tygerland.net

In response to this paragraph from blogger neanderpundit: -

Open a Bible. Pretty much any bible will do,I like this one but evenm a Gideon will work fine. Go to the new testament. Look at the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In those gospels lie the core messages of Christianity. Read them. Use a pencil to underline the places where Jesus tells his followers to kill someone. (or for that matter do harm to someone, or do anything but love them) You won’t NEED a pencil, because he never does. But go ahead and search anyway.

Now. Get a Koran. What’s best is to find one that is a direct translation of the original, but again, any one will do. Find the places where Mahomet tells his followers to kill someone or enslave them or do harm to them or force them to submission. There are plenty. Then try to put them into any good context. Go ahead, try.

Neanderpundit is deliberately narrowing the scope of the reader by insisting the reader concentrates on the Gospels, when indeed the purist word of God is found in the Old Testament – what has OG got to hide? Can he not reconcile his argument with the whole of the Bible? Why the need to compare one narrow passage with the whole of the Koran?

The regression of the Muslim faith can be traced to the emergence of Wahhabism in the 1700’s. The Islamic World had moved beyond the literal word of the Koran, and had become much more enlightened than the pre-renaissance Christian dogma.

This is the problem. As Christianity was rediscovering Classical philosophy (pre-Christian), which let’s be honest was the real thrust of the Renaissance (not some Rome-led enlightenment); religion in the Islamic World’s cradle (the Gulf) was lurching backwards.

Christians like to portray that their faith is somehow superior to Islam because of its tolerance and liberalism, but it was not the Church that led this evolution, the Renaissance was in truth, an affront to both Catholicism and Puritanism. As we have seen, particularly, in the Southern States of the U.S., Christianity is a natural enemy of individual liberty and tolerance, seeking to curb freedoms and dictate legislature.

Wahhabism sought to free Islam of the progress it had made, looking to rediscover a more pure, literal, incarnation of their faith. This abdication of reality is little different to the Evangelical Church, which concentrates much of its dogma around the Old Testament – no less dangerous than the Koran.

What makes us different from the radicals in Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East is our cultural secularism and tolerance, not our faith. Every freedom and liberty we enjoy was won against the conservatism and intolerance of the church – the current benevolence of the church indicates its emasculation at the hands of secular liberals, not its natural compassion. Do not confuse the liberties of the liberal democracy with Christianity.

This is not an argument about Christianity vs. Islam. This is an argument between the liberal democracy and the darkness and intolerance of Abrahamic religion.