dzheremi
The Qur'an, and hence the religion that is built around it, fails quite simply because it is not what it says it is: It is not the word of God/Allah (and, as a corollary, Muhammad is not the messenger of God/Allah, his "revelation" is false, etc). And we can know that it is not what it says it is because it fails in its own stated goals to serve as "reminder" of what came before (since it doesn't match what came before, if it's corrective, it wouldn't have to?
But if it can be shown to be wrong in its representation of what it is supposedly correcting, does that not harm its claims of being a correction of what came before? If I "correct" Islam based on what Ahmadiyya believe, then I haven't really corrected
Islam, have I? By the same token, if I claim that what I teach is in line with what came before, but it is actually at variance with what came before (being, as it is in the case of Islam, based on twisted versions of oral gospel rememberings, including non-canonical literature popular in Muhammad's time, like the Arabic Infancy Gospels), then it isn't really a reminder. It's a kind of retelling, but since it is flipped on its head and used to buttress the claims of a latter-day self-proclaimed prophet that none of the people who originally heard or composed those same writings it references accept, it is at best self-serving and anyway inaccurate. This was my point in bringing up Griffith's assessment, that there
are certainly echos of preexisting Christian and Jewish biblical and extra-biblical literature, but they do not correspond to anything that the Christians or Jews themselves would've recognized as scripture, since the Qur'an purposely mutilates them in order to support its own narrative. I mean, I bet if I took an x-acto knife to the Qur'an and rearranged its words until they said what I wanted them to say, you'd probably have a hard time stomaching my contention that whatever I'd created was a "reminder" or a "corrective" of the Qur'an, right? This is how it is with the Qur'an vis-a-vis other scriptures. Influences can be discerned, no doubt, but it doesn't really function as it says it does, either as a reminder or a corrective, because the only way that it fits itself in with what came before is by completely mangling what came before until somehow Muhammad or his followers could say that these people, places, and sayings fit together with Islam. But they don't, regardless of who says they do.
Muftis would do more than show the contradictions. You know yourself probably, the average Christian (ok maybe not the average Orthodox Christian), can't manage more than throwing bible quotes at people, torn from their original context.[/b]
I can't speak to what the average Christian would or wouldn't manage, but if Muftis think they know our scriptures better than the Fathers, I say let them bring what they have, and be silenced on that account. Some of the fathers in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, such as John of Damascus, even lived contemporaneously with the early Muslims, and observed their practices first hand.
His characterization need hardly be updated, I would think, as it is still true that Islam is a heresy of the Arabs, and Muhammad wrote many false things, etc.
It is a bit of a Goldilocks religion who?
Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a British fairytale that is also popular in America. It concerns a young girl who wanders into a house in which three bears live, and at one point she tastes porridge belonging to them. Finding the first two hot, and the second two cold, she settles upon the third, declaring it to be just right. The parallel to Islam is obvious: Judaism is wrong, Christianity is wrong, but along comes Muhammad who just happens to succeed where the others have failed.
(1) At the time of Christ (and, in the Jews' view, of course also after Him), there was a preexisting belief in the coming of a Messiah. but they wanted him to overthrow the existing rulers of the day and to start a revolution? That's what they were expecting
Yes, and? I said the preexisting belief was there. I didn't say anything about whether or not the Jews' expectations would be fulfilled by Jesus Christ (I think it's pretty obvious that they were not, given that there are still Jews today). Please do not read things into my posts that are not there.
I don't really understand what you're on about because you're not very pithy and i'm losing the will to live a bit in your post. It's like you brought yr own bottle of wine to a party only to be able to say how rubbish the wine is.
But so I read a lot about the Ottoman Empire and all that Islam achieved and contributed to the world.
Can you object without resorting to ad hominem? I'm not writing to be pithy or impress you. You asked why people who may have considered Islam and Christianity did not go for Islam, didn't you? These are a few reasons why it was easy for me to reject Islam in favor of Christianity.
And the accomplishments of Islam or the Ottomans were built upon Christian and Jewish physicians, polymaths, etc. There is very little that Islam actually contributed to the world. While the letter contains a racialist overtone that I find distasteful (after all, there's nothing wrong with being Arab, and Arab does not automatically equate to Muslim), Assyrian news reporter Peter BetBasoo does a pretty good job dismantling the most common claims of the Islamic sycophants who seem eager to credit "Islamic civilization" with everything accomplished by its minorities, who were usually the ones who were ultimately responsible for the so-called 'achievements' Muslims now try to claim as their own or for their religion:
What Arab Civilization? In your humble limited opinion
Which you asked for by starting this thread, mind you.
I can show you some equally difficult parts from the bible and the God of love and forgiveness that is also spoken of and where God instructs people to do certain things that seem a bit off for a loving God.
The All Mighty God is both the most loving, merciful and unfathomable as well as being totally terrifying.[/b]
No complaints here about that. I was merely saying that I don't see the love and forgiveness in Islam that you apparently do. Also, it should be pointed out that showing this or that difficult passage from the Bible does not in itself deal with the hadith in question, nor does the hadith in question lay the command to kill at the feet of
God Himself, but rather it explicitly says that this was Muhammad's command. So I am afraid your reply does not address what I've actually mentioned here, but no matter...this is your thread, not mine.
Another indirect consequence of being a murderer is that you close the door on any possible repentance on the part of the apostate. There are three days to repent.
Indeed. And similarly but greater the Fathers that this life (as in, the whole life) is given to us for repentance. It could be a three days, three years, three decades, or three minutes, but whatever it is, the time you have is to be used wisely to repent of sin, whether you are under sentence of death or not (as we all are in the long run, but hopefully you know what I mean).
