Read the damned book
There’s a discussion ongoing at the Munchkin Wrangler (Welcome to the blogroll, incidentally, sorry it’s taken so long) about the Koran and the Bible.
The discussion begins with the koran-burning minister in Florida. I haven’t got a dog in that fight, but I know from the experience of my friends that this is not such a good idea.
And therin likes the crux of the problem.
It is so often repeated- and is done so by Marko in the thread- that it is possible to cherry pick nastiness from the bible AND the Koran. Well, this is bullshit. You can spend some hours flipping through the bible, but you only have to open the Koran to any page to find the xenophobia.
If you’re going to make pronouncements about the contents of the Bible and the Koran, you should have taken the time to read them first. Once you do, your thoughts on them will parallel mine pretty accurately, if you are not insane.
Pleased to see you follow through on that discussion @ Marko’s.
Thanks for asserting what I’m too lazy/uneducated to write.
Countless folks are overly caught up in their quest for unfettered libertarianism to see past their ideology, to see the truth of the matter.
Good on ya…
Another big difference between the Bible and the Koran — or at least the peoples who venerate them — is that Jews and Christians aren’t known for getting their terrorist on and truck-bombing civilian targets and flying planeloads of hostages into buildings.
Oh, or for treating their women like shit, either.
The point I was going to make in the above but failed to do so was that, although there is some pretty down and dirty stuff in the Old Testament — fratricide, drunkenness, whoring, rape, genocide (think Amalek), slavery, theft, betrayal, and all sorts of other fun stuff — Christians and Jews treat that as history, some of it lamentable, and certainly not a guide to living one’s life in the modern world. We don’t apologize for it but we don’t embrace it, either.
Muslims, on the other hand, by and large look at the Koran as a guide to daily living, including all the nasty stuff. Which in my view makes them damn poor neighbors — worse even than Mexicans who don’t cut their grass and play their stereos cranked up to 11 at all hours.
This is not to say that I am not acquainted with some peaceful Muslims, but the only way I can figure they can be Muslims and run in the same crowds I run in is that they a) must do massive mental gymnastics to explain away the 95% of the Koran that is xenophobic and genocidal, and b) must not have been born Muslims and indoctrinated with that crap from the cradle.
Check out this video – the early “peaceful” parts of the Koran are explicitly overruled by the later, bloodthirsty parts…
http://beloitballistics.blogspot.com/2010/09/things-you-didnt-know-about-islam.html
It’s not even that, Nathan. People seem to want to draw a moral parallel between people whose prime prophet said, “This shall be the whole of the law…” Love God and your neighbor unreservedly, and they went ahead and killed and looted and raped anyway, and people whose prime prophet said, “Kill, rape, and loot and force people to worship your God because your God commands it of you.” and they went on and followed the instructions.
And they wonder that people who get the distinction call them moral lackwits.
M
See, Mark’s point is why I don’t have any respect for “the religion of peace”. It’s not; any time your religion commands that you kill people because your god demands it of you, that’s a death cult.
The Bible contains Jewish law, which is full of capital crimes; but Jewish law is not the word of God.
Muslims believe that the Koran IS the word of God, all of it.
“If you’re going to make pronouncements about the contents of the Bible and the Koran, you should have taken the time to read them first. Once you do, your thoughts on them will parallel mine pretty accurately, if you are not insane.”
One of the best quotes I have ever seen on the subject! Kudos Og!
“The Bible contains Jewish law, which is full of capital crimes; but Jewish law is not the word of God.”
Ed, I know Jews who would argue the point.