Can Islam be a Religion of Peace?

Interpretive issues
>The warmongering tribal shit has always been a subtext of Islam
>This is due to the organization of the Koran
>Longer Suras have been put in the earlier chapters
>Shorter Suras have been put in the later ones
>However, the shorter Suras are the most ancient, historically speaking, and they record the original sayings of the Prophet
>Instead, the longer Suras are somewhat more recent in years, and refer to Muhammad when he had become a political leader, with local and tribal concern (no peaceand love shit, but property law, etc.)
>Nevertheless, Muslims believe that the way the book is arranged is due to God's will.
>As such, they take the first Chapters to supersede the later ones
>It is like saying that, in the Christian Bible, Genesis is more important than Gospels because its page numbers are smaller
>Moreover, since Islam is prophetic rather than messianic, they regard the "Book" as the incarnation of God (flesh and bone = ink and paper)
>Muhammad, although sacred, is still just a messenger

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medinan_surah
answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol1/4b.html
wikiislam.net/wiki/Contradictions_in_the_Quran#Is_drinking_alcohol_okay.3F
wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Abrogations_in_the_Qur'an
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Compare with Christianity:
>It is true the Bible is full of warmongering and tribal shit
>However, for Christians it is later chapters that supersede the others
>Even though the Bible is Holy, it is not God and can be fallacious for a number of reasons related to the context Agiographs were living in
>For Catholics in particular, Church's own rulings and tradition follow from God, so Church can choose to ignore entire blocs of text at any given time without giving justification for that
>All things considered, Christianity is way more flexible with norms and rules. Can adapt and change through the ages
>Even though there has been a warmongering period in Christian Europe (albeit shorter and smaller than people think), it is more an effect of historical context of interpretation than a result of scriptures

Conclusion: Christianity can be a religion of peace without upsetting its theological apparatus. Islam can be a religion of peace only by heavily stretching their own very theology.

It also helps that Christianity's founder is a pretty chill guy, by all accounts.

Jesus was kind and praised humbleness and humility. Mohammed was a conqueror, a politicians and didnt die for my sins.

>didnt die for my sins
Technically speaking, other muslims died for his sins.

Anyway, what does exactly tells Muhammad aside from people like Stalin or Mao?

Muhammad eat psychedelic mushrooms and saw some crazy shit

>As such, they take the first Chapters to supersede the later ones
Is this just your assumption? I haven't heard of this before

>implying Jesus didn't

>Is this just your assumption? I haven't heard of this before
Man, this is Islam 101 as you get it from Uni.
Muhammad expressed his thoughts in 2 separate periods:
>Mecca period
>Medina period
The Suras from the Mecca period are older and more general (and short because of few written testimony).
The Suras from the Medina period are more recent (in terms of Prophet's life) and more specific (e.g. rulings, civil law, crime law, etc.).

This is generally accepted because in Medina he was leader of a community, whereas in Mecca he was just a preacher. So, as a community leader, he revised a lot of shit: equality of women, marriage became more regimented, etc.

Now look at the (later in time, but earlier in the book) Medinan Suras:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medinan_surah


>Mention of 'Jihad' and detailing on its rulings.
>Details of Islamic jurisprudence[5] and legal system[6] as well as laws governing family, money transaction, international law and acts of worship
>Mention of 'hypocrisy' and dealing with hypocrites.
>Any verse that starts with يا أيها للذين آمنوا O you who believe
>Long verses
>Easy vocabulary
>Arguments with the 'people of the Book' i.e., Jews and Christians.
Basically everything bad about Islam is in the Medinan Suras, as you can see.

(cont.)

Islam is very very flexible with interpretation because it is supposed to be compatible at any point of history which is why youll see a lot of very different views,For example

And if they break their oaths after their treaty and defame your religion, then fight the leaders of disbelief, for indeed, there are no oaths [sacred] to them; [fight them that] they might cease.

This verse is a popular one,some can use it to justify physical violence against non believers and even to kill them however there are two things to keep in mind,first is that the word fight in arabic could be used for any form of fighting or arguing whether it's through logical arguements or physical,another thing is when people try to use it to justify killing non believers is that they tend to not notice the last part of it which says ''[fight them that] they might cease.'',had the intention of this verse be advocating murder of non believers this part would be redundant.


Also that aside there are some wierd parts in the OP i don't get where you got them from.

>As such, they take the first Chapters to supersede the later ones

I'm not sure what this is based on but there aren't priorities between chapters more so than there being certain conditions to carry out certain rulings

>they regard the "Book" as the incarnation of God (flesh and bone = ink and paper)

No? the content of the book is regarded as god's word not an incarnation of god.
One last thing to keep in mind is that people don't always represent the religion,you can't say the religion is violent because of isis because that's like saying that the bible is violent because of the massacre of jerusalem during the first crusade or the sack of constantinople.