Again, I could equally bring up stuff here about Christianity as well, and what the bible teaches, but likewise, both will have explanations from their respective sides.
This kind of discussion gets us no where and it's a bare waste of my time and yours.
Ah, you could if their were such laws among Christians as there are in many Islamic countries, but there are not. Again, you want to bring difficult things from the Bible as though they answer for the Qur'an or the Hadith, but they do not. I think that's the actual reason why these kinds of discussions are generally a waste of time.
it doesn't have to 'work', i'm just telling you the reason.
And I likewise am stating why it does not make sense.
Blessed Mary did? A good example to follow.
Indeed.
Who says that the extra time the person is given will result in repentance?? That is way too risky. They have 3 days, that is enough time.
Too risky how? And for who? For the apostate? For God?
You do have a point, though, in that it is not guaranteed that any extra time will result in repentance. I am not sure that this wasn't already thought of in the times of our fathers, but that doesn't change the fact that our tradition is what it is. We did not fight the rigorists like the Donatists and others only to have that re-emerge with divine sanction from Muhammad and Co. Your religion may do as it pleases, but for us repentance is always possible, so long as we dwell on this earth.
Also, people got/get killed for all kinds of reasons, death row in the states and also for treason in this country and a tonne of others. Yet we go weak at the thought of the biggest insult to All Mighty, someone turning their back on the God who gives them every breath in their body and is their all source and resource. (reminds me of Hebrews 11) and yet this reason is lower down the scale than human justice and insult??
Is it truly
weakness to forgive rather than kill when you have the power to choose between one and the other? I have been taught in my faith that God's justice does not preclude His mercy (so we cannot think that we can do whatever we want with the idea that we'll just stop sinning later and poof, we're fine), but never that people must be killed to appease God's hurt feelings or whatever. That sounds more like Calvinism than traditional Christianity. We cannot
appease God, even if we live to be a million years old.
Anyway, I don't want to have a spat about this. You asked and so I answered but it's way off from what I need so If you reply back about it, I won't carry on the discussion. Really, it's just an exercise that's all. It don't add anything.
I am merely responding as I already wrote to Mina that I would only continue if you responded to me directly, which you have done now. We can cease communicating after this, if you'd like.
Same has happened here too misunderstandings from Christians about Islam. No matter how much it's explained, the explanations just aren't accepted. Both sides think the others' answer is messed up and so the answer is rejected and the misinformation continues.
Absolutely. This goes back to the first part of this reply, about how different our theological languages are. We can't help but conclude each other to be very, very wrong, even as we cannot fully appreciate every nuance of the others' points. I am, after all, not a Muslim, so much of what you've written here does not make sense to me. I assume that the same is true of my answers to you. This is kind of what I was getting at in my reply to Mina.
They really cannot countenance that the truth may be as the Christian puts it about our own belief, as that would mean that the Qur'an (and hence Muhammad and Allah) are wrong about something, and the whole house of cards just collapses (since Islam is built around "the book"). Not always the case. Your thinking only one dimensionally, this is the only reason I can think of so it must be true. Sometimes it's not understood because of cultural reasons or just a lack of comprehension about the actual concept itself. Like for instance, the incantation.
Not at all, in fact. You have put the word "only" into your characterization of my reply (it's not in the original, as you can see). I can certainly agree with everything that you have written here, because these are also reasons why a Muslim might disagree with the Christian belief, but please note that I was referring the characterization of the Christian belief as found and codified in Islam (hence the bit about "the book"), which is something other than whatever other objections Muslims might have to Christian doctrine. In the context in which I invoked the idea, it makes perfect sense to say a Muslim will not accept that the Christian's correction about our own belief, because doing so would mean that the Qur'an is wrong, and of course for Islam to be correct the Qur'an cannot be wrong.
But with me....seeing as you mentioned me in particular. It's incomprehensible, especially about the incarnation,so i find it not only difficult to hold that thought but also to even say it or talk about it. It's not a matter of rejecting your truth, I promise. That don't need a 'tut and rolly eyes', it just need repeating and bit of frikin patience.
The rolling eyes were for Mina's approach (perhaps somewhat hastily; sorry, Mina), as he seems to have acknowledged in his reply to me, not for you. I apologize for the confusion.
I only answered your posts like this because I felt for you because of what minas said. And also you wasn't rude to me personally, but minas is right, more of your posts was about what Islam isn't rather than what Christianity is. It's all good though. But they were a bit predictable. Seeing that you asked -)
Well, yes. They were about what Islam isn't because it is what Islam isn't in comparison to what it says it is (particularly in the context of its polemic against Christianity, since that's something I know at least a little bit about already, so it's easy to spot where Islam gets it wrong when it really shouldn't if it is in fact the true religion of God) that ultimately convinced me that it is not the religion for me. If you had asked "What about Christianity made you decide to be a Christian?", my answers would have been completely different, and not included Islam at all. I have no trouble taking either religion (or any religion) entirely on its own merits, but for the fact that they were invoked together in this thread. Well, that and the fact that Islam is at a bit of a disadvantage, as it must provide an apology for itself relative to its claims of continuation or perfection of previous faiths that Christianity does not need to provide in response (read: by virtue of its distinctive prophetology, Islam attempts to answer and correct both Christians and Jews, but since Christianity predates Islam by centuries, we do not have to prove ourselves in line with Islam, and indeed gladly say that we are not, since what Muhammad brought contradicts our own preexisting command that we not believe any other Gospel, even if brought from an angel of heaven).
