Who wants to help me out with answers to this one? Accoring to this guy, Islam is evil because it tells its followers to kill the unbelievers, etc. The Muslims who don't go along with that, according to this guy, are the hypocrits; whereas in Christianity the hypocrits are the ones who kill the "heathens." Argh!

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Here follows transcription of conversation:

> "Chapter 2, verse 190: "Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loves not transgressors." This portion of the Qur'an was written in about 606 C.E., when the Prophet Muhammad and his followers were under attack in the city of Medinah, says Imam Yahya Hendi, a Qur'anic scholar who is the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University. There, they had established their own state.

Precisely. They had established their own "state." They had arrogated to themselves, as a religious group, the right to rule over, tax, and if necessary persecute and murder unbelievers, simply because the Muslims were more powerful.

> But various coalitions of non-Muslim tribes--including Christians, Jews, atheists and animists--continued to go to war with them. This portion of the Qur'an explains their reasoning behind striking back. The passage actually refers to a defensive war.

By that standard, the Nazis were fighting a "defensive war" in Europe. They attacked all their neighbours, and their neighbours then proceeded to fight back, putting the Nazis on the "defensive."

> -"What the Qur'an Really Says About Jihad and Violence", beliefnet.com

A clarifying note: Unless you understand that everything that any Muslim says about Islam is a lie, you won't understand Islam. Islam believes that the end (a world-wide Islamic state in which all non-believers are either submissive or dead) justifies the means (holy war, treaty breaking, etc).

> > > Christianity, with it's commandments, and host of other sins etc., is just as much "no friend to freedom" as Islam;

> > How so? Show me from the New Testament what Christianity's philosophy of government is. (Hint: There is none. Christianity was always presumed to be a religion of the powerless. There are no hints for what "Christian" rulers are expected to do, or how they are expected to govern. Personally, I believe this omission is intentional--there has never been, and never can be, a "Christian" government, and any government claiming to be "Christian" or "run on Christian principles" is not.)

> The New Testament? Whatever happened to the Old? Didn't Jesus say "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill... Till heaven and earth shall pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law..." (Matthew 5:17-18?)

Jesus fulfilled the Law in his own person. The Law is eternal in the sense that Jesus is eternal. But are we expected to live by the Law? Of course not.

> In a "perfect Christian society," where everyone followed the Commandments in the way that we wanted them to be interpretted, sharing with and loving his neighbour etc. etc., there would be no problem I'm sure - except for the stripping of peoples freedom to eat shellfish, etc.

You seem to have a rather jaundiced view of Christianity, I'm afraid. Perhaps you are unaware of Jesus' saying that it is not what goes into a man's mouth that defiles him, but what comes out? The food laws and all that stuff are not our business any more. They have nothing to do with Christianity.

> Because, though, people can interpret the Bible and Commandments differently there needs to be an arbitrator who decides how they are interpretted;- enter the Papacy/Church. With only these guiding Commandments and doctrines as a basis for "Christian society," we see now fundamental rights removed; namely freedom of religionand personal choice.

One of the benefits of being a Latter Day Saint is that I can reject anything the Catholic Church said or did as being non-Christian, since the Roman Catholic Church was a split-off or schism from the genuine Christian Church. Any atrocities it may have committed in the name of Christ are irrelevant.

> > That much being said, compare explicitly "Christian" governments and their conduct with explicitly "Muslim" governments and their conduct. As repellent as "Christian" governments have been, they have at least grown up in the past couple of centuries. I haven't heard of any mass-executions of "heretics" by the state Lutheran Church of Sweden lately, or in any Christian country for that matter. Contrast that with Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan (where slavery is still legal, as long as the slaves are Christian, BTW) and a host of others.

> A government claiming itself to be Muslim can well do so and remain within socially accepted "boundaries" if they wish,

"If they wish"? That's sort of the whole point. A government can call itself anything it wants to. If a government really, honestly tries to live by Islamic principles, the results are the same: Sudan, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

> and a government which does not - and chooses to interpret their religious book in a manner that causes them to act in unacceptable ways; or chooses to use this religion as a cover or excuse for unacceptable behavior - cannot be taken as the deffinitive example of a society following such-and-such religion.

"Unacceptable" to whom? Not to Muslims.

> There can be many different types of "Christian community," as there can with Muslim communities or states.

I agree with that: There are basically two types, in fact, of both--the hypocrites and the non-hypocrites. See above.

> You're the historian, but are you really going to say that the development of the Western World to a greater global economic powerbase (however you want to put that) is due to the employment of "Christian values,"

Indirectly, yes. To give two examples: In Islam, humans are created to "submit" to God. In Christianity, persons are of infinite worth. God gave his only Son to save human beings from their sins. The value of human beings was worth God's eternal self-sacrifice. So... if God is willing to sacrifice his own Son for my neighbour, then why am I denying my neighbour the right to vote? Such ideas were instrumental in establishing the concepts of human rights (we are "endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights" -- T.J.) and personal liberty. This is why the idea of personal freedom and human rights originated in Christian Europe, and nowhere else.

Another example: In Islam, the laws of nature and the world exist at Allah's suffrance, and God can change his mind about how things work. In Christianity, the universe is created according to divine law--it works according to a predetermined divine pattern, and it follows predictable courses. The concept of universal laws of nature was necessary to the invention of science as we know it--if the universe is operating under capricious, ever-changing whims of God, we can't hope to understand how it works or to conduct replicable experiments on it. But in Christian Europe, with the understanding that an unchanging and predictable God had created laws of nature that were equally unchanging and predictable, verifiable experiments were conducted and a scientific understanding of the universe emerged. This is why modern science originated in Christian Europe, and nowhere else.

> Just as there are thousands upon thousands of "variations on the Christian theme," each with their own "Christian" ideologies and often holding themselves up as the only "true" Christian faith; why can there not be similar shades and variations of Islam?

Of course there are! The question is, which ones are obviously hypocritical, and which ones are not? Just because some mass-murderer goes around calling himself a Christian or a Muslim, means nothing--until you search each religion's basic tenets and see how far away from them this fellow is. In Islam, Muhammad was a war leader who executed captives and raped their wives. In Christianity, Jesus gave himself up voluntarily to be killed, and rebuked the apostle Peter for trying to protect Christianity with the sword. Don't tell me you can't tell the difference.