Originally posted by Omega Vision
I've only read a few books from the Quran (and in English), but from what I read, there's nothing in the book that's admirable or useful.I don't dislike Muslims, nor would I take their religion from them (so long as they leave other people alone), but whenever I hear a secular person claiming that they "admire" or "respect" the Quran I know that they've either never read a single word of it or they're being disingenuous for the sake of political correctness.
The Bible isn't great either, but at least with the Bible you can remove only a small portion of the scripture (looking at you, Leviticus) and get a book that's more or less a good guide to living.
I think it comes down to who the Jews historically were vs. who the Arabs were. Jews were violent, xenophobic, but ethical (at least within their own tribes) people, while Arabs were violent, xenophobic bandits.
Spot on.
Here's the problem: Bible has SOME redeeming qualities. Christianity especially does, and that redeeming quality is Jesus. The founder of Christianity, regardless how extremist look at him, had redeeming qualities in what he preached. Technically, majority of Jesus's teachings were good, hippyish, very ''turn the other cheek'', ''judge not lest ye be judged'' (or something like that), ''don't stone that prostitute!'' ''love each other and those who aren't like you''
This is the reason why Western world was eventually able to escape the dark ages practices.
What people don't know or are unaware about Islam is that the founder of Islam (if he ever existed) had no redeeming qualities. He was a warrior, he pillaged, killed, raped, maimed and obliterated entire tribes of Arabia who refused to join him. He ordered a killing of Asma bint Marwan, a poetess who protested Muhammad's slaughter of a 70 year old man through a poem, by having her killed while she was feeding her child.
This is documented by Muslims, not by kufr. Muslims say this about their own prophet.
Muhammad is, in Islamic tradition, considered al-insan al kamil, which means ''a human who is perfect'', meaning everything Muhammad did was right, for one reason or another. This implies that his practices were not outdated and claiming such is denying Islam.
Qur'an is claimed to be direct, unchanged word of Allah. Unlike Bible which, majority Christians agree, was inspired by God but written by men, Qur'an has a totally different stance in Islam. It was not inspired by Allah, it IS Allah, therefore nothing of the Qur'an can be ignored, changed or interpreted.
Any Muslim who says ''this is open to interpretation'' is an ignoramus and if they say to me it's open to interpretation, I remind them that by saying Qur'an can be interpreted, they're contradicting 12 verses of the Qur'an which claim absolute clarity of the book.
Those who are familiar with the abrogation in the Qur'an know that all the good verses, mainly the the Meccan ones, were later abrogated, majority by the Sura 9 (or the Verse of the Sword as it's known). It is the most violent of the Suras and it is the only one that does not start with 'bismillahir rahmanir raheem' because that sura does not contain any mercy, indeed.