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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]I am as liberal as you can get, and [b]I do not defend Islam[/b].  I agree with Sam Harris that Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas.  No matter how you turn it, the basic principles of Islam are not those of a tolerant religion.

[b]I don't defend fundamentalist Christianity[/b] either.  Both religions have, at their very base, very bad ideas.  That doesn't mean that you can't water them down, edit them or ignore the ideas/commandments that you don't like and consider yourself a member of that religion.

What it does mean is that, with very little effort, you can find in both religious texts plenty of justification to enslave, murder or obliterate anyone that disrespects you.[/quote]

Why do you qualify Christianity in a manner that you don't for Islam?
[/quote]

I'm not that poster, but I could have written that post. I think fundamentalist Christianity is intolerant in a way that's inconsistent with a straight reading of the gospels. Jesus never talked about homosexuals, he encouraged Martha to leave the kitchen and come hear his teachings, and so on. Fundamentalist Christianity relies on Old Testament attitudes towards women and gays that I consider the gospels to have abandoned at the same time they abandoned dietary laws. Also, the gospels are all about avoiding war, loving your enemy, and so on. I've read the Quran from front to back (in translation, but no help for that), and I saw very different messages about the umma versus everybody else.[/quote]

So, you are saying that there is no version of Islam that you would ever defend? You and I have had this discussion a number of times and it is pretty useless to repeat everything. But, I am still astonished that you put so much faith in something you have read while ignoring actual practices (which includes how those words are interpreted by believers of the religion). As your distinction between "fundamentalist Christians" and non-fundamentalist Christians shows, two groups can read the same words but practice what they read much differently. I'm surprised that you can't acknowledge that the same is true of Islam.
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It's tougher with the Quran, which is God's literal word transmitted to Mohammed by the angel. You know that.[/quote]

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