Which More Violent: Bible or Quran?

[sr71plt]

Yep, srgreene is pretty mealy mouthed about the appearance of violence and mass killing in the Bible.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Nowhere? Try Kings 1. Elijah exhorted his people to kill 450 priests of Baal who unarmed, were inoffensively pursuing their own faith and just trying to make it rain.

And yet Elijah never had the people kill the 400 priests of Asherah who were also present. Ever wondered why?

There were a lot of third person passages such as that, where God ordered the Israelites to kill people. That was always in the third person, and reads more like a history book. The Koran is written more in the second person, where individual readers or listeners are ordered to kill infidels, etc.

 

[JackLuis]

Neither book is particularly relevant to a 21st Century intellectual actually. The OT is a relic of the bronze age and the Q is not much more modern.

Face it the last five Presidents are all guilty of War Crimes and Ronnie was too. That is a modern fact!

Whining about the Bible or the Quran is like bitching about The Philippine Insurrection of 1903. Over and done, irrelevant to modern man.

But go ahead and bitch, it's a Constitutional Right.

 

[magicalmoments]

Which is the most violent set of fairy tales? I'm going with the brothers Grimm, far more violent than the other contenders and a lot more believable to boot.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Which is the most violent set of fairy tales? I'm going with the brothers Grimm, far more violent than the other contenders and a lot more believable to boot.

And they're sanitized. Go back not too far and it was all blood and guts and paens to blood and slaughter. Read The a Song of Roland or the Morte d'Arthur or those welsh legends and oh wow. And Christianity has got to be one of the few religions around that perpetuates ritual cannibalizm. Now THERE is a prehistoric rite.

 

[srgreene]

Nowhere? Try Kings 1. Elijah exhorted his people to kill 450 priests of Baal who unarmed, were inoffensively pursuing their own faith and just trying to make it rain.

And yet Elijah never had the people kill the 400 priests of Asherah who were also present. Ever wondered why?

ishtat-

Perhaps I could have developed my message better, but I think you have failed to read it carefully. Certainly the ancient Jews had a bloody history.. As a Christian, I believe God's plan for us is to more toward a higher plane over time.

Allow me to point out that the example you cite is one in which the Prophet Elijah issued a command based on Yahweh's admonition while guiding the people of Israel. The command to kill the priests of Baal at a particular time did not, however, come from Yahweh Himself.

But you fail to grasp the distinction between the violence so common in the history of ancient Israel. The Israelites were commanded to a specific people at a particular moment in time. It manifestly is not a general admonition to kill the infidel in all places, throughout time as in the Koran. It is the general admonition, unbounded by place or time, to kill that is so horrific about the Koran. Whether or not the Bible may, as the OP indicated, contain more violent passages than the Koran is irrelevant.

May you learn to read with a more nuanced understanding.

 

[srgreene]

Ooo, ouch. Hit a nerve did I?

More of your vapid commentary and self-flattery.. But no, while the general subject is of interest to me, your comments are not.

 

[srgreene]

Neither book is particularly relevant to a 21st Century intellectual actually. The OT is a relic of the bronze age and the Q is not much more modern.

Face it the last five Presidents are all guilty of War Crimes and Ronnie was too. That is a modern fact!

Whining about the Bible or the Quran is like bitching about The Philippine Insurrection of 1903. Over and done, irrelevant to modern man.

But go ahead and bitch, it's a Constitutional Right.

What war crimes was Ronald Reagan guilty of?

Nevertheless, I am sorry that the salvation that Jesus Christ has made available to humanity seems to you to be not particularly relevant, There are some eternal themes, Jack.

 

[JackLuis]

What war crimes was Ronald Reagan guilty of?

Nevertheless, I am sorry that the salvation that Jesus Christ has made available to humanity seems to you to be not particularly relevant, There are some eternal themes, Jack.

Reagan and the Iran-Contras, Honduras, was a criminal act. Ignoring the Bolland Amendment was illegal.

I'm a fan of JC's teachings but not of the Church's perversion of his teachings.

 

[sr71plt]

Nevertheless, I am sorry that the salvation that Jesus Christ has made available to humanity seems to you to be not particularly relevant, There are some eternal themes, Jack.

Umm. It was actually Paul who got the Christian church formed. You might do some more reading on the origins of the Christian movement.

 

[Hypoxia]

Which is the most violent set of fairy tales? I'm going with the brothers Grimm, far more violent than the other contenders and a lot more believable to boot.

The Grimms weren't insane enough, and I doubt their tales were meant to be believed and acted upon. Insane serious holy works drive insane behavior. And holy works (told or inspired by a potent deity or three) must be heeded by believers, lest the slackers be sent off to eternal torment.

