Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it fast -- like the swinging of a sword and then the person is dead right away -- little pain?

Wow, you are sick.

That's how they do it in Saudi Arabia. I read a news article a while back where they interviewed on of the executioners. They also let children come help clean up the blood in the public square afterwards. The executioner they interviewed absolutely loved his job.

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

This is so incredibly FALSE. What about Umdat al Salik, the official Sunni manual of Sharia law? It is certified by al-Azhar and is the official Sharia manual of the Muslim Brotherhood. It also includes the slight differences of Sharia interpretation of the different madh'habs. The English translation, Reliance of the Traveller, however, does not include the section on slavery.

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed. They say it in the videos.

While Shariah law is left to interpretation, is not the Quran gods law, the unaltered and direct words of God, as written by Muhammed, a human being? at least it is supposed to be that until it is not convenient.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

It is not hard to figure out what is going on, even though many on this board are stuck in a politically correct dc view.

The only solution is to follow the money, stop the Saudi funding of terrorist schools that preach Wahabism and hate. Expand our energy resources and tax the oil from SA to sky high levels. And confirm the fundamental separation of church and state and equal rights for women. Let the ME rot in never ending moslem on moslem violence. We need to stay out of there. Obama had it right but caved in. Bombing from the sky is lunacy. Stop all immigration from ME. Stop all travel from SA at american airports. We need to be smart and fight this cancer with economic warfare.

"The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

With regard to the article, the problem as I see it is less the claims of infallibility of the Quran than the insistence that what it says is good for all times and all places--that is that the Quran is eternal and co-existent with God. This is what prevent s Muslims from saying--okay those verses seems antiquated relative to today's mores but they came in response to a very specific historical situation and can't really be applied more broadly than that.

The createdness of the Quran in seventh century Arabia (as opposed to from the beginning of time) was a mainstream theological view for a few centuries but eventually it lost out to theologians arguing for the co-eternity of the Quran with God. This is a desperately needed reform in Islam as it will allow everyone to distance themselves from the most problematic aspects of the Quran, just as Christians and Jews are able to distance themselves from the most problematic aspects of the Bible.

As for infallibility, Islam does need to reform itself on that as well. It would be fine and well to imagine there is somewhere in virtual space an infallible Quran, but real scholars (not the bottom of the class men who, much to their families' disappointment were not bright enough to study medicine, engineering, or science and so entered the school of religion at their local university--the only school that would accept them) need to come forward and point out how they Quran was assembled in Arabic and all the room for error and changes in wording inherent in that process.

This is just not true. Muslims do understand the context of the verses, when and why they were revealed, I mean really, you'd hope that the majority of Muslims do know this. Do you really think we are just a bunch of brainless sheep? Just because you refuse to understand that everything in the Quran has a context that you need to know to fully understand its verses, doesn't change this very basic fact of the Quran.

Yes, the Quran is timeless, infallible, that is our belief, you obviously do not believe that, it is your prerogative . It is your prerogative to interpret it but with due responsibility given the fact that we are dealing with a text that is 1400+ years old, written in a language that has changed in dialects over the years. Islam doesn't need a reform, Muslims do. Funny thing is, the Quran itself predicted this. It warns that those with a perverted heart will ignore the decisive foundational verses of the Quran, and manipulate the interpretive verses to promote discord and incorrect interpretations.

Here is the problem: If the Quran is eternal a phrase like "Kill unbelievers wherever you find them" becomes a dictate that is valid in all ages so someone like Baghdadi can exhort his followers to do so today in the name of the Quran. If the Quran is not eternal, that dictate is strictly limited to the early days of the Islamic expansion and what Baghdadi is doing is a heretical perversion of Islam. If it is eternal, you then have to defend the passage and tie yourself up into knots explaining why Baghdadi does not represent true Islam.

Of course, it is also true that ISIS is following its own particular view of what constitutes an unbeliever. There is plenty in the Quran to indicate that people of the book (Jews, Christians, Zorastrians--of which Yazidis are an offshoot--and certainly other Muslims) are not unbelievers.

With regard to infallibility, Muslims need to acknowledge the way the Quran was put together--on friable materials and in a Persian hand--means that the Quran as it is put together today most certainly is not exactly what Mohammed recited to his followers. And then there is the problem of discerning the meaning of words that are 1400 years old. Biblical scholars are in the constant process of re-evaluating what certain things in the Bible meant in the language of the time and this feeds into renewed understanding of its passages. Islam today is very closed to such a process and needs to open up, rather than saying this was all decided by theologians in the first 300 hundred years of Islam and not subject to further interpretation.

