Trying too hard, Huma!

Submitted by Prashant (United States), May 28, 2013 at 18:04

Dear Dr Pipes, your reader Huma Babuna from Turkey is trying too hard to establish that Islam is a religion of peace. Well, 5:32 tells us that killing one man is like killing the whole humanity. The 5:33 prescribes all sorts of brutalities on those who challenge Allah and his prophet. And then 5:34 (as quoted by Huma) tells us that those brutalities are unrecommended if the culprit repents --before-- she or he is apprehended by the believer. Let me get it right. Even if I include 5:34 in the context, there is no reprieve for the challenger of Allah and Muhammed unless s/he repents before getting caught. Very nice.

Let us say that Christianity is also a religion of peace in the same sense as Islam. Muslims routinely invalidate the Christian Bible and paint it as a corrupted version of the God's word.

So if we apply 5:34's logic in the opposite direction, Muslims must repent before they are caught for challenging Christianity and if they are caught before they repent then certain atrocities are available for them. This is getting too brutal for good taste and I do not recommend any such thing but Huma will probably see the point. Huma's arguments are baseless but I must admire her desire for fact-based argumentation. That is exactly what is needed and that is a lot better than Talebani guns. And, yes, 5:35 is more or less unrelated and mostly good.

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