I am talking about Mohammed and how he behaved and not how Muslims later behaved. Now they have a less tolerant view.
Yes, but this has really only been the case since the nineteenth century and the rise of wahhabism.
Mohammed invented the "Holy War".
AIUI Jihad in the Qur'an can equally well refer to the personal struggle in one's own life to live by Islamic values as going out and fighting people.
I know many people are not able to write nor read either and don't know the Qoran and some of those not literate people turn everything upside down and make is worse. In Iran where they don't know Arabic can't understand a word of the Qoran.
True, and mediaeval Christianity suffered from the same problem: the general populace did not understand Latin. That was part of why John Wycliffe got into so much in the fourteenth century for translating the Bible into English.
Muslims do not expect anybody to be literate and educated. You just need to say one sentence to become Muslim without any further knowledge.
The big difference between Islam and Christianity on the one hand, and Judaism on the other here, is that the former two are proselytising religions. Judaism, because it is a religion which makes it difficult to become Jewish, sets very high standards for entry into it.
I know that Ishmael had a Hebrew father and an Egyptian mother. But he was brought up as an Egyptian. His mother got him an Egyptian wife. My point was that the Muslims don't know anything.
What makes you think he was brought up as an Egyptian? Until his teenage years he was brought up by Abraham. Thereafter it says he became an archer in the desert - not in Egypt. And when it lists his sons, we see the names of Arabic tribes turning up: Nebaioth (the Nabataeans) and Kedar, for example. And it says:
They dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, which is before Egypt, as one goes toward Assyria"
Moreover, the identification of Ishmael as the ancestor of the Arabs was not one invented by Muḥammad out of nowhere; it was a Jewish identification, which he got from the Jews.
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Re: Islam
Date: 2006-01-24 04:05 pm (UTC)Yes, but this has really only been the case since the nineteenth century and the rise of wahhabism.
Mohammed invented the "Holy War".
AIUI Jihad in the Qur'an can equally well refer to the personal struggle in one's own life to live by Islamic values as going out and fighting people.
I know many people are not able to write nor read either and don't know the Qoran and some of those not literate people turn everything upside down and make is worse. In Iran where they don't know Arabic can't understand a word of the Qoran.
True, and mediaeval Christianity suffered from the same problem: the general populace did not understand Latin. That was part of why John Wycliffe got into so much in the fourteenth century for translating the Bible into English.
Muslims do not expect anybody to be literate and educated. You just need to say one sentence to become Muslim without any further knowledge.
The big difference between Islam and Christianity on the one hand, and Judaism on the other here, is that the former two are proselytising religions. Judaism, because it is a religion which makes it difficult to become Jewish, sets very high standards for entry into it.
I know that Ishmael had a Hebrew father and an Egyptian mother. But he was brought up as an Egyptian. His mother got him an Egyptian wife. My point was that the Muslims don't know anything.
What makes you think he was brought up as an Egyptian? Until his teenage years he was brought up by Abraham. Thereafter it says he became an archer in the desert - not in Egypt. And when it lists his sons, we see the names of Arabic tribes turning up: Nebaioth (the Nabataeans) and Kedar, for example. And it says:
Moreover, the identification of Ishmael as the ancestor of the Arabs was not one invented by Muḥammad out of nowhere; it was a Jewish identification, which he got from the Jews.