Your answers questions hint a profound ignorance of Islamic history and show your lack of knowledge of the Quran. Always baffles me to read people write paragraphs about Islam and lecture Muslims on things they have zero knowledge about. So let's decipher your message, and I'm only taking the time to do this, not for you, but other people who might read this while having no prior knowledge of Islam but your words that they can misconstrue as truth. Lets also start by saying, the basis of religion, Islam or otherwise is faith, not science or what you think is logical. Islam is a life choice and there is no compulsion to go into it.

From your first paragraph: No really, that's not how it works. Whether you like it or not, for Muslims the Quran is timeless. People of different times, different places, will understand it differently and there is in it something for each one of them. A verse that says "kill unbelievers" is not timeless since said verse is part of an entire paragraph that discusses why such verse was revealed and what needs to be done in that case. It is not a verse revealed to all mankind, how much sense would that make? Or else I guess the over 1 billion muslims who are not marching the streets killing unbelievers have all deviated from the Quran, we all failed but surely ISIS and Baghdadi got the message. It is particularly dishonest to quote a single verse from the Quran and scream "see I told you, they are barbaric". Why didn't you quote the verse before it? Or the one after it? So people can understand the context of that revelation? This is intellectual dishonesty, please stop. The Qur’an itself clarifies that certain commandments required certain circumstances. Heck, muslims were allowed at some point to drink alcoholic beverages, but this is no longer the case and the are many examples like this. If you study the Quran appropriately, you can never form the opinion that all the Quranic injunctions and guidance were practically binding on all Muslims for all times to come. This is just not true and make you sound ignorant.

Your 2nd paragraph: I don't know why you are bringing Persians into this but it is a historical truth that the text of the Quran as we know it today is, syllable for syllable, exactly the same as the prophet saw had recited to the Arabs 1400+years ago. When a verse was revealed , He would recite it, the companions would write it down and read it back to him, word for word. They would all recite the entire Quran. This went on for 23 years to give birth to what the Quran is today. But the miracle of it all, is that throughout 1400 years, muslims all over the world have memorized the Quran in its entirety and in arabic, Arabs and non-arabs alike. If you burn all copies of the Quran in the world today, it wouldn't make a difference, because it is preserved in the hearts of those who believe in it, and they can recite it word for word, dot after dot, all 6000 verses of it. So, yea, it is unchanged! Now when it comes to the interpretation of the verses, that's where we have fluidity, and this is why different Muslims sometimes believe different things. And this goes back to the Quran's timeless nature, people from different times, will understand it differently, heck people of the same time understand it differently. As early as the 12th century, scholars of Islam referred to the necessary “revival” (ihya) of “religious sciences”.The idea that faithfulness to Islam through history required a permanent effort of research, renewal and reform of though and of methodologies has been present in the world of Islam for centuries now. Scholars are having these conversations, on a daily basis, some dedicated their lives to studying classical arabic and the Quran for decades to better understand the text and what it means for people of our time. It is a shame that you didn't know this, perhaps a bit of research into the subject before writing an uninformed opinion would have helped!

The Bible has horrible dictates in it. Somehow we still manage to call it "The Good Book". I suggest we treat interpretation of the Koran with the same level of nuance that we give to the Bible.

Anonymous wrote:
With regard to infallibility, Muslims need to acknowledge the way the Quran was put together--on friable materials and in a Persian hand--means that the Quran as it is put together today most certainly is not exactly what Mohammed recited to his followers. And then there is the problem of discerning the meaning of words that are 1400 years old. Biblical scholars are in the constant process of re-evaluating what certain things in the Bible meant in the language of the time and this feeds into renewed understanding of its passages. Islam today is very closed to such a process and needs to open up, rather than saying this was all decided by theologians in the first 300 hundred years of Islam and not subject to further interpretation.

There are two amazing aspects to this paragraph: 1) that you presume to tell an entire religion what it "needs" to do; and 2) that much of what you say "needs" to happen is happening and that you are not aware of it.

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed. They say it in the videos.

While Shariah law is left to interpretation, is not the Quran gods law, the unaltered and direct words of God, as written by Muhammed, a human being? at least it is supposed to be that until it is not convenient.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

It is not hard to figure out what is going on, even though many on this board are stuck in a politically correct dc view.

