The problem is that the words of Jesus have to be taken in context with the entire Bible - OT and NT. Christians seem to approach this in several ways:

- it's not meant literally, much of it is metaphor or historical and no longer applies today - it is all superceded by Jesus' summation of two commandments.
- much of it is still valid - homos are still abominations (while eating shellfish isn't); adultry deserves criminalization, the Ten Commandments apply, and the arguments that led to the "doctrine for a just war"

Examples of violence can be found here:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html

There are plenty of expressions supposedly attributed to Jesus that support the latter view if one chooses to do that. The big problem with the Bible is it's many contradictions which become apparent when one takes it literally.

That brings us to Islam. The Quran has many violent passages - reflecting both the culture of the time and the man who was it's prophet. However - side by side with the Bible - you will find that they are almost equal in violence and bloodshed. (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cr...ble_quran.html) The cultures that led to the Abrahamic faiths were pretty violent. The idea of a diety as a benign father figure is a relatively modern construct. Yet - despite that - the Quran and the Bible only 5.34 and 2.71 percent (respectively) of their total versus express violence. That's really not much.

That brings us to the next problem faced by people who argue irreconciable violence in a religion. Context. Context is important, of course, and many of these seeming cruelties disappear when read as such. However - would that stop an extremist (of any faith) from interpreting their holy book in such a manner as to concoct a religious justification for unspeakable horrors? Like Pope Urban II did, for example, when he preached the First Crusade in 1095? Or like many American preachers did when they used Leviticus to defend slavery? Or like modern Islamic extremists do to defend their interpretation of "jihad"?

So think for a moment...in the Quran 5.34% of the versus are violent. That's a minute amount in comparison to the whole. Likewise in the Bible 2.71%. This means that you must be working quite hard to cherry pick all those violent versus while simultaneiously ignoring the far vaster amount of non violent ones. I notice there are many anti-Islamic sites that apparently do that. Is there a double standard at play perhaps based on cultural attitudes?

The last thing - and the reason I bring up Christianity at all is that Christianity has a similar bloody, violent, war torn past. It doesn't matter what it's prophet said because in whatever he said was found the relgious justification for bloodshed, slavery, and discrimmination. What's important is that a large portion of Christians overcame it and turned towards a different, less literal interpretation of their holy book. This went hand in hand with a major religious reformation, with cultural secularization, democracy and overall prosperity. Hard times breed extremists and fundamentalists. Many of the Islamic countries are developing countries with repressive regimes and high rates of corruption. They are still based on a very feudal and tribal way of life and way of thinking (goat herder logic to use a phrase coined by another poster elsewhere). Some of those countries have jumped from this way of life to an affluent westernized way of life in less then 3 generations. That means there are people alive who remember what it was like before. That is hardly enough to affect a major cultural change or shift in the common person's attitude.

This brings us to the tenant of "free speech". We seem to think free speech should be valued highly everywhere and because it isn't in these Islamic countries to the same degree it is in ours - that the problem is the religion. Well, the bible has plenty of injunctions against blasphemy. There used to be laws in this country concerning it. We've moved beyond it in the secularization of our system of law. That does not mean that given time, these Islamic countries won't achieve the same.

That leads to my final point: all of your arguments seem to point towards a view that Muslims intepretations of Islam can not and will not change - despite the fact that Christians, with a similar legacy - did.


I am an agnostic - I adhere to no doctrine. I do not think I am the one with manipulative machinations here. I am not the one trying to make 5% of the Quran into 100%.

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I'm a leftwing fascist, disease spreading, devil worshipper!