The thing is, there's a lot of verses in the Qu'ran talking about peace and love for ones neighbor and etc. There's also quite a few talking about when waging holy war on someone is acceptable, usually in defense of Islam, emphasis there on defense. When foreigners try to take over, basically, and make what what was an Islamic state into a non-Islamic state.
Heh, the birthplace of Christianity is Islamic land. Caliph Abu Bakr in order to stop the early Muslim community from fracturing upon the death of Muhammed (as many tribal leaders declared themselves successor to the prophet) himself declared that since there is only one God, there is only one community. Secession and apostasy was declared treason. This was supposed to be a short term solution but changed Islam to be a sociopolitical force that has conquered people from one end of the Atlantic to the Pacific. Caliph Abu Bakr's general crushed the rebels and once more reunified the Muslim community. The Byzantines and Sassanid were taking advantage of this chaos, gearing up to remove their southern threat - invasion was inevitable in the long term. So Caliph Abu Bakr decides to strike first. The Arabs being nomads and traders were well versed in their enemies' tactics and knew that they were exhausted from having warred with each other for so long. Caliph Abu Bakr gathered his advisers and prepared for a campaign against the Byzantines and Sassanids, who although weakened, were still the two greatest military powers of their time.
Unfortunately Caliph Abu Bakr grows ill and knows he is soon to pass away, so he announces he wishes to appoint Umar as his successor. Umar was a large imposing military commander who the council feared was not the right man for the job so to say, as his fearsome imposition could present the wrong image. Then Ali endorsed him and all was well, Umar became Caliph Umar. As soon as he took office, he took to the military campaign.
Caliph Umar took the notion of the Ummah being the one good community and expanded it - anything outside the Ummah was immoral, chaotic and evil, for it did not live up to the laws of God. And so the world becomes divided into two realms, the Dar Al-Islam and the Dar Al-Harb, the Realm of Submission to God and peace and the Realm of War respectively. The Dar Al-Harb were infidels, and were justified in declaring Jihad against them. This is the first Jihad not as say, an inner struggle. This is the first Jihad with a military dimension used in order to justify an invasion into foreign lands, in this case the Byzantine southern Meditteranean lands, Levantine lands and the Persian Mesopotamian lands and most significantly of all - the Sassanid lands beyond the Persian mountains. The moral issue of foreign conquest was no longer a concern, with the purpose of spreading God's truth the military Jihad was a noble act and all soldiers were committed to the campaign. The impact of this precedent remains to this day, made only further so after the assassination of Uthman and the partisans of Ali left and formed the Khawarjites, redefining sinners as being infidels, allowing the definition of Jihad to be applicable even to the Muslim world (whereupon they would do things like attack marketplaces full of merchants with hidden daggers).
In comparison to Christianity, the idea of violence as inherently negative, rather than being a tool like any other, is relatively recent.
The vengeful Yahweh of the Old Testament and the forgiving God of the New Testament which lend themselves to either being harsh punishment or forgiving love. For example in the Old Testament it is often forgotten that it is not "thou shalt not kill" but "thou shalt not murder," very very common and it keeps coming up. In the Old Testament it's very clear that killing can be just in some situations, and Israel's Sampson option for example is rooted in Sampson bringing his enemies down with him or being given strength by God to smite his enemies. New Testament is goody two shoes level of fluffiness, with the worst thing Jesus having done is chasing moneylenders around with a whip and flipping tables. Oh and killing a fig tree. In regards to violence in the New Testament Jesus is very explicitely against it as an inherent negative.
Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.
Matthew 26:52-54
The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Psalm 11:5
The notion that violence is inherently negative is ancient, with the Buddhists and Jains having nonharm (a step beyond nonviolence) as core philosophical principles centuries even before Christianity. I don't doubt with Greco-Buddhism predating Christianity that some philosophical influence would have made its way to Jerusalem in some shape or form or the other.
Seriously, look at the religious wars Christianity got into; the only real difference is that the people going to war are considered part of their countries instead of terrorist groups, and there were so many more of them that it wasn't guerilla warfare (plus, genocide was still considered an acceptable response to those kinds of shenanigans from a town you just conquered back then).