The only solution is to follow the money, stop the Saudi funding of terrorist schools that preach Wahabism and hate. Expand our energy resources and tax the oil from SA to sky high levels. And confirm the fundamental separation of church and state and equal rights for women. Let the ME rot in never ending moslem on moslem violence. We need to stay out of there. Obama had it right but caved in. Bombing from the sky is lunacy. Stop all immigration from ME. Stop all travel from SA at american airports. We need to be smart and fight this cancer with economic warfare.

"The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

With regard to the article, the problem as I see it is less the claims of infallibility of the Quran than the insistence that what it says is good for all times and all places--that is that the Quran is eternal and co-existent with God. This is what prevent s Muslims from saying--okay those verses seems antiquated relative to today's mores but they came in response to a very specific historical situation and can't really be applied more broadly than that.

The createdness of the Quran in seventh century Arabia (as opposed to from the beginning of time) was a mainstream theological view for a few centuries but eventually it lost out to theologians arguing for the co-eternity of the Quran with God. This is a desperately needed reform in Islam as it will allow everyone to distance themselves from the most problematic aspects of the Quran, just as Christians and Jews are able to distance themselves from the most problematic aspects of the Bible.

As for infallibility, Islam does need to reform itself on that as well. It would be fine and well to imagine there is somewhere in virtual space an infallible Quran, but real scholars (not the bottom of the class men who, much to their families' disappointment were not bright enough to study medicine, engineering, or science and so entered the school of religion at their local university--the only school that would accept them) need to come forward and point out how they Quran was assembled in Arabic and all the room for error and changes in wording inherent in that process.

This is just not true. Muslims do understand the context of the verses, when and why they were revealed, I mean really, you'd hope that the majority of Muslims do know this. Do you really think we are just a bunch of brainless sheep? Just because you refuse to understand that everything in the Quran has a context that you need to know to fully understand its verses, doesn't change this very basic fact of the Quran.

Yes, the Quran is timeless, infallible, that is our belief, you obviously do not believe that, it is your prerogative . It is your prerogative to interpret it but with due responsibility given the fact that we are dealing with a text that is 1400+ years old, written in a language that has changed in dialects over the years. Islam doesn't need a reform, Muslims do. Funny thing is, the Quran itself predicted this. It warns that those with a perverted heart will ignore the decisive foundational verses of the Quran, and manipulate the interpretive verses to promote discord and incorrect interpretations.

Here is the problem: If the Quran is eternal a phrase like "Kill unbelievers wherever you find them" becomes a dictate that is valid in all ages so someone like Baghdadi can exhort his followers to do so today in the name of the Quran. If the Quran is not eternal, that dictate is strictly limited to the early days of the Islamic expansion and what Baghdadi is doing is a heretical perversion of Islam. If it is eternal, you then have to defend the passage and tie yourself up into knots explaining why Baghdadi does not represent true Islam.

Of course, it is also true that ISIS is following its own particular view of what constitutes an unbeliever. There is plenty in the Quran to indicate that people of the book (Jews, Christians, Zorastrians--of which Yazidis are an offshoot--and certainly other Muslims) are not unbelievers.

With regard to infallibility, Muslims need to acknowledge the way the Quran was put together--on friable materials and in a Persian hand--means that the Quran as it is put together today most certainly is not exactly what Mohammed recited to his followers. And then there is the problem of discerning the meaning of words that are 1400 years old. Biblical scholars are in the constant process of re-evaluating what certain things in the Bible meant in the language of the time and this feeds into renewed understanding of its passages. Islam today is very closed to such a process and needs to open up, rather than saying this was all decided by theologians in the first 300 hundred years of Islam and not subject to further interpretation.

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed. They say it in the videos.

While Shariah law is left to interpretation, is not the Quran gods law, the unaltered and direct words of God, as written by Muhammed, a human being? at least it is supposed to be that until it is not convenient.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

It is not hard to figure out what is going on, even though many on this board are stuck in a politically correct dc view.

The only solution is to follow the money, stop the Saudi funding of terrorist schools that preach Wahabism and hate. Expand our energy resources and tax the oil from SA to sky high levels. And confirm the fundamental separation of church and state and equal rights for women. Let the ME rot in never ending moslem on moslem violence. We need to stay out of there. Obama had it right but caved in. Bombing from the sky is lunacy. Stop all immigration from ME. Stop all travel from SA at american airports. We need to be smart and fight this cancer with economic warfare.

