An Alternative View on the Koran

[WMS]

Or in other words, a lot of stuff is ijma, not actually from the hadiths or Sunna. (I think I spelled the last part of that right...)

[WMS]

Or in other words, a lot of stuff is ijma, not actually from the hadiths or Sunna. (I think I spelled the last part of that right...)

Yes.  That is one problem associated with the Koran.  Some things, like Sharia ('Islamic Law') are based off of things that should be treated with extreme skepticism since anyone who had the slightest bit of influence could declare that Mohammad said something he didn't. 

Another problem with Sharia is that the Koran only deals with a handful of legal issues, everything else needs to be extrapolated (the veils are an example of this - Mohammad's wives wore veils, thus it should be law).

Another problem is interpretation.  Arabic has a lot of words that can have vastly different meanings depending on the translator's viewpoint.  Two completely qualified Koranic scholars can [and do] interpret passages to have completely opposite meanings. 

Nice points. And the interpretation issue is true for Hebrew as well, which makes some passages in the Bible ever so interesting...

[WMS]

As much as I hate to give States' ammunition on this topic ( )...religiously, Muslims are not supposed to enslave other Muslims - or other 'People of the Book' (i.e., Christians and Jews), I think. Historically, that was violated very early on in the Caliphate. There is a ton of hypocrisy in the history of Muslim regimes...

...as there was in the history of the regimes of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. Political power does tend to corrupt religious faith, of all kinds.

The point I was agreeing with was that, even by the standards of the Koran itself, the Islamic world has failed to live up to those standards, on a massive scale. They are very, very, far from where they should be...although it would be nice if they would stop blaming 'the West' for their own failings.