You will have to be more specific because it sounds like you are mashing a whole lot of time periods together with many anachronisms.
The Qu'ran, like any other holy text, is rich with opportunities for a variety of interpretation. The Bible (and really, because of all the various translations, 'the Bible' is rather a poor phrase) has quite a few verses about conducting war in the name of god, or being the instrument of divine wrath and such as well. In both cases, it's about 'just war'.
But regardless, this does not mean Islam itself is bad. It means certain interpretations are.
Perhaps it only means certain interpretations are, but the old interpretations persist to this day and are very mainstream. The old interpretations themselves are quite awful, if everyone followed old Christianity we'd be boringly moral whereas if we followed Muhammed we'd have taken over Syria by now and executed our enemies. Or even in new interpretations, compare for example the Westborough Baptist Church with 40 practitioners to the many millions of Wahhabis.
Loud Whispers, what are you trying to say? Because religion is, most often, used as an excuse for other things.
This is not one thing being used as an excuse for "other things," its design is to be used for "other things."
Yeah, people get pissy when you do things their religion considers offensive. That's rather unsurprising.
If by get pissy you mean behead, I find that is considerably more unacceptable. Those reporters got hunted down in Pakistan and no one cared, no one will care. Even in the West so many are eager to throw journalists and cartoonists under the bus for having caused their own deaths by offending Muslims. This is a basis of Shariah law or Muhammed's poet-critics being executed and is practiced with blasphemy laws across the Muslim world, or even here.
If you're trying to say only Muslims have been committing genocide, or even that only Muslims have been committing genocide in modern times, you'd be wrong.
You are correct, that is because I am not saying that. If I questioned China's human rights record would you assume I was accusing China of being the only such regime to act so?
If you're wanting to say that Islamic Law violates human rights, I'd agree with you, when you look at international definitions and agreements about it. Different cultures have different views on that, though. I would argue that Abrahamic Law in general violates human rights, myself. Just a matter of whether people are interpreting it literally.
I find human rights arguments to be quite useless, so no I am not bothering to see if beheading apostates fits within Western legal framework.
When it's an institution using religion as an excuse to maintain their power base, blaming the religion, and by extension, all of the people who practice it, is a pretty shitty thing to do. Because when you criticize Islam, rather than criticizing X interpretation of Islam, you are insulting an entire culture and community of religious individuals. Why is it socially acceptable to criticize Christianity? Because it's the majority. It's the one with the power.
Islam? In the Middle East they have power, and they don't allow criticism because most of the governments are still very authoritarian, and even when they aren't, it's quite obvious that Muslims don't appreciate having their religion insulted. And when someone puts up an image of Mohammad, knowing full well that Islam forbids it and finds it offensive, they are insulting it just as much as someone who tries to present themselves as a Christ-figure. It's just different cultural values and weights on freedom of expression. But regardless of all of that? When you attack Islam, just like when you attack any religion, you are attacking it's members. Which includes your fellow Americans or Europeans or Asians or what have you. Because Muslims are people too, and they're your fellow citizens. And you're saying they're bad people for believing in the religion they believe in, because other people are using their religion to commit atrocities. That is why I will defend Islam. I will not defend ISIS, I will not defend the Taliban, any more than I will defend neo-nazis and extremists of any other stripe. But the average individual? Not one of those things.
My heart is not moved by your feelings, they are just feelings. If you can criticize Christianity "the one with the power" and be fine whilst criticizing Islam will get you ostracized or killed...?
The most fucked up part of all of this is that being an extremist is hard to avoid when you're raised by extremists or in areas with massive strife and violence, and conflict between people of different sects or ethnicities. Hate can be taught, and is.
And if the religion teaches hate, we are to ignore this because it is just "different cultural values and weights on freedom of expression." Across the Islamic world Americans back down, cower and look the other way when men and women who violate Shariah are brought before a mob of 200 people and beheaded. It ignores one massive, massive issue that terrorists do not even begin to make up the majority whose ideals align quite well; the "moderates" cease to be so moderate and they will get everything they want. Islam by conception is very unique from other religions of its size, struggle is sown in its success.
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