"The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

Correction: Muslims do not believe that the Quran was written by Mohamed saw. We believe that it is the Word of God revealed to the Prophet saw through the angel Gabriel. Fun fact, Prophet Mohamed saw was actually illiterate, he couldn't read nor write, so yeh he didn't write the Quran, moving on.....Those verses that you cited have been debated over and over again on this forum, explanations have been provided, context has been provided, no need to rehash them over and over.

And the article that you quoted is from a self-proclaimed Atheist Muslim who is advising Muslims to disassociate "Islamic identity from Muslim identity by coming together on a sense of community, not ideology". The inference from such a statement is that the Islamic Identity is attributable to those few verses of the Noble Quran that seems to call for violence against all nonMuslims. Out of more than 6,000 verses in the Quran, he cited the verses the so called radical Muslims act upon and he used a simplified rhetoric to give the notion that these verses sum up the entire Islamic identity. What he and so many fail to understand, is that for the Muslims who embrace and understand this religion, Islam has never been wrong, we do not need to drift away from this ideology, from our Islamic identities to be decent citizens. The problem is, people who do not have a sound understanding of the religion itself, its scripture, or half/selective understanding and interpretations. That is the real danger!

Now, as for you, saying "ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed", ISIS have successfully beaten you, their attempt at spreading fear has worked. You now think that they're greater in numbers than they are, and are a greater threat than they actually are. They have successfully "beheaded" you. Congratulations ISIS!

ah, just round one. a lunatic religion like Islam will eventually crumble. as more and more men take on the role of god, fractures and splits will occur. It is inevitable. And then they will fight each other to the death.

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed. They say it in the videos.

While Shariah law is left to interpretation, is not the Quran gods law, the unaltered and direct words of God, as written by Muhammed, a human being? at least it is supposed to be that until it is not convenient.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

It is not hard to figure out what is going on, even though many on this board are stuck in a politically correct dc view.

The only solution is to follow the money, stop the Saudi funding of terrorist schools that preach Wahabism and hate. Expand our energy resources and tax the oil from SA to sky high levels. And confirm the fundamental separation of church and state and equal rights for women. Let the ME rot in never ending moslem on moslem violence. We need to stay out of there. Obama had it right but caved in. Bombing from the sky is lunacy. Stop all immigration from ME. Stop all travel from SA at american airports. We need to be smart and fight this cancer with economic warfare.

"The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

Correction: Muslims do not believe that the Quran was written by Mohamed saw. We believe that it is the Word of God revealed to the Prophet saw through the angel Gabriel. Fun fact, Prophet Mohamed saw was actually illiterate, he couldn't read nor write, so yeh he didn't write the Quran, moving on.....Those verses that you cited have been debated over and over again on this forum, explanations have been provided, context has been provided, no need to rehash them over and over.

And the article that you quoted is from a self-proclaimed Atheist Muslim who is advising Muslims to disassociate "Islamic identity from Muslim identity by coming together on a sense of community, not ideology". The inference from such a statement is that the Islamic Identity is attributable to those few verses of the Noble Quran that seems to call for violence against all nonMuslims. Out of more than 6,000 verses in the Quran, he cited the verses the so called radical Muslims act upon and he used a simplified rhetoric to give the notion that these verses sum up the entire Islamic identity. What he and so many fail to understand, is that for the Muslims who embrace and understand this religion, Islam has never been wrong, we do not need to drift away from this ideology, from our Islamic identities to be decent citizens. The problem is, people who do not have a sound understanding of the religion itself, its scripture, or half/selective understanding and interpretations. That is the real danger!

Now, as for you, saying "ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed", ISIS have successfully beaten you, their attempt at spreading fear has worked. You now think that they're greater in numbers than they are, and are a greater threat than they actually are. They have successfully "beheaded" you. Congratulations ISIS!

He said you would respond in one of 4 ways .....

(3) The Muslim responds by defending these verses as Allah's word -- he insists that they have been quoted "out of context," have been misinterpreted, are meant as metaphor, or that they may even have been mistranslated.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed. They say it in the videos.

While Shariah law is left to interpretation, is not the Quran gods law, the unaltered and direct words of God, as written by Muhammed, a human being? at least it is supposed to be that until it is not convenient.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

It is not hard to figure out what is going on, even though many on this board are stuck in a politically correct dc view.

