Brian Ross wrote on Feb 15
th, 2018 at 12:26am:
Auggie wrote on Feb 14
th, 2018 at 11:01pm:
Brian, the actions of the founders of each religious tradition necessarily inform the practices of its adherents. Sure, Islam is more than Muhammad as Christianity is more than Christ but both religious traditions teach to follow the example of Muhammad and Christ.
Surely, you recognise that Jesus was undoubtedly more pacifistic than Muhammad in his actions.
Muhammad was a spiritual and military leader who established a state on earth. Jesus’ state and overlordship was in heaven and spirit.
Oh, deari, Augie. Doesn't matter how pacifist the founder is, it is how his message is "reinterpreted" that matters. Christianity was and still remains an extremely violent religion. So is Islam. Mohammed was trying to assert his will against an unwilling populace.
Christianity since Christ was doing the same. In the end, both ended up converting peoples en mass by the sword. Should we only be criticising Islam and allow Christianity a free pass on the topic? I don't believe so. What about you, Augie?
By "doing the same" do you mean Muhammad was teaching people to rape and pillage while Jesus was teaching forgiveness? You have some very strange ideas of what it means to do the same thing.
Also, are you actually arguing that how pacifist the founder of a religion is, or how pacifist his teachings are, has no bearing at all on how people interpret those teachings? Or are you just pretending to be an idiot?
"In the end" what happened is that Christian Europe lead the current global transition towards freedom and democracy, while Muslim societies remained forever backwards to this day, to the extent that even the countries you and Gandalf hold up as progressive Muslim nations are doing aweful things like legislating the death penalty for apostasy. Islam destroyed most of western civilisation, turning the most advanced societies on earth into the most backwards.