Well, where and when did He bring a literal sword and divide with it?
Such language is all over the Hebrew scriptures. But as St. Augustine said:
“Nor had I knowledge of that true inner righteousness, which does not judge according to custom, but out of the most perfect law of God Almighty, by which the manners of places and times were adapted to those places and times— being itself the while the same always and everywhere, not one thing in one place, and another in another; according to which Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and David, and all those commended by the mouth of God were righteous, Hebrews
11:8-40 but were judged unrighteous by foolish men, judging out of man’s judgment, 1Corinthians*4:3 and gauging by the petty standard of their own manners the manners of the whole human race. Like as if in an armoury, one knowing not what were adapted to the several members should put greaves on his head, or boot himself with a helmet, and then complain because they would not fit. Or as if, on some day when in the afternoon business was forbidden, one were to fume at not being allowed to sell as it was lawful to him in the forenoon. Or when in some house he sees a servant take something in his hand which the butler is not permitted to touch, or something done behind a stable which would be prohibited in the dining-room, and should be indignant that in one house, and one family, the same thing is not distributed everywhere to all. Such are they who cannot endure to hear something to have been lawful for righteous men in former times which is not so now; **or that God, for certain temporal reasons, commanded them one thing, and these another, **but both obeying the same righteousness; though they see, in one man, one day, and one house, different things to be fit for different members, and a thing which was formerly lawful after a time unlawful— that permitted or commanded in one corner, which done in another is justly prohibited and punished.”
Confessions, Book III, Chapter 7
Why are you so quick to assume that the same theological principles that we Christians apply to our own scriptures can’t be applied to Islam? The concept of “abrogation” has been central to Islamic theology since its beginning. Ignoring it is to willfully misunderstand the religion.
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