"And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers]... but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah."

Quran (2:191-193)

No this does not exclude entry but merely points out Muslims should not force conversions and so no it is not written that they should.

This is Surat al baqarah and is used in the context of the tribes of banu quraish whom were attacking the Muslims and therefore they were allowed to defend and it is actually an ayat stating that you should fight persecution

I have on fact memorised the first five ayat/lines of this chapter as well as all the one before and a few small ones from the back of the nook

*book

bo_sox, like most Qu'ranic quotations you find on the internet designed to paint Islam as an irredeemably evil and violent religion, this quote has been extremely "edited". In full, that section says:
"190 Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors.
191 And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.
192 But if they desist, then lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
193 And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against wrong-doers."

I'm not some other ignorant person I'm actually in academia and know the religion really well and can recite much of the Quran as well as an able to read Arabic language just not translate it perfectly without help from my Muslim friend

And that goes back to my point of repentance.

Well done Tolstoy this is actually one of the only correct posts I have seen on here

I would strongly recommend checking any Qu'ranic "quotes" you read with one of the good English-language translations to be sure of its accuracy and completeness. Many such "quotes" will leave out or deliberately mistranslate key words to give the text a completely different meaning from what is actually written. Pickthall is my favorite English translation (it sounds very old and KJV-ish):
http://sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/

Also I'm available with my extensive knowledge and fully translated Quran from Saudi Arabia with the sultan's authoritative stamp I did cross reference it though.

The Quran does also root for the Christians when they clash with Persia so it obviously can't be all for ' Christians suck' lets convert them'

Surat 17 al-isra

About a quarter of the way through

"Not.About.Religion.

When a person kills a soldier for invading and killing people in his home.

Christians, Atheists, and Muslims are all equally capable of being human and investing in hate."

I'm pretty sure it isn't confirmed that either of the two men are from anywhere currently occupied by British troops. In fact, all the sources I have seen claim they had 'London accents'. The only thing they DO have in common with the people in countries occupied by British troops is their religion. I would say that makes it at least partially about religion.

Every human is capable of investing hate, but the amount of killing carried out *in the name of atheism* is a comparative drop in the ocean (if it has occurred at all which isn't by any means clear).

The fact is that by the very nature of such holy books, no-one's interpretation is superior to another. You can squeeze virtually anything out of them because they're so contradictory, confusing and hole-ridden (unsurprising once you know their textual and compositional history). This means that those two men's interpretation is no further from being correct than a moderate interpretation. The fact is, passive support is given to such actions by the bulk of moderates whether they like it or not, whether they condone it or not. If they'd been killing in the name of the Martians because of the invasion of the Curiosity Rover there'd be no debate at all, they'd simply be labelled as madmen and locked away.

Protest is protest. In the UK we have a right to peaceful protest. Protests like this are not acceptable and not defensible. Did anyone see the interview on the BBC with Anjem Choudary? He believes that it's the British government's fault that soldier was hacked to death by two mad cowards in broad daylight. He won't accept it has anything to do with the religion he espouses.

It isn't really religion what he is looking for us really pacifism and is using his religion to cause controversy and possibly an even bigger effect.

But yes if they were doing it for Martians they would be in a rubber room

I am not saying Islam had a clean record but find me a religion that does I'm merely saying it isn't a very bad one with forced conversions or any massive amounts of violence which has not been increased by media

Also earlier someone talked about jihad which is actually a strive for righteousness as opposed to the common idea of terrorising the world with bombs

If no newspaper or other media mention terror attacks then eventually the public would have learnt tolerance and have it known that Islam is peaceful and now it is hard because parents go oh don't play with that terrorist Muslim do noone can teach the kids and they become anti islam

@Hereward, yes, I guess my point is, it doesn't matter whether Islam is the identity they happen to use to claim kinship with the Afghanis and Iraqiis who were invaded by the British Army - it does not mean the the religion of Islam supports war.

And i'm not defending this 'form of protest' - and *in the name of atheism* is not a thing, atheism isn't a set of beliefs like communism or islam, it is the absence of a set of beliefs. It is rather hard to follow no belief, to follow the absence of leadership and instruction, that is just not how humans work.