The only solution is to follow the money, stop the Saudi funding of terrorist schools that preach Wahabism and hate. Expand our energy resources and tax the oil from SA to sky high levels. And confirm the fundamental separation of church and state and equal rights for women. Let the ME rot in never ending moslem on moslem violence. We need to stay out of there. Obama had it right but caved in. Bombing from the sky is lunacy. Stop all immigration from ME. Stop all travel from SA at american airports. We need to be smart and fight this cancer with economic warfare.

"The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

With regard to the article, the problem as I see it is less the claims of infallibility of the Quran than the insistence that what it says is good for all times and all places--that is that the Quran is eternal and co-existent with God. This is what prevent s Muslims from saying--okay those verses seems antiquated relative to today's mores but they came in response to a very specific historical situation and can't really be applied more broadly than that.

The createdness of the Quran in seventh century Arabia (as opposed to from the beginning of time) was a mainstream theological view for a few centuries but eventually it lost out to theologians arguing for the co-eternity of the Quran with God. This is a desperately needed reform in Islam as it will allow everyone to distance themselves from the most problematic aspects of the Quran, just as Christians and Jews are able to distance themselves from the most problematic aspects of the Bible.

As for infallibility, Islam does need to reform itself on that as well. It would be fine and well to imagine there is somewhere in virtual space an infallible Quran, but real scholars (not the bottom of the class men who, much to their families' disappointment were not bright enough to study medicine, engineering, or science and so entered the school of religion at their local university--the only school that would accept them) need to come forward and point out how they Quran was assembled in Arabic and all the room for error and changes in wording inherent in that process.

This is just not true. Muslims do understand the context of the verses, when and why they were revealed, I mean really, you'd hope that the majority of Muslims do know this. Do you really think we are just a bunch of brainless sheep? Just because you refuse to understand that everything in the Quran has a context that you need to know to fully understand its verses, doesn't change this very basic fact of the Quran.

Yes, the Quran is timeless, infallible, that is our belief, you obviously do not believe that, it is your prerogative . It is your prerogative to interpret it but with due responsibility given the fact that we are dealing with a text that is 1400+ years old, written in a language that has changed in dialects over the years. Islam doesn't need a reform, Muslims do. Funny thing is, the Quran itself predicted this. It warns that those with a perverted heart will ignore the decisive foundational verses of the Quran, and manipulate the interpretive verses to promote discord and incorrect interpretations.

Anonymous wrote:Is it fast -- like the swinging of a sword and then the person is dead right away -- little pain?

Wow, you are sick.

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed. They say it in the videos.

While Shariah law is left to interpretation, is not the Quran gods law, the unaltered and direct words of God, as written by Muhammed, a human being? at least it is supposed to be that until it is not convenient.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

It is not hard to figure out what is going on, even though many on this board are stuck in a politically correct dc view.

The only solution is to follow the money, stop the Saudi funding of terrorist schools that preach Wahabism and hate. Expand our energy resources and tax the oil from SA to sky high levels. And confirm the fundamental separation of church and state and equal rights for women. Let the ME rot in never ending moslem on moslem violence. We need to stay out of there. Obama had it right but caved in. Bombing from the sky is lunacy. Stop all immigration from ME. Stop all travel from SA at american airports. We need to be smart and fight this cancer with economic warfare.

"The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

With regard to the article, the problem as I see it is less the claims of infallibility of the Quran than the insistence that what it says is good for all times and all places--that is that the Quran is eternal and co-existent with God. This is what prevent s Muslims from saying--okay those verses seems antiquated relative to today's mores but they came in response to a very specific historical situation and can't really be applied more broadly than that.

The createdness of the Quran in seventh century Arabia (as opposed to from the beginning of time) was a mainstream theological view for a few centuries but eventually it lost out to theologians arguing for the co-eternity of the Quran with God. This is a desperately needed reform in Islam as it will allow everyone to distance themselves from the most problematic aspects of the Quran, just as Christians and Jews are able to distance themselves from the most problematic aspects of the Bible.

As for infallibility, Islam does need to reform itself on that as well. It would be fine and well to imagine there is somewhere in virtual space an infallible Quran, but real scholars (not the bottom of the class men who, much to their families' disappointment were not bright enough to study medicine, engineering, or science and so entered the school of religion at their local university--the only school that would accept them) need to come forward and point out how they Quran was assembled in Arabic and all the room for error and changes in wording inherent in that process.

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed. They say it in the videos.

