Muslim/Christianity
- Thread starter Red Devil
- Start date
Jews didn't worship Jesus either, and yet Mohammed mass murdered them. Religions can't stand competition.
Having been a practitioner of both religions at different times, before realizing that religion is a tool used to control people and that there is no god, I can tell you that the true history of what happened in regards to the battles between Mohammed and the Jews isn't really known. You have to consider the source when you are reading historical accounts of what happened as well as the perspectives of those involved. Perceptions and Reality are rarely reconciled in regards to issues of human conflict.
EDIT: History reflects the views of the victorious, for the most part. As we all know there are two sides to every story. The holocaust however, which was a very public atrocity, known the whole world over, with survivors existing right up until very recently, makes anyone squeemish to even remotely criticize them. It is simply unpopular to see them as anything but victims. Had the holocaust never happened I am sure people would be more willing to consider the possibility of the Jews being the antagonist in the battles with early Muslims. The Christians of the time defended the Muslim's rights to exist and protected them from the Jews. But maybe that was not out of concern for the issues that were taking place. Maybe they helped the Muslims out of anger over the perceived Murder of Christ. Either way, the Jewish state, as a political entity, now gets away with murder because no one will openly criticize their actions for fear of being called anti-Semitic.
EDIT: History reflects the views of the victorious, for the most part. As we all know there are two sides to every story. The holocaust however, which was a very public atrocity, known the whole world over, with survivors existing right up until very recently, makes anyone squeemish to even remotely criticize them. It is simply unpopular to see them as anything but victims. Had the holocaust never happened I am sure people would be more willing to consider the possibility of the Jews being the antagonist in the battles with early Muslims. The Christians of the time defended the Muslim's rights to exist and protected them from the Jews. But maybe that was not out of concern for the issues that were taking place. Maybe they helped the Muslims out of anger over the perceived Murder of Christ. Either way, the Jewish state, as a political entity, now gets away with murder because no one will openly criticize their actions for fear of being called anti-Semitic.
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This is a canard. Israel gets openly criticized at least as much as any other country, the world over. And I have seen very few examples of such critics being called anti-semites without that accusation having merit.
Muslims killed the Jews for being Jewish for not converting to Islam. He was quite proud of this. The problem is that the founder of Islam was basically a warlord and a pirate, so the religion he created is likewise violent and arrogant.
I mistakenly stated it as a fact. I should have added, IMO. My apologies.
In social circles that I have either participated in directly, or in over hearing conversations, I have witnessed more often than not, that if anyone says the State of Israel is in any way at fault in the conflict with Palestine, accusations of antisemitism begin to fly. It is possible I have only been around fundies on either side of the equation.
Whether or not you perceive the accusations to have merit is determined by your personal perspective and possible bias. It has nothing to do with whether or not their accusations actually hold merit.
I am not saying specifically that your claim isn't true, because I never met the guy and don't know plus I wasn't there, Islamic teaching however does not report that as the reason at all. It claims self defense. We can only take the word of those who wrote history to determine what really happened. And we know how biased people can be when reporting events.
I don't think one can honestly say they know for a fact what really happened back then.
I have to ask, have you actually studied Islam from a non-biased point of view? Have you ever read the Qur'an setting aside your preconceived notions of what you think it teaches?
Bias .... we all have it.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
Take JC out of the equation, and that dove and what are we left with - two religions that worship the same god, so I have to ask - whats the bloody problem?
Neither of them are close to the truth so it seems.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Islam differs from Christianity in being a return to an older-style Semitic religious legalism. Except in Islam, the legalism isn't intended for the Jewish people alone, designed to preserve their ritual purity and to set Jews apart from others as God's priestly nation.
In Islam, the legalism is supposed to be for everyone, a divinely-revealed and in its fundamentals unchangeable social order that's supposed to be extended to the entire human race.
I guess that the Jews and Christians, the "people's of the book", recipients of earlier prophetic revelations from the same God, can be allowed to worship that God in their own way within the Islamic social order. But only so long as Muslims have authority over them. Religions like Hinduism or Buddhism are less lucky, not being worshippers of the same God. So in theory, the only option members of these other religions are given is conversion to Islam or death.
Of course in real life, that isn't always going to be practical. So when the Muslims conquered India, the Hindus were generally treated as dhimmis, as if they were people of the book under Islamic rule, even though they technically weren't recipients of what the Muslims accepted as earlier prophetic revelation.
That was a big point of controversy in medieval Indiam Islam, with religious legal scholars periodically calling for the conversion-or-death ultimatum to be aggressively enforced against the heathen idolators. And that history in turn explains some of the religio-political peculiarities of present-day Pakistan.
I'm not sure that specifically religious history is the only explanation for why Christianity and Islam don't get along though. A lot of it is a lot more secular.
