shortsighted

Submitted by William Harold-Jenkins, PhD (Australia), Aug 26, 2008 at 01:50

Islam is no more violent that christianity. All religions, and their texts (the Bible, Quran, Torah,etc.) are open to interpretation - that is, extremist interpretation if that is what the reader desires. For example, my religion christianity...to give examples of Christian extremism - the most well known is the Crusades, the KKK, along with today many extremist groups still exist.

To state that the Quran, and thus Islam itself is a violent religion is short-sighted and somewhat hypocritical - as I said before, all holy books can, and have, been interpreted for violent persuits. Overall, each of these religions persue peaceful and god-fearing existances for its followers (as does most polytheist religions). The problem is that some people choose to live a life of violence, and it is a small minority out of around 24% of the worlds population.

The problem is we see terrorists, african militant leaders, etc and think that "Islam is violent" without noticing that the large (yes large) majority of people live peaceful lives (or deeply wish to live peaceful lives). The interesting thing about Quran (i think I am right here) is that although the Islamic god (Allah) gave his words for his 'bible', he was unable to prevent it from becoming corrupted (e.g. through human transcript). On the other hand, the Christian Bible, proclaimed as the exact world of God, was writted by people - e.g. the life of Jesus written in the gospels of M,M,L&J are written at the greatest extent of 100 years after JC's death. As accurate as proclaimed? Doubtful.

However, it is not that I do not agree with the teachings in the Bible; I just feel that they (and my opinion of the general message - to lead a peaceful, loving, happy, caring, rightous life [ and obey God, etc]) are interpreted incorrectly, and thus are used for people's own violent aims. Islam (which, along with Judaism you cannot deny is largely similar to Christianity, apart from a few minor differences) can be taken to be a peaceful religion; however, like most other religions, if the will to do 'evil' things is there, it can be twisted and warped to serve that person's intentions.

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