I didn't see Anjem Choudary, but surely he is right in saying, "The British government attacked Islamic countries and these Islamic men retaliated" - rather simple narrative.

In northern Ireland people said protestant and catholics killed each other, but the religion was just an excuse, they simply identified the other as different.

It has nothing to do with the particular religion, it has everything to do with human behaviour, we identify with a particular group and we seek to further it's interests and defend it from attack.

Simple but is apparently very misleading into causing people to think he is using Islam as retaliation

@orathaic

I agree they're claiming kinship. I'm just saying that it seems the only thing they have in common with Afghans or Iraqis is their religion (particularly as again, from what I've seen they are not of Arab ethnicity either). That means this is definitely has a religious element. I'm not necessarily saying Islam supports war. I'm saying it was almost certainly a key motivation for these men and all those saying their interpretation of the book is wrong and therefore their motivation was not Islamic because of it are incorrect. Their view is as good as anyone else's when interpreting such texts.

I didn't say atheism was a distinct thing. I am aware that the only thing atheists share in common is their absence of belief and beyond that their personal philosophies and ideologies vary immensely. What I was saying is that all humans can hate and kill. Humans have done so very often because of dogma, be it religious or ideological. People kill for their God, or for their leader, or for the proletariat, or for the Emperor. They don't usually kill specifically in the name of not believing in a God or gods. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear there. I think it isn't too hard to avoid 'belief' but I suppose that might depend on your definition of 'belief'. Belief has a quality of infallibility I'm wary of.

That rather simple narrative is right, but so simple as to lose all analytical merit.

I suspect if Cromwell hadn't been quite so Puritan during his conquest of Ireland and the Irish hadn't been quite so uniformly Catholic that the troubles there would have been much less problematic. Are you saying that if a magic wand was waved and all Northern Irish and southern Irish people lost their religion there might be a reduction in violence and anger? Really? What about if that wand was waved 200 years ago? Bigger impact then?

"It's completely wrong to fear Islam at all. It pushes for just as much good and commands just as much out of its people as either Christianity or Judaism, and all three, in a looser sense, are the same general thing. If you fear Islam over such minor things, you fear Christianity and Judaism as well, which is undoubtedly irrational."

1. I think I've stated before quite clearly I take ISSUE with all three religions...

I don't actively "fear" Judaism or Christianity, but not because they're better (again, look no further than 1 Samuel for an appalling justification of genocide and infanticide in the name of God, so to be clear, calls for or justifications for violence are not exclusive to Islam) than Islam, but rather because Islam is, at present, the ideology who has members which are to be feared at the moment in a real sense.

That does NOT mean ALL Muslims are to be feared--not at all.

But while you're correct, bo_sox, in saying Christians and Jews have, in the past, killed in the name of religion on mass scales...

They're NOT the chief perpetrators of that terrible bloody religious legacy today.

That's Islam, which, like Judaism and Christianity, allows for and condones these actions (and at the risk of tapping the Hitchens well too soon, I DO think he makes a good point as to why Islam is an issue at the moment in the sense it's to be feared--Jews faced 2,000 years of persecution and so never really had the mass fighting force to kill others in the name of their book, and Christians did that for centuries but, after a series of religious reformations and the rise of democracy and the Enlightenment in the West, you see a definite correlation...as Enlightenment ideals come and grow, so too does the religious urge to kill one another sort of wane, and Christian sects--while still not always happy with one another--generally don't go to war any longer, not because their ideals are nobler but simply because we have centuries of bloodshed to look back on and say "...No, I think not" and we have a calmer, tamer society. This does NOT mean--AT ALL, so I don't want this misconstrued--that Arabs or Muslims are somehow less evolved socially than Western Christians, Jews and Atheists, but merely that a similar sort of Reformation/Age of Enlightenment sort of event hasn't occurred in the Islamic world...again, to be fair, that's rather hard to do when European countries are carving up your nations for centuries and now, in the era of nation-states, you really can't blame the Islamic world for largely mistrusting the European/Western one, or any of its ideals, and so in the same way--regrettably--that a certain faction of Israelis would seek to define Israel by having its Jews be as "Jewish" and ultra-Orthodox as possible, and thus lead to medieval-style ideals and decisions, in the same way, many Islamic states now seek to be as far-conservative about their Islamic identity as possible...and as disastrous as it would be for a Jewish or Christian state to take 1 Samuel's apology for genocide as justification of genocide just so long as "God" says it's OK, so too is it NOW disastrous when Islam is taken so literally and to its literal ends.)

