If YOUR religion lead the world (by far) in terrorism, would you work to improve it?

Humans don't behave as directed by their religion, so one can't argue with that!!

But, there are those who are respected as having a deep understanding of the meaning of these writings.

The Shia branch has the pope-like Ayatollahs.

Sunnis do not have a hierarchy like that. But, there are centers of religious study that are seen as the repository of understanding of what it means to be a Muslim and what the early documents should be interpreted to mean.

These experts from both branches see ISIS as a bunch of criminals and heretics. They most certainly do not teach the ISIS ideas.

 

Well, a state of a few city blocks.

 

Some do. They are called fundamentalist. They follow a strict, literal interpretation of their doctrine.

You mean interpreted to mean OTHER THAN a strict literal interpretation as followed by the Islamic fundamentalist.

 

And properties all over the world.

 

"My kingdom is not of this world" "render unto Caesar, that which is Caesars"

Ephesians 2
15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.

Hebrews 8
13 By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

Romans 10
4 Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.(*)

Romans 7
6But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

2 Corinthians 3
13We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. 14But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.

Galatians 3 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."

23Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. 24So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. 25Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

Sounds like Christianity is divorced from such matters of governance. Christianity is about the individuals relationship to god and his fellow man. The admission price to heaven, Christian doctrine simply doesn't have any dictates as to form of government or law to be applied.
Thomas Paine in his Pamphlet "Common sense" used the text of the bible to demonstrate the illegitimacy of the divine rule of monarchs and the legitimacy of government of by and for the people.

 

I don't see anything that suggests that these ideas of yours are correct.

ISIS being heretical doesn't give other Muslim majority nations any more right to conduct war operations in Syria or Iraq.

ISIS is probably interesting because it is a response to the chaos and dysfunction that can be found in so many places. Even here in the US we have people who are ready to vote without concern for policy - merely on the grounds that a new individual would offer a new opportunity. It's a message that can be seen as attractive to those who are disenfranchised, who see no future within the current framework, etc.

If these people were actually interested in Islam, they would study Islam - not the ISIS apostasy. Islam is FAR more available than is ISIS.

 

That's what they TRY to follow - just like other people who try to follow less rigid doctrine. We're all humans.

Well, now you are asking me whether Muslim scholars of Islam see their interpretations as "strict" or "literal". I would have to ask THEM that question.

But, I can tell you that their interpretations of the religion are substantially different to the ISIS interpretation.

That's something we can all detect and it is something that Islamic scholars state clearly, loudly and repeatedly all across the world.

 

Paine was a revolutionary thinker. Christianity had not agreed with him.

In fact, the American colonies showed strong integration of government and religion, with government tax in some colonies going directly to the dominate church, with even more colonies highly oriented to a single religion. Those who came here weren't looking for freedom of religion - they were looking for freedom of THEIR religion.

You gave us a scatter shot of passages that would require context and argument to determine whether they even applied to the topic at hand here.

The "render to Caesar" line itself has multiple interpretations. Without going into that, let's notice that they were living under pagan law and Jesus proposed how the minority could survive under that regime.

There WAS Jewish law at the time. Jesus didn't complain about that.

 

Those centers of learning teach that Sharia should prevail throughout the world.

https://youtu.be/kJk_AiK-4No

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No, it's not. It really isn't. There were no "Dark Ages" in the Byzantine Empire, which carefully preserved the ancient Greek texts, and then taught them to the Arabs. The original contributions by Arabs were minimal. The Italians learned Greek, not Arabic, when they engaged in the Renaissance, and soon far outstripped the modest Islamic contributions.

I could carefully document all these facts, but you won't pay attention, so I won't bother.

Are you a Bahai by any chance. I understand they have a religious obligation to tout Islam as a worthwhile.

 

Yeah, he was probably an atheist, and still, he could use the text of the bible to demonstrate the illegitimacy of the divine rule of monarchs and the legitimacy of government of, by and for the people

Because his teachings didn't even concern themselves with the form of government and the law to be applied.