Christianity's founder was a genocidal , homophobic, misogynistic racist who allowed slavery and encouraged and assisted in brutal tribal conquests that ended with conquered woman being 'taken as wives' and the men killed or enslaved.

Now, how Christians choose to interpret their scripture is all ad hoc bullshit anyway and Muslims can and do the same thing. They can decide tomorrow that all the violent shit was just a metaphor or only applied historically, etc and it wouldn't be any less valid.

Geopolitics determines how people's behavior and attitude and their religion follows suit.

(cont. from )

>[...] it seems appropriate to quote a few authors who make their own comments upon the contrast between the Meccan and Medinan passages. Believing that the Qur'an is eternal and that it was mechanically dictated to Muhammad, Muslim writers are generally disinclined to admit the contrast.

>They fear to allow any idea of a development in the Qur'anic text as this seems to imply that it had much to do with Muhammad's growing prophetic consciousness.

>One writer, however, who has the courage to openly admit this development [...] accordingly has no difficulty identifying the distinction between the two periods:

>A voice is crying from the very depths of life and impinging forcefully on the Prophet's mind in order to make itself explicit at the level of consciousness. This tone gradually gives way, especially in the Medina period, to a more fluent and easy style as the legal content increases for the detailed organization and direction of the nascent community-state. >(Rahman, lslam, p. 30).

>"It is interesting that all these descriptions of experiences and visions belong to the Meccan period; in the Medina era we have a progressive unfolding of the religio-moral ideal, and the foundation for the social order for the newly instituted community but hardly any allusions to inner experiences" (Rahman, Islam, p. 128).

>Another writer also alludes to the developing character of Muhammad's prophetic consciousness in the contrast between the Meccan and Medinan surahs:

>"Yet the revelations which he received, in Mecca so passionate and overwhelming, seemed in Medina to become increasingly, though perhaps unconsciously, the result of reason and thought". (Glubb, The Life and Times of Muhammad, p. 231).

(cont.)

Yes. Born and raised in the West, I don't have a body count on my name.

>Christianity's founder was a genocidal , homophobic, misogynistic racist who allowed slavery and encouraged and assisted in brutal tribal conquests that ended with conquered woman being 'taken as wives' and the men killed or enslaved.
>Now, how Christians choose to interpret their scripture is all ad hoc bullshit anyway and Muslims can and do the same thing. They can decide tomorrow that all the violent shit was just a metaphor or only applied historically, etc and it wouldn't be any less valid.
>Geopolitics determines how people's behavior and attitude and their religion follows suit.

Are you talking Jesus Christ?

(cont. from )

>It is not our opinion, however, that the phenomenon is purely one of a logical development. The Medinan passages do not compare in style, diction or content with the elevated spirit of the Meccan passages and this retrogression, rather than true "development", is symbolic of the similar deterioration we find in the character of the persevering prophet of Mecca who became the autocratic and, at times, ruthless ruler of Medina.

Sauce: answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol1/4b.html

So, user, to finally answer your question here:
... the answer is it is well-known to scholars all over the world that Muslims, including the writers of that interpretive body of works called "hadith" hardly make a historical analysis on why some Suras come first and later for editing purposes and why the Meccan ones are completely different in style and topics from the Medinan ones.

Reason is, and this is one of the strongest tenets of Islam, that:
>Koran is as it is because it is a photocpy of God's mind and word, so basically there is no purpose in saying what happened first and later or why Muhammad said one thing and then the opposite of it because what matters is the final result: word of God materialized and, as such, unchangeable.

>christianities founder

You are talkin bout jews here user.

What you're citing is a really dumb method of Qur'an exegesis.

Since all of Muhammad's revelations obviously have divine authority, a lot of Quranic scholars take issue with assigning more value with one sura than another. If it's all God's word, then it is all of equal importance. What this means in terms of textual analysis is that the Qur'an must be read as having the same underlying themes running throughout all of the suras. It is clear to see that with this in mind, the revelations primary thematic concern overall is some form of peace and equality. Passages that seems to contradict this require a slightly deeper reading, and additionally, translatory errors have lost much of the nuance found in the original Arabic language in western language translations (particularly English due to its lack of gendered nouns)

Obviously "Islam is a religion of peace" is bullshit made up by tumblr-risqué apologists, however it is absolutely possible for a nonviolent reading of the Qur'an that doesn't betray core Muslim principles

>I'm not sure what this is based on but there aren't priorities between chapters more so than there being certain conditions to carry out certain rulings
What is the Quranic abrogation system.

