Quote:This will be fun, see you and Zenda try to defend Mohammad as misunderstood. :) Wait until we go over some of the horrific slaughter of innocents.First, you seem pretty willing to blur culture and religion now that we're talking about Mohammed, going back fifteen centuries and halfway around the world. But you're pretty touchy about it when it comes to Christians in Haiti. Either cultural context is important, or it isn't. But you can't go excusing one group for it, then blaming another. Inter-tribal violence, genocide, marriage (especially of women) at a young age, slavery, these were all parts of life back when, and it really wasn't much better in the Christian world at the time, if at all.
Second, have you read the bible recently? Deuteronomy 25:11-12 is a personal favourite (thanks, Adam Thrasher!).
Quote:11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.But that's just the start. This God is a merciful God! Want genocide and slaughter of innocents? You got it! Deut. 20:10-15.
Quote:10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.Other examples abound, of course. Good thing Jesus was a little calmer, because his dad seems kind of psycho. Moses also seems a little off in the head, by modern standards.
None of this is to show that I think Christianity, or Islam, has been well-understood, or misunderstood, or whatever. It all seems like ancient mythology to me. But the point is - it all reads like that. Even Jesus says and does some pretty freaky stuff - don't even get me started on the Apostles.
All religions spend their days selectively reading their holy texts, picking out and interpreting what seems convenient, and ignoring the bits nobody wants to hear about.
-Jester
Afterthought: As for scholarship, does the Hadith support your viewpoint? Or just throwing it out there? I still haven't seen the scholars or scholarship that reinforces what you're saying. (To me, it seems like projecting our biases - what is "genuine" prophecy? Is there a test for it? I don't believe in prophecy, so it all seems "contrived" to me in that sense, but how are we to figure out intent from someone 1400 years dead?)