Both the Modern West (the civilization that Medieval Christendom has evolved into) and the Islamic world are very proud. They both see themselves as great and superior civilizations with a clear mission to expand their values and worldviews around the planet.
Islam was shaped by its amazing victories in its early years of expansion, when it defeated the Byzantines and seized most of their territory, and when they totally conquered the Persian Sassanids. Within a single lifetime, Islam emerged from the Arabian tribes and stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of China.
And that historically unprecedented success seemed to only be explainable by God's favor. It was proof to the Arabs that Mohammed was indeed a true divinely commissioned prophet.
And during the early Middle Ages, the Islamic world never slumped into as dark a "dark age" as most of Europe did. The Muslims had conquered two long-established empires and possessed an urban civilization with a money-economy from the very beginning. So the Muslims got in the habit of looking at the Christians as cultural and economic inferiors.
And once the Muslims were in that mindset, they retained it, even as the Christian High Middle Ages matched and then surpassed Islamic achievements. Even into early Modern times, the success of the Ottoman Turks, the Persian Safavids, and the Indian Moghuls, along with the rapid expansion of Islam in Indonesia, permitted the Muslims to concentrate on their own culture and achievements, while ignoring the increasingly annoying commercial developments and worldwide exploration coming out of the European fringe.
So they didn't pay much attention to the Scientific Revolution either. It was only the military superiority resulting from the Industrial Revolution that finally allowed the Europeans to overthrow most of the fading decadent and internally-divided Muslim powers and plant their own colonial rule atop them. The Muslims suddenly found themselves in what to them was the unnatural state of being the Europeans' colonial and cultural dhimmis. And that sudden failure came as a total existential shock to Islam.
Today's Islamic ferment is a reaction to that. Muslims are thrashing around for an explanation and a prescription that will right things and return them to the order that God intended. (Muslims on top.)
It's ironic that what Muslims typically think of as Islamic "modernism", is what we in the West label "Islamic fundamentalism". It's something like a belated Protestant Reformation, an attempt to sweep aside centuries of what many Muslims perceive as corrupt and decadent (and secular) traditions, so as to return to what they piously but probably unhistorically imagine to be the moral purity of the earliest Muslim community, loyal and obedient to God. And to that rightly-guided community's divinely-ordained worldly success.
I believe this reaction is historically disfunctional. It steers the new and more religiously militant Islam onto a head-on collision course with secular Global Modernity, both in the original Western version and the newer Confucian-inspired Asian version.
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Fascinating replies and all very informative. The warlord/pirate islamic founder is interesting. Surely a religion actually based on violence is the opposite of the meaning of religion. I was talking about this with a pakistani originated english person, a muslim.
He told me that Islam is about peace and co-existence. He said that the people who use violence have been told time and time again by the people - we do not want you or your violence - go away. But these terrorists are on to a good thing, they get funded and supplied with weapons and are paid to have 'fun' in the name of religion. So they wont go away.
Mybe its now down to governments to actually do something their own people want??
He told me that Islam is about peace and co-existence. He said that the people who use violence have been told time and time again by the people - we do not want you or your violence - go away. But these terrorists are on to a good thing, they get funded and supplied with weapons and are paid to have 'fun' in the name of religion. So they wont go away.
Mybe its now down to governments to actually do something their own people want??
Islam does talk about peace, and most of it's believers are peaceful, but there is justification there for religious war, and it's not hard to fit that into a modern context. There is a strange cultural tendency to assume that anything associated with religion is basically peaceful or neutral, and only extremists distort the message, but I claim that anything can be integral to a religion, even violence, certainly sacrifice, especially self-sacrifice.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
If there is another "holy crusade" I will stand between both armies and stand up to both of them and say both sides blasphemy the name of God with their lies, and hatred towards their brothers for their false beliefs when they too believe in something false.
Largely true.
It is of some importance to trace the movements of Paul the apostle after the death of Jesus as well, for context.
I'm often given to wonder if it is of any real significance that the man most credited with the spread of Abrahamic religion in the middle east was one who... to put it gently... appeared to have a somewhat less than charitable attitude toward women.
Just throwing it out there.
No, you won't. you'll stand on the sidelines, shaking your head sadly and going "tch tch" until someone with a little more fanaticism than you have relieves you of the burden that is attempting to keep your head upright on your shoulders.
This tendency you recognize is, I believe, the result of political correctness in our culture.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
Bells
Staff member
Now now Cherie..
They did change, especially with the implementation of the New Testament. They are now a peaceful and loving group, desiring only to spread the word of Jesus and love.
So they just concern themselves with the thought of putting homosexuals to death and others deny women the right to proper reproductive health care.
But realities aside, all Abrahamic religions had and continue to have less than charitable views towards women. One has to wonder if they haven't gotten past legends of Lilith and the corruption of Eve yet..