Sunstone said:
Should I read it out of context or in context? Which do you suggest would be best for re thinking my position?
Obviously read in context is always better than a read out of context, and this is in response to Ryan as well, but I don't know how to quote more than once in a response. The verse of the sword is not the only teaching of Islam, obviously, but it is something that we in the West need to be aware of. No, I don't for one second beleive that every single one of the billion Muslims in the world are terrorists, any more than someone should believe that every Christian in the world is a kill the ******s, Queers and Jews Klansman, but, as you go to the more fundamentalist end of either spectrum, you will find a disturbingly high percentage of believers who are sympathetic with both sets of extremists. . . and as we have often pointed out, there has been no Muslim Reformation.
Nor, very likely, are there nearly as many "moderate" Muslims as there are moderate Christians.
As a bit of anecdotal evidence, I recently was involved in a theological discussion with a man, now in his 50's who was born in Tehran, Iran, and was raised there till the age of 15. I had just tried his mother-in-law's civil case, and we were killing time waiting for the jury to return their verdict (we won, not that its important to this story) and we got to talking about the difference in North Texas culture vs. Iranian/Islamic culture, religious differences, and the like.
He was raised Muslim, but after coming to America disgarded what he referred to as "all that silly stuff" and is now, I suppose, an AA, like myself. He then went on to tell me of some of the things he saw as a boy in Iran, such as beatings and shootings carried out against suspected apostates and the like. We discussed many issues, mostly political and religious, and at the end he said this to me: "You want to know the difference between the Islamic world and the Western world in a nutshell?" to which I replied "Yes", and he went on to say. . . "Here we have this conversation, and some of the people passing us by may not approve (as we are in a very conservative, Christian area) but the most we get is a dirty look (which we had, already) but if we have this exact same conversation in Tehran, we would both, most likely be killed."
This came, basically unsolicited, from the lips of someone who has been there and seen it, first hand. This is not some right wing spin doctor, this is a man, living the American dream, who has seen firsthand the difference in a secular culture vs. an Islamic state. He spoke in very real terms about the oppression and violence of an Islamic society, and he told me he heard, as a boy people advocating such positions as the Verse of The Sword, and its like. So, don't take it from me, I have never been in a Mosque in my life, take it from authors such as ibn Warraq, and this man, who were born and raised in such cultures.
B.
