video of michael bloomberg (mayor of nyc) from last night
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/th...hael-bloomberg

its under 8 minutes long and very relevant. in my opinion anyone who has been active in this thread should watch this.

I saw that it was pretty good, Bloomberg was even funny.

I think it can, but I respect your position and we can leave it like this. The NT doesn't teach you every single moral rule indeed. There have been many Early Church Fathers with Patristic writings. But to let those writings be valid, it has to be in accordance with the NT. If it's not, then it's not part of the Church.

I'm honest here: Christ talked in parables. Christ talked in direct commandments. You can have a literalist interpretation of Christ commandments. But it becomes difficult to have a literal interpretation of parables. Yes I agree with you it's important looking at the context, cultural/historical. But when the Qur'an says it's ok to marry 4 wives, while the NT speaks of 1 man 1 woman, then there's something not in compliance. In that case, you can't just say, yes it was normal back then to have 4 wives. No, it was a command, it was allowed by Allah. When Christ speaks of the Samaritan woman. You can't take a literalist view. When Christ speaks of turn your other cheek, then it's a direct commandment, and you can take a literalist view and say that Christ appeared to be a pacifist.

I'm willing to do the research, but my moral system is built on the NT, which makes it easier to judge the Qur'an based on the objective moral standards of the NT. If the Qur'an allows something which is not allowed in the NT, I immediately view the Qur'an as being immoral. I do this, because the Qur'an claims to be a correction of the OT and the NT, which have been supposedly perverted. So when the NT speaks of 1 man 1 woman, and the Qur'an of 1 man and max 4 women, I have to make a decision. And I expect non-Christians and non-Muslims to do the same.

I don't agree with this view of Christianity progressing after the Enlightenment. My view is Christianity was most perfectly interpreted by Jesus Christ, the Apostles and the Early Church Fathers. Any behaviour after these most true Christians that is not in compliance with the behaviour of these people means the interpretation of Christianity is weakening/diminishing.

I would LOVE to have Muslims making a moderate Islam and saying that the violent verses where only meant for people 1300 years ago. And that self defence is only possible in very exceptional cases. But when I analyse the behaviour of the early Muslims that conquered big areas with force (not self defence IMHO), and are IMHO the closest to true Islam, which makes me worrying for our peace now.

What's wrong with having 4 women, Islam knows how to partaaay

No but seriously, could this really be a Christian who praises Christianity and condemns other religions? OH MY GOD THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE