Is Islam really a peaceful religion?

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You can't only include passages from the New Testament for Christians when medieval bishops and rulers often used the Old Testament to justify their violent acts.

Both Islam and Christianity has had violent histories. And they've also had peaceful bits of those same histories. Even Buddhism has had conquerors and murderers. All religions (and those professing no religion) have had violent actions.

Heck, the New Testament has violent descriptors as well, in describing what will happen to sinners at Judgment Day.

While I agree with you to an extent, the central figures of Islam and Christianity have very different teachings with respect to the treatment of outsiders. Yes, we can all point to more than enough examples of atrocities having been committed by those of a particular religious persuasion, whatever that persuasion might be. But scripturally, Christians rely primarily on the Gospels, the book of Acts, and the letters of Paul as their foundational writings, just as Muslims rely on the Qur'an as their foundational writings. I think most people understand that what Jesus said/did and what Muhammad said/did is central to the teachings of Christianity and Islam, respectively.

So with this as a starting point, my question is quite simple: is Islam really a peaceful religion, given the quotes I cited in the first post, and can anyone show me quotes similar in nature that come from the central writings of Christianity, which again is the text of the New Testament?

Do you have any familiarity with the Bible at all? Why do you have to ask other people this question if you do?

Besides which, as has been noted, you're being unnecessarily restrictive to dictate that we stick only to the New Testament, as though the Old doesn't count. After all, Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Claiming that we should disregard all the violence of the Old Testament is pretty nonsensical, especially considering that many evangelical Christians today are using it to advocate for discrimination against (up to and including outright lethal violence toward) gay people.

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Why don't you seek out the opinions of moderate Muslims and try to understand how they reconcile what you see as troublesome verses, rather then try to dictate to them what is true about their own faith?

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You're not understanding my point with the Old Testament. Medieval Christians used that almost as much as they used the New Testament. In fact, if Wikipedia can be trusted, a few medieval chroniclers (some of whom were priests) equated the Muslims with the Amalekites (an Old Testament Caananite group), and advocated the destruction of Muslims in a similar fashion.

And you're not understanding my other point, that the scripture itself matters less than the actions taken by officially "Christian" or "Muslim" societies at given points in history. There have been Muslim regimes that were happily tolerant towards their own subjects, and there have been Christian regimes that were barbaric and zealous. Clearly, either set of scriptures were either ignored or used in support of those regime's policies. And yes, the Islamic regimes that were tolerant could have ignored some of the Quran. That's what most governments do. Or do you really think Christian or Jewish governments always made eating shellfish illegal, for example? Or, as Paul in the New Testament advocates, keeping women from speaking in church?

And do you think Judaism is a violent religion? After all, the Old Testament is quite violent. Or does the historical context outweigh the implementation of the scripture?

Yes, historical context surely matters, and actions taken within societal structures matter. I get your point, and I agree with it, at least up to the point where it leads to the conclusion that "each religion has violent extremists, generic fundamentalists, New Age types, Christmas and Easter types, and more. The specific religion doesn't matter nearly as much as people pretend it does."

Because there's a critical difference: those Christians who love their Muslim neighbors and promote peace are acting in accordance with their scriptures, and those Muslims who love their Christian neighbors and promote peace are acting in opposition to their scriptures. Or at least that's how it appears to me. And the real problem with Islam is that Muslims who question any aspect of their faith run the risk of being labeled an apostate, which in many portions of the Muslim world is still considered a crime, a sin, and an act of treason punishable by death.

Why don't you ask a moderate Muslim about their views on their faith rather than dictating it to them?

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Why don't you ask a moderate Muslim about their views on their faith rather than dictating it to them?

Okay, how about we ask this young lady?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXGE2eBUdlQ

She's a Christian. I'm talking about a practicing moderate Muslim, not a Christian anti-Muslim activist.

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And Malaysia, the world's most populous majority Muslim nation, seems to get along with it's neighbors fairly well.

That doesn't really disprove his point that nearly all conflicts on Earth going on right now involve Muslims on one or both sides.  Yes, you can point to a couple that don't and yeah, you can point to a couple of non-Muslim groups currently doing something horrible.  But for the most part, if you pick any random current conflict, you can safely bet that Muslims will be involved.  I don't think that's a coincidence, you're welcome to try and prove otherwise.

good luck!

