Jason, Mohammed did not "dictate" the Qu'ran.
Qu'ran a
verbal noun (
maṣdar) of the
Arabic verb
qara`a (Arabic: قرأ
, meaning he read or he recited. Arabians relied heavily on oral tradition. The texts weren't compiled in writing until just after Mohammed's death. The compilation itself likely something prompted by the deaths of about seventy of the reciters in battle during a time of many wars. Both the time between hearing and comitting the sura to text and the circumstances when they were put into writing allows for some distortion to have occurred.
I'm with Rubi and my Middle Eastern Studies teacher, Dr. Ismail. I still have my notes from that course and Dr. Ismail stated that the Koran was completed before the death of Mohammad. Perhaps he was wrong, but the man was from Turkey and a Muslim so I figured he knew better than I did.
The "fight" and violence you referenced from the suras are in relation to neighbouring pagan tribes and cities. Moses also demanded the slaughter of the Midianites (men, women AND children), purportedly on god's instruction, for the sin of heathen sacrifice. I think we can agree he wasn't muslim.
These were not mere skirmishes. Mohammad conquered an
enormous territory by his death in 634 CE having started from being an outcast from his own tribe. I'm a bit puzzled why you're putting the word, fight, in quotes. This man led real and true armies; very effective armies. Whether they were pagans or not is of no difference. These are still people, many of whom had no argument with the Hashemites because the Hashemites were part of their greater peoples, the Quraysh. The first people Mohammad put to the sword were the people of his own tribe.
It's all fine and dandy to quote words as you find them but if you put those words in their historical context the meaning of those words become clearer and less easy to misrepresent.
Which is why the Hadith has such weight. The Hadith reinforces the teachings of Mohammad while giving additional instruction on how to best follow Islaimic law.
The meaning of the words have not changed in 1400 years. That's why we still see stonings, hand choppings, beheadings, hareems, and the oppression of non-Muslims, gays, and women in theocratic countries. While Europe was living in slop, Islam was conquering the Mediterranean and the middle east. It's true that Pythagoras was Greek, but the reason we still have his theorum is because it was preserved by the scholars of the Islamic empire. Scientific inquiry, mathematics, astronomy, geography, and medicine flourished during the empire. If I had a time machine and was dropped into medieval Europe, I'd get my ass down to Spain or Egypt so I could live in relative peace and relative cultural advancement. Education and literacy were highly prized during the Islamic Empire and unlike Christianity, there were no theocratic prohbitions on learning.
The reason I point this out is because the Koran was well-documented from the start. Islam's beginnings are not lost in the mist of time by any means and that documentation survived intact to the present day. There is no misrepresentation in what was meant, no anonymous scribe or monk who decided to substitute one phrase or entire sections of the Koran because he didn't like what was said.
Fact. Islam considers Judaism and Christianity progenitors, the same way Christianity sees Judaism. Islam, the religion, has never targeted Jews and Christians as foes nor defined them as unbelievers.
That interpretation is a tool used by extremists and xenophobes.
Tell that to the Christians defending Byzantium or the people of the Balkans and Spain; or to the present day Christians of The Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sudan, and a few other places. The Zoroastrians and Baha'i of Iran are in the same boat. All are have faced persecution and forced conversion at the point of the sword or gun. The famed Janissaries, the personal guard of the Ottoman sultans, were the sons of Christians living in Ottoman territories. Each year families would have to give-up their sons to the sultan. These boys, who ranged in age from 8 to 18 were taken from their homes and forcibly converted to Islam. They never saw their families again. This blood debt to the sultan was called the
devşirme and even today, speaking that word in the Chrisitan Balkans will rile tempers. This practice, which started in the 7th century CE, did not end until 1826.
These are facts, not xenophobic rants.
I don't understand why you're comparing the treatment of the Peoples of the Book by Islam, to the treatment of Jews by Christians because Christians have slaughtered Jews at a whim and forced conversion on them whenever it pleased Christians to do so. Talk to Sephardic Jews of their history. It's generally not pleasant. No Jew ever had any theocratic or legal protection beyond what various Christian rulers gave them. Jews and Christians did have various rights but only if they lived within the realm of the Islamic empire and at no time were they given anything resembling equal rights. Even though the Jannisaries were circumcised, plucked of hair, made to profess Islam, and went into battle shouting, "Allahu Akbar!," they were never permitted to wear beards as those who were born Muslim. They were permitted to have moustaches and that forever marked them as lesser Muslims even though they came to wield enormous power within the Ottoman empire itself.
Jason,
I am not very knowledgeable about comparative religion. Yet, I am skeptical of any analysis or scholarship that characterizes an entire religion with quotes from 1400 years ago. One of the reasons I am agnostic, is due to the belief that this sort of thinking has created untold misery.
I think you just threw ammunition to the real idiots, such as the OP, sorry to say.
There is no need to throw ammunition at idiots. It's already there. The roots of Islam are born in a philosophy, even an imperative to commit violence and war, "at the point of the sword," as they say. Islam has reformed through the centuries much as other religions have. They change interpretations to suit the norms of the day. Not all people do so. There are still very strict sects of all major religions and that includes Islam. Where Islam differs from most, but not all, is that a fundamentalist Muslim has a blatant command to go forth and commit violence and war on unbelievers by The Prophet himself. This is a problem I do not think will go away any time soon and that's due to a number of factors, not all having to do with the inherent tenets of Islam itself. The Saudis continually fund the establishment of fundamentalist
madrassas all over the world, including the USA. These are the only source of education for many people all over the developing world where there is no public education. The Saudis have to do this because they derive their moral authority to be custodians of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina (both in Saudi Arabia) from the very fundamentalist Wahabbi sect who are seen to be very pious (if strict) in the eyes of Arabian muslims.
This root of violence is also why there is so little outcry amongst more mainstream Islamic leaders in the face of fundamentalist violence. They really can't argue that what these people are doing is wrong because the fundamentalists are backed by the Koran itself. It's unfortunate, but true.
The, "idiots," as you call them are those who believe that all Muslims believe in fundamentalism. Clearly they don't. As has been noted, the 9/11 attacks were a complete failure for al Qaeda as they did not result in an uprising of Muslims everywhere. The vast bulk of Islam was horrified though not necessarily surprised or even saddened. Many Muslims felt the US needed a comeuppance, if not by such an extreme measure. Happily, many more felt that the murder of innocents was wrong and that bin Laden is a dangerous headcase.
The idiots also don't know that Islam is much like any other major world religion in that there are vastly different divisions and sects devoted to particular Koranic teachings and reformist philosophies. As my Sufi friend likes to remind people, he'd be branded a heretic in more than a few conservative Muslim countries and prevented from practicing sufism openly. Even in Islam, there are huge disagreements beyond the more widely known Shia/Sunni schism. Islam has sects of enormously broad range, roughly equaling the breadth between Unitarianism and Legionaries of Christ in Christianity or Liberal Judaism and Hasidic Orthodoxy in Judaism or Theraveda and Zen in Buddhism.