Fair questions.
Very True! Porn and its addiction is insidious.
Myth may be the wrong word for it. Overblown may be more correct. As I watch a news story about an Embassy bombing in Yeman.
Maybe not. First, you are in America, and we have a very small percentage of the vocal ones. Second, you seem to be the kind of person who does not tolerate hate. I doubt that you would be attracted to those kinds of people, or that you would stay around them for long. You also seem smarter than to fall for the lines they use.
The extreme nature is in how they interpret the faith. They say that non-Muslims should either convert or be enslaved. They hold that if it is not Islam, it is evil by its nature. They will ignore anything to the contrary.
The term is used here in the same way it is about Christianity. It is not about following the fundamentals, it is about defining them in such a way as to force a world view.
The claim jihad allows them to kill women, children, innocent lives. They allow women to be killed for not covering or for trying to run out of a burning school. They beat a girl who was raped for being alone with a boy. Tell me, is this evil or good? Is this Islam?
Sometimes. More common, they tape it for distribution.
I see your point. What you cannot deny is that there are Muslims who want me to change to be like them. This is called compulsion. They hold that if logic cannot convert me, the gun can. Yes, it is more political than religious, but Islam is both. These people want to destroy the West. There is no doubt about it. DO you think that it was Jews and Christians who destroyed the World Trade Center? Or just blew up the Embassy in Yemen? I do not hold that these are rank and file Muslims, but they are Muslims none the less.
A couple of points. I’ve never heard Muslims advocate the things you claim. I’m listening. I’m listening to teachers from Saudi Arabia, I’m listening to a student of Imam Sudais for example, but also students of many other scholars in KSA. So with my ear there shouldn’t I be hearing these things? And I’m not.
That non-Muslims should convert or be enslaved? I have absolutely never heard a Muslim advocate that. Never.
That anything outside of Islam is evil? Okay I have heard a scholar say that women can’t ride dirt bikes and I thought that was kind of wacky… lol. In Islam (i.e., Shari’ah) everything fits in to 5 categories. Obligatory, recommended, permissible, disliked, and forbidden. There is no category called “evil.” And all things are considered to be permissible unless there is proof that they are disliked or forbidden. So in general things aren’t evil just for not being “in Islam.”
I have never seen any proof that if a woman doesn’t cover she should be killed. And in Islam, something like that would require proof. But what I do see, quite often, is people sensationalizing certain events, tying them to Islam, calling the players involved by different labels. And it’s fundamentally unfair to view these situations from only one side and make assumptions. Some things in Islam are forbidden–absolutely forbidden–but in life or death situations it becomes not just permissible, but even obligatory to do them. To preserve life. That is Islam.
But what you see taped isn’t Islam. It’s politics. And to say Islam is more politics than religion shows a misunderstanding of Islam at a fundamental level, and a misunderstanding of global affairs today, I think.
And lastly–it is not compulsion to just want someone to convert. I’m sure many people on this forum would like me to become a Catholic. But they do not compel me to do so. There is no compulsion. And as everyone on this board should have read by now, ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ is explicit in the Qur’an. And if anyone thinks he can kill people for not converting, and call it jihad, then he does not understand jihad and he doesn’t understand the Qur’an. It’s that simple.