Islam DOES have good ideas...so does Judaism and Christianity--

But it is STILL a religion to be feared when taken to its literal ends, and that's the way this ideology is taken by a significant portion of its followers today (NOT ALL, but you cannot deny that, whether they practice it violently or not, it's a significant portion...look to these attacks, look to states like Iran post-Revolution, look to the Salman Rushdie affair and how those who took Islam so literally WORLDWIDE called for his death...yes, that's something to fear, bo_sox, when a religion calls for or leads to the suppression of free speech out of fear, and when it condones the killing of others.)

Ignore the 'Really?' above.

"Another tragedy is that this incident gives more ammunition to theophobic bigots like Obiwan."

2. I don't think charging all religions and especially the three Abrahamic religions as immoral is "bigoted," FlemGem...

Did I say "the Arabs" or "All Muslims are violent?"

NO.

I went to great pains to be clear about that.

I simply state and continue to state that as an IDEAL Islam is immoral...which I only pick on now because of the three Abrahamic religions it's the one leading to the most death at the moment, NOT because Islam is in any way worse than the other two or that its proponents are any worse than the literalists of the other two...

Stating "I find Ideal X immoral" does NOT make one a bigot.

I don't hate a people--I hate an IDEA. And we can debate whether that idea is good or bad, but to dislike it is NOT bigotry.

Hi Obi, glad to be arguing with you again, you've been gone too long!

You wrote: "Stating "I find Ideal X immoral" does NOT make one a bigot."

That gave me a good chuckle. If I said "I think gay sex is immoral" you'd burn up your keyboard telling me how bigoted I am.

Anyway, I stand by my statements. You've demonstrated over and over that you're willfully ignorant about, arrogant towards, bigoted against, etc. etc. etc. the Abrahamic faiths. The more you type the more it shows. Sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but when we have a blind-spot sometimes we need a friend to show it to us. I'm glad I can be here for you.

Also: "as Enlightenment ideals come and grow, so too does the religious urge to kill one another sort of wane"

A classic example of your ignorance and bigotry. Ever hear of the French Revolution? How'd the atheistic Enlightenment ideals work out there? Pretty different from the American revolution where yes, there were some atrocities, but some of the worst were perpetrated by atheists against Christians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnadenhutten_massacre, please note that George Washington, who you rightly believe was not a Christian, did nothing to punish the perpetrators).

We could go on like this for some time, pointing out various atrocities perpetrated by different groups of believers and/or unbelievers. To me it seems quite obvious that a calm, rational, unbiased thinker would conclude that genocide, murder, terrorism, etc., is a *human* problem, not a *religious* problem, and could proceed to evaluate religious texts and ideals on the basis of how they grapple with the problem of evil. You, however, have never demonstrated an ability or *desire* to think fairly and without bias about religion.

"I don't hate a people--I hate an IDEA."

You have never demonstrated that you understand what the main ideas of the Bible are. In fact, your reading is so clouded by unreasoning bigotry that you can't even accurately read individual texts/stories, let alone the whole. I can't comment intelligently on whether you understand the Quran - for some reason I have a sneaking suspicion that you don't know jack about that either, but I respect Islam enough to let a Muslim make that call.

"If I said "I think gay sex is immoral" you'd burn up your keyboard telling me how bigoted I am."

1. You could choose to believe that if you wanted to, so long as you didn't act on that or infringe on the rights of others, which brings me to

2. The key difference in your analogy--

NO ONE is stopping cartoons or articles from being printed for fear of gay activists bombing their building.

What's more, the LGBT community has no manifesto stating that this is acceptable.

This IS the case with Islam--freedom of speech is being suppressed by ways of violence and fear of violence, and this violence is given credence by the holy text taken as not just a manifesto and scripture of sorts, but an infallible scripture, one taken to be beyond compromise, "the final word"...

Written in the 7th century, no less.