Cafael Dust wrote:There is no Islam, there are only people who practice Islam as a set of teachings, as part of a society, as culture, Koran etc. The sentence 'Islam considers' is meaningless.
So you say.
Try telling a Moslem that....
The religion has no centralised authority in the same way as, say, Catholicism.
Your point being?
But I know people are going to trot out the same tired stereotypes and see their mental images of scimitar-wielding, turban wearing fanatics and suicide bombers.
Again, what's your point?
Where has anyone done that?
You're inserting irelevant prejudices here....
I was reading an account by some Christians in... where was it? Syria or some Muslim country, and they'd converted to Christianity from Islam thirty years ago or so, and they were saying 'I don't understand, we converted and there was no bad word spoken against us?'.
Find it. We'll discuss it.
Until then, this is unfounded hearsay, and of no relevance to this discourse....
Agreed, it's punishable by death in several countries, but that doesn't mean said law represents the whole of Islam,
I'm afraid I think you'll find it does, certainly on an ever-increasing scale.....
The acid test of pluralism is conversion — the freedom to join a religious community or leave it. Yet across the Islamic world Muslims are either nervous about conversion or adamantly opposed to it.
“Soft” Muslim countries still have some pretty hard laws. For instance, tolerant Dubai has its limits in this respect: non-Muslims are free to pray as they wish, to build churches and temples, but trying to convert Muslims is a criminal offence. In Malaysia, changing religion used to be a formality, just requiring registration; now Sharia courts intervene to stop anybody from leaving Islam
any more than you can say all Buddhists believe that this age is too corrupt for people to be enlightened in, or that women can't teach, or another of the oddball notions.
Well, nobody here has ever said that, so this is pure trivia and not relevant.
Grasping at straws will get you nowhere....