 

That's because ISIS teachings aren't heretical. If they were, other Muslim nations would have religious justification. First action of the first caliphate after Muhammads death was to wage the wars of apostasy against fellow muslims who stopped paying tribute to Mecca after Muhammad died. Branded apostates simply because they refused to pay. ISIS is emulating the first Caliphate. First of four the Sunnis consider to be the only "Rightly Guided" Caliphs. Within 80 years of Muhammads death they were waging violent Jihad in Spain to the west and Afghanistan to the east.

 

Properties that are not a part of their state.

 

They are assets of their state.

 

When Muslims leaders call ISIS heretics should we believe them or you?
http://ijr.com/2014/09/173312-briti...-isis-heretics-muslims-religious-duty-oppose/

 

Yes, properties are assets. Did you have a point or just a fondness for the obvious.

 

I pointed to they are a state, with subrogates all over the world. A very powerful one. In an attempt to counter your augment that Christians do not control governments.

 

Allah is just another name for Yaweh. Yaweh has let a lot of (*)(*)(*)(*) happen.



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For every one like him, there are a dozen that believe otherwise. He was branded a heretic for believing in evolution by scholars from Riyadh.

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I never claimed Christians don't control government

 

Cute!! You use an assumption that I won't read as an excuse for failing to document anything!

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Yes. He was fine with religion and government being united.

 

You claimed separation of church and state was part of their doctrine and they cast if off when they learned how to read. England still has a Queen, Christians are behind nearly every aspect of the western world. It just not discussed, we accept it as a fact of life.

 

I await your evidence. I see claims....no evidence

 

Look at it this way. The Islamic Golden Age lasted from the 6th to the 13th centuries, over 600 years. In that time they made some minor discoveries, based on the Greek learning preserved in the Byzantine Empire.

The same Greek learning fled to Europe after the sack of Constantinople in the 15th C. In about 600 years that learning was parlayed into putting a man on the moon.

Why the amazing paucity of the Islamic Golden Age compared with the West?

 

- Religious differences do not form a justification for war.

- There is stuff in the Bible that Christians see as criminal today, too.

- It's easy to find cases of criminal behavior connected with religion between then and now. Suggesting those events define the religion is too much of a stretch, especially when they occurred long ago.

 

What religious teachings or doctrines were/are the KKK and IRA citing as motivation or justification for their actions?

 

and there's a reason why the middle east was advancing ahead of the west during that era. Islam had never drawn a line between sacred and profane knowledge. During the dark ages the church actively discouraged secular studies. The middle east became advanced in mathematics and astronomy, they adapted a superior numeral system which originated in India (that we now use today) with a reoccurring "0" every ten numbers (it is believed they chose this frequency because there are ten fingers on the human hands). You can imagine doing long division or algebra with Roman numerals.. it would feel damn near impossible

When we talk about the revival of western intellect, we think of great thinkers like Galileo, who received heavy scrutiny from the church for daring to say the earth was not the center of the universe, and that the earth revolved around the sun. Galileo was sentenced and imprisoned for heresy over a scientific discovery that the Arabs had discovered centuries before Galileo was born. To this day, 2/3rds of all known stars have Arabic names because of the advances in astronomy made during the Arab golden age.

Fast forward to today, and it's a completely different atmosphere. It is now the middle east who is living in a dark age

That's an interesting concept of the Christian scriptures, one that many Christians (including some who post on these forums) would not agree with. I'm definitely not going to say theirs is right and yours is wrong, the truth is Christians dispute the meaning of their scriptures all the time. The same is true within Islam, I'm definitely not going to say there aren't Muslims who would argue that there can be no separation of church and state, because there definitely are, but there are also plenty who do advocate for a separation, and some who even argue that their scriptures demand it

I'm going to provide you an example of an argument made by a Muslim that Islam demands a separation of church and state http://www.huffingtonpost.com/qasim...e-five-things-every-non-muslim_b_1068569.html

This isn't to say that his notion is definitively the correct interpretation of the Islamic scriptures, there are Muslims who would disagree with him. I am sharing the article with you just to give you perspective, because you seem to only be familiar with the notion that Islam demands a church and state coalition