>i) where a verse has been removed from the Quran and another given in its place;
>ii) where the injunction (command) is abrogated and the letters of the verse remain; !
>iii) where both the verse and its injunction are removed from the text

>No? the content of the book is regarded as god's word not an incarnation of god.
Man, if you touch the book you touch God basically.
In all respects, the Book is to the Muslims what the sacred bread is for Christians.

Comparison between Qur'an and Bible is fallacious.
Qur'an should be compared to consecrated bread, not to the Bible.

I answerd what sets Muhammad apart from Stalin and Mao, not Jesus.

>if you touch the book you touch God basically.

What are you basing this claim on exactly.

>Abrahamic sanddune religions

Spooks, all of them.

It's not the book. That just binds the words. It's the message. Hence people call the Qur'an musaf instead.

>Is this just your assumption? I haven't heard of this before
>I'm not sure what this is based on but there aren't priorities between chapters more so than there being certain conditions to carry out certain rulings
>Since all of Muhammad's revelations obviously have divine authority, a lot of Quranic scholars take issue with assigning more value with one sura than another. If it's all God's word, then it is all of equal importance. What this means in terms of textual analysis is that the Qur'an must be read as having the same underlying themes running throughout all of the suras. It is clear to see that with this in mind, the revelations primary thematic concern overall is some form of peace and equality. Passages that seems to contradict this require a slightly deeper reading, and additionally, translatory errors have lost much of the nuance found in the original Arabic language in western language translations (particularly English due to its lack of gendered nouns)

Customarily, I stand by the idea earlier book Suras are usually taken to supersede and override all the following ones... despite of historical order of utterance (precisely because, as the last user says, there is no relevance for a believer in the chronological sequence of Suras).

Consider this set of contradictions:
wikiislam.net/wiki/Contradictions_in_the_Quran#Is_drinking_alcohol_okay.3F

As you can see, all contemporary Muslims (I am not aware of exceptions) take Alcohol, for example:
>5:90 Alcohol is from Satan
>2:219 Alcohol is a huge sin
The above supersede:
>4:43 you can drink when not praying
>16:67 you can drink alcohol and it is a wise think
>47:15 Paradise has rivers of alcohol
>83:22 Allah is basically a drunkard

Are animals evil?
>7:179 Yes
>7:166 Yes
Supersedes:
>22:18

Etc.

Find a Muslim who says alcohol is halal. Because it is clear that in Islam abrogation is a thing and Medinan Suras are usually favored over Meccan Suras.

Check 'em: I know it is mostly a thumb-rule.
But it's a 2000 years old thumb rule.
And such thumb rule favors Medinan Suras over Meccan Suras when it comes to abrogation.

Please make an example in which a Meccan Sura is usually taken to abrogate something in the Medinan Suras.

Protip: you can't.

wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Abrogations_in_the_Qur'an
Basically what happens is that since the Medinan Suras tend to be longer, they are more likely to abrogate Meccan Suras than vice versa.

Suras either abrogate themselves or are abrogated by verses in other Suras.

Since the warmongering and degenerate (from my Christian pov) Suras are longer, it is very likely they will provide abrogation material for the ecumenical and peaceful one-line Suras at the end of the book.

>4:43 you can drink when not praying
No,this verse does not say that you can drink while not praying it says that IF you are drunk then you shall not approach prayer,that's a stretchy conclusion.

>16:67 you can drink alcohol and it is a wise think

''And from the fruits of the palm trees and grapevines you take intoxicant and good provision. Indeed in that is a sign for a people who reason.'' says nothing about drinking intoxicant being allowed,keep in mind intoxicants aren't prohibited when they're being used for medical reasons.

>47:15 Paradise has rivers of alcohol

Because you're now in paradise and have passed god's trial so there is no point in prohibiting it as you are immortal and incapable of hurting anyone even if you go in a drunkard rage

>83:22 Allah is basically a drunkard
???? this verse just says that the righteous will be in pleasure,unless you quoted the wrong verse.

>Are animals evil?
>7:179

How does this verse prove that animals are evil exactly,it says that the jinns and evildoers are more unaware than livestock.


>7:166
Yet another loose interpretation ''So when they were insolent about that which they had been forbidden, We said to them, "Be apes, despised."'' i don't get how this verse implies all animals are evil,if it even implies villiany.

Abraham? Abe just started the lineage.

Sorry but neo-liberal capitalism and globalism isn't going to be able to cuck Islam like it cucked Christianity.

Yep. Whenever the US stops backing the country with ideology identical to ISIS and is keen to export it to all four corners of the world, we might be able to have peace a few generations from then when we work out all the damage that's been done.

Or at least it'll be contained to the Middle East proper.

...

Even if it was malleable towards peacefulness, fat chance of it happening with the ambitions of leaders in Muslim countries.

Saudistan needs a glassing and be handed to the Iranians as a colony so they can go full shia on the world as keepers of the kaaba/its smouldering remainer.