Islamophobia and God Alone.
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Well, "Christianity" without certain elements and the delusion that Jesus is the son of God, is not a too bad faith. "Christian values" (then I mean values) are among the finest, but for people to really follow them wholeheartedly is another question. People who could truly interpret Quran would although preach the same stuff as Jesus in terms of humbleness and killing of one's own ego. It is the same teaching all along.
There are fools associated with what the man Jesus taught just like in with Muhammad, void of sound judgement (kafar) who do not use their brains, hearing or eyesight for something of value. And they focus more on "their" prophet than what is healthy, and they are usually a mediator between them and God against all teachings, while the prophet told them to be in God's light as one.
Be of one with God
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You're suggesting that it was only in the past that Christians were violent in the name of their doctrine, i.e., the Spanish inquisition, the Reconquista, the Crusades. This is a common fallacy. The Christians today are equally if not more violent. Even recent modern history bears testament to this fact. If the Christian apologists say that the Nazi and KKK version of Christianity is not authentic or true to the spirit of the faith, then isn't that what the vast majority of moderate Sunni Muslims including our Ulama have been saying about the tiny minority of extremists and terrorists who claim to represent Islam?
You've got a point.
Former President Bush declared his invasion of Iraq, with the chemical (White phosphorus) attacks on Fallujah and other atrocities against humanity as a "Crusade". The Christian preacher Ann Coulter wrote and continues to defend her idea that the Christians should "invade Muslim countries, kill their leaders, and forcefully convert them to Christianity".
The fact remains that the vast majority (I'm talking over 99%) of Muslims are peaceful, nonviolent, and moderate. They interpret the so called violent passages of the Pure Holy Quran in a historical context and with respect to guidance regarding a just/defensive war (the question of literal or figurative is irrelevant). This is exactly how Jews and Christians interpret the violent passages of their Bible. If, as the bigoted Christian priests suggest, the majority of Muslims are violent and extremist, than there would be over a billion members of the various terrorist cells and groups which in reality have only a few thousand people with them.
True.
A religion being young or old is irrelevant. Whether Islam is young or old, the fact is majority of Muslims TODAY and in fact, throughout history, have been nonviolent and non-extremist.
Well, it matters in the way it has a grip on society, or lack of grip. Extremists are everywhere, but when religion is a large part of culture and society, even moderate and sensible people fall prey to nonsensical or harmful ideas, simply because they're not supposed to question things from religion. Of course, sensible people won't generally do bad things, but being afraid of questioning something is never good. In this way, an older religion would have lost more influence over the populace than a younger religion. At least this is what it seems like to me when comparing xristianity and islam. However, using the same logic, judaism would have even less influence, which is not true, if looking only at the time factor, so I guess there are more variables at play. Jews are a much smaller group with very different dynamics. I guess minorities are always more conscious about their identity. Anyway.
There is no way to measure belief. Only God Himself knows what is in a person's heart. Human nature is compelled to judge by actions and the manifest. And what is manifest is that churches are generally emptying while the construction of new mosques cannot keep up the pace for their demand. You have massive cathedrals that are being turned into museums, and across the street, a makeshift mosque overflowing with Muslim worshippers so that there are Muslims forced to pray outside the mosque on the walkways and parking lots!
True, however, I'm of the opinion, due to my own experiences, that the true believers (in God's eyes) constitute more or less the same proportion no matter what group (large enough) you look at. I think it would be arrogant to deem one religion as full of believers while another is full of something else. This is due to that people don't (as a rule) choose religions. They are born into them. Therefore the proportion believer/disbeliever would be fairly similar in the big religions.
So that is an indication that Islam is not only taken more seriously than Christianity by its adherents, Islam bears signs of life and a pumping heart.
Yes, due to it's youth, along of course with the spread of information in this age.
You say Islam is young and Christianity is old. In a sense you are right. Islam is young in the sense it can be compared to a young man who is full of life, healthy, and energetic, while Christianity is old like an old sick man lying in a hospital on life support slowly rotting away...
;D but even the young man will eventually become old and sick... with time... when the innocent ignorance is gone and bitter reality shows it's ugly face... hence the difference due to age that I earlier pointed out. The body of religions die with time, because they're only material, but the spirit of truth, at the core, lives on.
Peace
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I'm not Christian
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We are, unfortunately, caught in the line of fire when "Islamophobes" are looking for a scapegoat- at that point any Muslim of any stripe will do.
I run across the kind all the time in reading the comments on news stories (Yahoo! News is notorious for the amount of hateful people who comment), and every time I see X or Y being said about Muslims or Islam in general. They'll go on an on about how evil we are based on something someone did sometime or whip out a cherry-picked sura or hadith to prove this or that. My solution to it is to call them out- they want to provide a cherry-picked sura from the Qur'an, that's fine, but provide exactly where they got it and the context it was given in. Give me a hadith number and whose book it came from. In almost every case, they won't do it so I provide the entire sura and the surrounding context so that others who read will see the original commenter is woefully unprepared.
I'll also go to lengths to explain there are differences within the Islamic community, and- just like Jews and Christians- we have our differences in how we practice the faith. I explain about the hadiths and how they are almost always twisted and are completely unreliable in any case.
I will also put out an appeal to everyone who reads my response to go to the Qur'an for themselves and read it with their own eyes so they'll know what it says about any given item. I tell them to stick to the Qur'an and don't even try to make sense of the hadiths, even though that's what most Muslims profess to follow to some degree.
We cannot stamp out Islamophobia in one giant hammer blow, but we can each do our part to chip away at it and when confronted with false or out-of-context 'proofs' call then out on them and correct them and point out that we are all not cut from the same cloth. The best proof of that is our own example- don't get dragged down in flame wars online, and if it's in person be respectful but firm.