Forget the quantity of violence. Does the quality of insanity differ much between the Quran and biblical texts? I've not studied Q so I can't say. But I've read many versions of both canonical and non-canonical biblical texts, and they're pretty nutz. Q, a strung-together pile of Mohammad's dictated tweets, might have difficulty reaching that level of psychic impairment.

 

[colddiesel]

were this

 

[phrodeau]

What war crimes was Ronald Reagan guilty of?

Nevertheless, I am sorry that the salvation that Jesus Christ has made available to humanity seems to you to be not particularly relevant, There are some eternal themes, Jack.

Eternal? Nobody cared about personal salvation until Jesus started selling it.

 

[dan_c00000]

What war crimes was Ronald Reagan guilty of?

Him and his buddies sold arms to Iran to fund Contra killing squads that murdered children and nuns.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Eternal? Nobody cared about personal salvation until Jesus started selling it.

That's what males him so popular. Previous to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam paradise was for the rich and powerful. Judaism offers it to ALL Jews. Christianity to the meek and Islam to true believers. Women and slaves were the first mass converts to Christianity.

 

[PrincepsCyberius]

The Sword Verse (ayat as-sayf) is the fifth verse of the ninth sura (Surat at-Tawbah, or ) of the Qur'an[1][1] (also written as 9:5). It is a Qur'anic verse widely cited by critics of Islam to suggest the faith promotes violence against "pagans" ("idolators", mushrikun), by isolating the portion of the verse "fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them" ( fa-uq'tulū l-mush'rikīna ḥaythu wajadttumūhum فَاقْتُلُوا الْمُشْرِكِينَ حَيْثُ وَجَدْتُمُوهُمْ ; trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali).[citation needed] The next immediate verse (often excluded from quotes) appears to present a conditional reprieve within the statement: "if any of the idolaters seeks of thee protection, grant him protection till he hears the words of God; then do thou convey him to his place of security -- that, because they are a people who do not know."[2]

Qur’anic exegetes al-Baydawi and al-Alusi explain that it refers to those pagan Arabs who violated their peace treaties by waging war against the Muslims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_Verse

According to several mainstream Islamic scholars, the verse relates to a specific event in Islamic history -- namely that Arabian pagans made and broke a covenant with Arabic Muslims. The verses immediately preceding and following 9:5, 9:4 and 9:6, make the context very clear: Only those pagans who broke the covenant were subject to violent repercussions, so that any pagans who honoured the covenant or repented their betrayal were to be spared.

It was these hardened polytheists in Arabia, who would accept nothing other than the expulsion of the Muslims or their reversion to paganism, and who repeatedly broke their treaties, that the Muslims were ordered to treat in the same way – to fight them or expel them. Even with such an enemy Muslims were not simply ordered to pounce on them and reciprocate by breaking the treaty themselves; instead, an ultimatum was issued, giving the enemy notice, that after the four sacred months mentioned in 9:5 above, the Muslims would wage war on them. The main clause of the sentence ‘kill the polytheists’ is singled out by some Western scholars to represent the Islamic attitude to war; even some Muslims take this view and allege that this verse abrogated other verses on war. This is pure fantasy, isolating and decontextualising a small part of a sentence. The full picture is given in 9:1–15, which gives many reasons for the order to fight such polytheists. They continuously broke their agreements and aided others against the Muslims, they started hostilities against the Muslims, barred others from becoming Muslims, expelled Muslims from the Holy Mosque and even from their own homes. At least eight times the passage mentions their misdeeds against the Muslims. Consistent with restrictions on war elsewhere in the Qur’an, the immediate context of this ‘Sword Verse’ exempts such polytheists as do not break their agreements and who keep the peace with the Muslims (9:7). It orders that those enemies seeking safe conduct should be protected and delivered to the place of safety they seek (9:6). The whole of this context to v.5, with all its restrictions, is ignored by those who simply isolate one part of a sentence to build their theory of war in Islam on what is termed ‘The Sword Verse’ even when the word ‘sword’ does not occur anywhere in the Qur’an.

Well written, but a bit of a straw man argument, don't you think?

First, you base your arguments entirely on interpretations of S.9 A.1-15. Nowhere in my arguments do I cite any of those passages. I point out instead that the Qur’ān directs “the Believers” to “vanquish... the Unbelievers” by merciless conquest (S.8 A.65-67) until "the Last Day" (S.9 A.29). That bit about until the Last Day is the point. Unlike in the Bible, the violent conquest commanded by the Qur’ān is perpetual until either there are no "Unbeleivers" or until the end of time.

Second, you ignore what to me is the more important issue:

...

We do not have Christian entities setting up aggressive theocratic states where they are executing people for practicing witchcraft, cursing their parents, taking the Lord's name in vain, or even for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. On the other hand, we do have Muslim entities setting up aggressive theocratic states where they are executing people under the parts of the Qur’ān I quoted above (and others). That is the worry.