Is Islam really a peaceful religion?

[ingemann]

The idea that a "good Muslim" need to be a cartoonish evil sociopath and peaceful Muslims are just Muslims who doesn't follow their religion, are really not helpful or very insightful into what Islam is.

Of course at the same time people who begin to bleat about the wonders of Moorish Spain are a f**king joke. Moorish Spain was a dysfunctional disaster who depopulated much of Spain (with much of the population fleeing to the North) and was unable to set up a viable state. The reconquista may not have been nice, but it was no worse than the conquest of Iberia by the Moors.

As for Islam as the Faith of Peace(tm), it's a talking point and no more, Bush decided to use it to avoid unnecessary violence in USA against American Muslim, and that was a good thing, but you need to be blind, deaf and functional retarded to not have discovered 15 years after 9/11, that Muslims and Islamism are overrepresented in the world's conflicts, in fact they're more or less in conflict all places where they interact with non-Muslims...

...Well people, if you meet a asshole once a day, you have meet a asshole that day, if you meet ten asshole everyday, it's you who is the asshole. And it seems that Muslims keep being neighbours to people who don't like them, at some point that begin to say more about them than their neighbours.

[ingemann]

The idea that a "good Muslim" need to be a cartoonish evil sociopath and peaceful Muslims are just Muslims who doesn't follow their religion, are really not helpful or very insightful into what Islam is.

Of course at the same time people who begin to bleat about the wonders of Moorish Spain are a f**king joke. Moorish Spain was a dysfunctional disaster who depopulated much of Spain (with much of the population fleeing to the North) and was unable to set up a viable state. The reconquista may not have been nice, but it was no worse than the conquest of Iberia by the Moors.

As for Islam as the Faith of Peace(tm), it's a talking point and no more, Bush decided to use it to avoid unnecessary violence in USA against American Muslim, and that was a good thing, but you need to be blind, deaf and functional retarded to not have discovered 15 years after 9/11, that Muslims and Islamism are overrepresented in the world's conflicts, in fact they're more or less in conflict all places where they interact with non-Muslims...

...Well people, if you meet a asshole once a day, you have meet a asshole that day, if you meet ten asshole everyday, it's you who is the asshole. And it seems that Muslims keep being neighbours to people who don't like them, at some point that begin to say more about them than their neighbours.

It depends on what period of Moorish Spain you're talking about; there were periods of genuine toleration, and other periods of persecution and chaos. It depends on what family was in power in Al-Andalus. Same with the Ottomans, though regarding the Sultan and his Vizier rather than different families.

..And that's exactly the problem, you compare short periods of tolerance in Moorish Spain, which was followed with periodes of greater Islamic intolerance with Habsburg Spain at its very worst. There was also long periodes of Spanish tolerance toward Jews and Muslims, which was why their expellions happened so late.

Moorish Spain as some kind tolerant paradise are late 19th century propaganda, where the "savage" (the Moor) are hold up as a picture of greater virtues than the "knight" (the reconquistadors) as a way to sell a message of Europeans should be nice to religious minorities. They could sell that message because the Iberian moor no longer existed as a counter image and Europeans north of Pyrenees barely knew anything about Spanish history and barely saw the Iberians as Europeans.

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Indonesia not Malaysia and while I don't think they horrible, their history in East Timor and eastern Indonesia are not a positive history.

[ingemann]

My opinion as a muslim: No, no religion is entirely peacefully. However, Islam needs an age of enlightenment. Christianity went through that already, and as a result, became less violent. Just think of all the religious wars in Europe in earlier centuries. They now learned that their lesson.

I had mostly decided to leave this debate, but you bring some interesting points up. But I think it's more important to look at the difference in historical context

One elements I have thought much about are the different ways most Christians and Muslims see warfare. The Christian perspective of warfare are not only now but also historical much more secular in justification, while Muslims more often justify it more with religion. Some of this are the experience with holy war. When Christians think about holy war, they mostly think about the Crusades (even if there was other), while Muslims mostly think about the early expansion of Islam. The Crusades was ultimative a complete failure, the early expansion of Islam on the other hand was a great success. This ultimative give a quite different perspective. It doesn't help that the most successfull conflicts for Muslims with the non-Muslim world have to large extent been lead by Islamist organisation, while secular Muslim states have been humiliated in most conflicts wit the west. Sadly this mean that what the Arab world need are the humiliation on the battlefield of ISIS and AQ. These organisations need to lose face, just as Arab nationalism lost face with their conflicts with Israel and the West.

It doesn't help that when Muslims look at the Arab World today, the Gulf Sheiks are rich and powerful, while the secular Arab states do quite poorly. While this is because of the formers oil, it still create a image of the Gulf States being rewarded for staying true to Islam.

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I think it's more complex than that, Muslims in these years are adopting a less regional version of Islam, but that's not necessary positive because Saudi Arabia have in many way affected the new international Islam which are growing. Young Muslim women in the west are more likely than their parent to wear hijab as example.

Also when we look at the Muslim groups in the west, compared to how many they are, the number of young men who takes to Syria to fight their number are incredible. As are the people with extremist opinions. But yes they're a minority, but they're a significant minority (in Denmark as example likely around 10-15% of Danish Muslims are salafists or worse).

[ingemann]

Why MUST the issue of violence in Islam be discussed from a sociological point of view? Why can't it be discussed from a doctrinal point of view?

Because you're uncomfortable with the answer when it's done that way, that's the only reason.

The problem is that Islamic violence do make the most sense sociological. If we take Judaism and Zoroastrianism both have a theology which lend itself to the same kind of violence as Islam does. But in newer history neither group lack the tradition for religious violence Islam.

This is because of the structures both groups have lived under, if the Jews of Poland-Lithuania had behaved in the same manners as modern Muslim behave today, I doubt there would have been any Jews left in 1939 for the Germans to commit genocide on.

Religious violence is not only based on doctrine it's everybit as much based history and power.

Warning what I say below are not a suggestions or policies I support

If western began to kill every domestic terrorist's family and members of his mosque, we would soon no longer see domestic Islamic terrorists.

If we had build pyramids of skulls in Afghanistan and in general decimated the population, the violence there would likely also be over by now.

It was how Jews and Zoroatist became as peaceful as they are now, everytime they raised their heads, some one beat it back down into the ground.