While Shariah law is left to interpretation, is not the Quran gods law, the unaltered and direct words of God, as written by Muhammed, a human being? at least it is supposed to be that until it is not convenient.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

It is not hard to figure out what is going on, even though many on this board are stuck in a politically correct dc view.

The only solution is to follow the money, stop the Saudi funding of terrorist schools that preach Wahabism and hate. Expand our energy resources and tax the oil from SA to sky high levels. And confirm the fundamental separation of church and state and equal rights for women. Let the ME rot in never ending moslem on moslem violence. We need to stay out of there. Obama had it right but caved in. Bombing from the sky is lunacy. Stop all immigration from ME. Stop all travel from SA at american airports. We need to be smart and fight this cancer with economic warfare.

"The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

Correction: Muslims do not believe that the Quran was written by Mohamed saw. We believe that it is the Word of God revealed to the Prophet saw through the angel Gabriel. Fun fact, Prophet Mohamed saw was actually illiterate, he couldn't read nor write, so yeh he didn't write the Quran, moving on.....Those verses that you cited have been debated over and over again on this forum, explanations have been provided, context has been provided, no need to rehash them over and over.

And the article that you quoted is from a self-proclaimed Atheist Muslim who is advising Muslims to disassociate "Islamic identity from Muslim identity by coming together on a sense of community, not ideology". The inference from such a statement is that the Islamic Identity is attributable to those few verses of the Noble Quran that seems to call for violence against all nonMuslims. Out of more than 6,000 verses in the Quran, he cited the verses the so called radical Muslims act upon and he used a simplified rhetoric to give the notion that these verses sum up the entire Islamic identity. What he and so many fail to understand, is that for the Muslims who embrace and understand this religion, Islam has never been wrong, we do not need to drift away from this ideology, from our Islamic identities to be decent citizens. The problem is, people who do not have a sound understanding of the religion itself, its scripture, or half/selective understanding and interpretations. That is the real danger!

Now, as for you, saying "ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed", ISIS have successfully beaten you, their attempt at spreading fear has worked. You now think that they're greater in numbers than they are, and are a greater threat than they actually are. They have successfully "beheaded" you. Congratulations ISIS!

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

A fantastic article, I beg all Muslims to read.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

Muslima wrote: I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....

ISIS beheads their victims because they are following the Quran and Mohammed. They say it in the videos.

While Shariah law is left to interpretation, is not the Quran gods law, the unaltered and direct words of God, as written by Muhammed, a human being? at least it is supposed to be that until it is not convenient.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

It is not hard to figure out what is going on, even though many on this board are stuck in a politically correct dc view.

The only solution is to follow the money, stop the Saudi funding of terrorist schools that preach Wahabism and hate. Expand our energy resources and tax the oil from SA to sky high levels. And confirm the fundamental separation of church and state and equal rights for women. Let the ME rot in never ending moslem on moslem violence. We need to stay out of there. Obama had it right but caved in. Bombing from the sky is lunacy. Stop all immigration from ME. Stop all travel from SA at american airports. We need to be smart and fight this cancer with economic warfare.

"The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive. Many of you believe that letting it go is as good as calling yourself non-Muslim. I get that. But does it have to be that way?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html

I recently stumbled on an excerpt of aTED talk by Lesley Hazleton: A "tourist" reads the Koran". I think it sums up very well most misunderstandings that people have about the Quran. I haven't watched the full talk yet which is about 90minutes but will definitely do so. I for one, appreciated the sincerity, and humor in her approach. Here's the excerpt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2Or0LlO6g#t=560
Now, as far as Shariah law is concerned, it is fluid and decentralized.The Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf commented that ‘reducing Shariah down to the punishments is like reducing the US judicial system down to the electric chair’. Any scholar with enough years of study can issue a fatwa (opinion) and it is not binding on anyone other than the one who chooses to follow it. Shariah considers context, time and place in its rulings. It is not uniform, what is considered an obligation/binding on one person may be prohibited for another. Rulings are made on a case-by-case basis. The principles behind Shariah remain the same but the applications are widely varied depending on a lot of different things including time, place, ect. The only people who attempted to formalize and codify shariah were the British with their colonies when they created the ‘Anglo-Muhammadan Law’ in an attempt to better control the law . Because of the very nature of Shariah law, a simplistic comparison to other legal systems will for the most part always be misleading. In fact, most Muslims have a very basic understanding of Shariah law, and that is another problem as well.....