Does Islam Promote Violence?

For most Americans, Islam was a religion that lived on the periphery of their lives, a culture they caught glimpses of in movies and television shows. Then came the tragic events of 9/11, and suddenly the Western world was desperately grasping to understand a religion they knew precious little about. With all the questions swirling around the true nature of Islam, none has been asked more than this: Does Islam promote violence?

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The Qur’an Promotes Violence

- From Jihad Watch

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whole sura

before judging you should read each verse (ayah) in the context.
One should not separate a comment from its context because it may be connected with other sentences meaningly.

To study the whole sura (Ultimatum) you can follow the link below:

http://www.efarsi.org/quran/sura9.htm

- lili August 3, 2008 12:18AM

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NO NIT-PICKING

This is the equivalent of taking specific passages from the Bible, like in Samuel 15:1 thru 15:34 (where the events that happened can only be described as genocide carried out in God's name), and saying that the Bible promotes ruthless violence.

Islamic terrorists represent all of Islam as much as Fred Phelps and his church represent all of Christianity.

- NCHammer326 September 3, 2008 8:53PM

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Both the Bible and the Koran can be used to justify violence.

Both the Bible and the Koran can be and have been used to justify violence and cruelty. There is no getting round this. All can be faulted in this way. It is only when people of all religious persuasions renounce violence that we can hope for any lasting peace.

- Michael Glass December 6, 2008 10:34PM

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- God never promotes violence against innocents.
  
  In the Christian and Jewish scriptures God is never found giving a command to kill innocents and the righteous. God never commands to kill others just simply because they don't believe Him.
  
  Please read the Bible throughly. God only commanded the destruction of peoples who totally abandoned morality and righteousness. Those nations that the nation of Israel was commanded to destroy were nations that sacrificed their children to the fire in worship of demon gods or gave themselves over to every kind of debasing form of lust.
  
  God tells Abraham that his decendents will go into captivity in Egypt hundreds of years before it happens, when He tells him, God also reveals to Abraham how the sins of the Amorites are not enough for God to judge them.
  
  Genesis 15:13-16 (ESV) "13 Then the Lord said to Abram, 'Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs [Egypt] and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
  
  However, the god of Islam, "allah" is not the same god of the Jews and Christians. Mohammad progressively moves toward a more aggressive stance and after being rejected as a prophet by the Jews, becomes enraged with pure evil and hatred, thereby commanding all his followers to kill anyone who won't convert to Islam.
  
  - michaelz January 6, 2009 1:30PM
  
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  - What never?
    
    Michael Z says:
    
    "In the Christian and Jewish scriptures God is never found giving a command to kill innocents and the righteous. God never commands to kill others just simply because they don't believe Him."
    
    If there is ONE incident in the whole of the Bible where God or the LORD commands indiscriminate slaughter then this statement is demonstrably false.
    
    - Michael Glass January 6, 2009 10:27PM
    
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    - Yes, Never.
      
      I'm sure you don't agree with what I'm about to say, but that's OK with me because it's not my opinion, but God's truth.
      
      All humans are guilty. There are no true innocents. There are only degrees of sinners. We're all sinners. We all fall short of God's holy and righteous glory.
      
      [Psalm 51:5 ESV] "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." -King David of Israel. (He doesn't mean he was born from an illegitimate relationship)
      
      [Romans 3:10 ESV] - "as it is written: 'None is righteous, no, not one;'"
      
      [Ezekiel 33:13 ESV] - "'Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die."
      
      God's standards are high and He expects us to be perfect, so that's why He had to come to us Himself as the Son, Jesus Christ, and satisfy His own standard for righteousness in our stead, and died in our place.
      
      This is the grace and mercy of the true God, not Islam's. Islam's god wants you to meet a standard and if not your dead. Too bad for you. There is no plan by Islam's god for a substitute Redeemer.
      
      No so with the true God. However, people love their self-righteousness and sins and so they hate Jesus Christ, because they have to live honestly and truthfully; confessing their sins openly.
      
      - michaelz January 7, 2009 7:06AM
      
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      - Examples of indiscriminate slaughter in the Bible.
        
        The command for the slaughter of men, women, children and babies in Ai:
        
        "Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Do not fear or be dismayed: take all the fighting men with you, and go up now to Ai. I have handed over to you the king of Ai with his people, his city, and his land. You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king;" Joshua 8:2
        
        So what did they do to Jericho?
        
        "Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys." Joshua 6:21.
        
        Jericho and Ai are two examples of genocide by order of the LORD. It is texts like this that explain why a crazy like Baruch Goldstein went on a rampage of killing in modern-day Israel.
        
        Is the Koran any better? Of course not! That is why I stated that both the Bible and the Koran can be used and have been used to promote violence.
        
        - Michael Glass January 8, 2009 7:37AM
        
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        Do some deeper research.
        
        Michael Glass,
        
        You should really do some deeper research into the practices of the people of Jericho and Ai.
        
        Let me give you some questions to ask and research.
        
        Did they (people of Jericho and Ai) do likewise to the peoples around them? Did they go out and wipe out villages indiscriminately? Was God repaying them for the same evil they perpetrated on others?
        
        You are jumping to conclusions without doing the fact finding.
        
        What if in the future people said that the English and the rest of the Allies were perpetrators of violence and evil on Europe and the Germans during the 1940's. Ignoring the fact that Hitler and his Reich were murdering millions of Jews in ovens, and dropping bombs on England.
        
        - michaelz January 8, 2009 9:05AM
        
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        Your argument falls down
        
        Even if the men and women of Jericho and Ai slaughter their neighbours, does this justify genocide?
        
        If there is evidence that they behaved just as badly towards their neighbours, does this justify the indiscriminate slaughter of children?
        
        You made the claim that God never promotes violence against innocents. I gave two instances of the slaughter of children as part of an act of genocide when the ancient Israelites invaded the promised land and dispossessed the people who lived there. These two instances occurred, we are told, because the LORD told them to do it. Now you mightn't like me calling it genocide. You might quibble about who was innocent and what this means. However, there is no getting around the text that the LORD ordered the mass slaughter of the people of Jericho and Ai.
        
        I put it to you that your statement about God never promoting violence against innocents is either false, or it is a trick, as no-one is really innocent. Or, maybe, you would argue that God and the LORD are not the same.
        
        Once more I state that both the Bible and the Koran can be used and have been used to promote violence.
        
        - Michael Glass January 8, 2009 3:35PM
        
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