Perhaps they include Muslims, but are they centered around Islam? That's the key here. Not every conflict that includes Christians is a Christian conflict, after all.

For example, the Somali Civil War and the Kurdish-Turkish conflict involves Muslims on both sides, but neither conflict involves Islam specifically. Somalia's mess involves a bunch of different tribal groups jockeying for power in the complete breakdown of the Somali government, while the Kurdish-Turkish conflict involves and ethnic conflict about autonomy and independence. The Syrian and Yemeni wars are a Muslim conflict because they specifically involve different groups of Muslims whose hatred of each other is partially based in their interpretation of Islam. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves a very prominent Muslim cause, so it could be considered a "Muslim-Jewish" conflict. But the Pakistan-Indian conflict over Kashmir is not a Muslim conflict because the fact that Pakistan is Muslim does not make it a religious war.

A point well made. I'd only add, to make it extra clear, that it's not at all apparent to me that the geopolitical factors fueling a lot of these conflicts would somehow not be present if the actors were predominantly some other religion.

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Why not ask a moderate Muslim about the faith he or she practices, rather than trusting that a conversation between a bunch of non-Muslims is going to decisively arrive at objective standards for who is and isn't a "real" Muslim? This is not the first or second time I've asked this question, and I'll guess it won't be the first or second time you've ignored it.

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Why not ask a moderate Muslim about the faith he or she practices, rather than trusting that a conversation between a bunch of non-Muslims is going to decisively arrive at objective standards for who is and isn't a "real" Muslim? This is not the first or second time I've asked this question, and I'll guess it won't be the first or second time you've ignored it.

Well, I was hoping to find some moderate Muslims amongst the Atlas members (or are you saying there aren't any?) But go ahead, ask the question a third or fourth time, maybe the answer will somehow come to you...

You certainly didn't address your question that way. There are Muslims on this board, though they're few and far between. Encourage their participation.

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At least one of them thinks its ok to murder any Israeli that lives beyond the '67 borders.  Is that moderate?

That doesn't deserve a response.

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A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

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A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

You think there's a hole in my reasoning? Where abouts?

You think I've moved the argument away from the original assertion? How so?

I think I've been pretty consistent, but I could be wrong...

As I've been saying from the outset, the idea that you can throw away the parts of the Bible you don't like for purposes of this discussion is specious reasoning. Many people have done violence in the name of Christianity throughout history, and they've cited scripture to do so. This isn't because Christianity is inherently violent, or that those people weren't true Christians, whatever that's supposed to mean. It's because there are multiple interpretations of religious texts. Yours is one. There are many that disagree with yours.

Let's take one example: the death penalty. Wouldn't a pretty literal reading of the New Testament argue against the idea that anybody ought to be using the death penalty? Yet substantial numbers of Christians in America support it. Does that mean they're not real Christians? No. It means that they've got a different view of things, and one I happen to disagree strongly with. But what it doesn't mean, certainly, is that I can wave their scripture in their face, tell them what it means, and then be satisfied that I've fully understood and encapsulated their religion for them.

Why do you think you can do the same for Muslims?

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A whole thread of "No True Scotsman." Awesome.

You think there's a hole in my reasoning? Where abouts?

You think I've moved the argument away from the original assertion? How so?

I think I've been pretty consistent, but I could be wrong...

As I've been saying from the outset, the idea that you can throw away the parts of the Bible you don't like for purposes of this discussion is specious reasoning.

Tell that to the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant churches, who all reject Biblical literalism.

Biblican literalism is not the cornerstone of Christianity. Koranic literalism IS the cornerstone of Islam though.

I said not one word about biblical literalism. I was merely saying that acting as though the Old Testament doesn't exist is faulty reasoning.

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Jesus said he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. You said, "Show me where there is violence in the Bible, but the Old Testament doesn't count!" A lot of those laws, not abolished, call explicitly for violence, and there are people who hew to Christianity who believe that we ought to exercise Old Testament interpretations to violations of those laws.

But let's even leave that aside. Leave Christianity aside. Let's just talk about the Jewish people. Are they irredeemably violent because their scripture is full of violence, and they don't get to claim it doesn't count?

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It's like you're on the verge of a breakthrough and just aren't willing to take the leap. What do you think has happened to make it less likely that Christians would do the horrible stuff that they absolutely could justify through reference to their scriptures?

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So close that you actually basically stated the answer, and then imposed your own biases over it and said they're more important.