I'm not going to answer all of your whitewashing attempts, my time is too precious for that.
"lol if you think the Koran is consistent. Nothing says "I am clueless about religion" or "I am a literal fundamentalist" louder than believing for a second that any religion has a basic objective reading with no conflicts and grey areas."
The Quran is generally consistent, not surprising considering it is the work of one man. Some point for example to the verses saying "there is no compulsion in religion" and the verses against apostates and "hypocrites" or for war against people of other religions as an example of contradiction, but it's not really a contradiction. The first verse can only mean that you cannot forcefully convert anyone, but you can fight them and force them into submission. Which is what islamic societies did for centuries.
"What in the sexual intercourse are you talking about. Is the only Christian violence you've ever heard of the Crusades or what."
There were wars of religion later on, but this is confusing because of the secular implications. Otherwise, examples of clearly religiously motivated Christian violence are not that common in history.
"It would have been the absolute norm across the board prior to modern secularization of the west, nothing to credit Christianity with."
Nope. Before the Reformation, most people didn't even know what was in the Bible, since Mass was done in Latin and thus priests could control what people knew of the Bible. Try and find any major religious denomination that claims that the Bible is the verbatim word of God.
"And really this cuts to the problem with half your approach, because the west (for the most part) has introduced secularism and such on wide and deep scale by the present day...you seem to credit the resulting moderated and fairly liberal Christianity...to Christianity. Rather than seeing the pattern here suggests the issue in most of the Muslim world has been a lack of that process, and if anything an increase in fundamentalism in the last 40 years. Its extremely history illiterate."
Christianity does indeed have seeds of secularism (as in separation of Church and State) and liberal attitudes in it. Things that Islam doesn't have. There is no wonder then that the Islamic world was frozen in time for centuries, especially when the previous populations of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians started losing influence and disappearing through gradual conversion over time.
"And Jewish. But yeah forgetting how the Jews were treated in the Christian world is another convenient amnesia that you need for your argument to function yes."
The first recorded massacre of Jews in Europe was in 1066 in Granada, and it was done by a Muslim mob. Jews, being minorities, were always vulnerable to repression from the majorities, that's true in Christian and Muslim countries. Funnily enough, the case of Spain shows Jews first welcoming the Muslims, then gradually migrating North to Christian kingdoms to escape Muslim oppression, then helping the Christians kick the Muslims out only to often flee to North Africa to escape the Spanish Inquisition.
"The pilgrimage routes becoming dangerous because of nomadic invaders was not "MUSLIM AGGRESSION" any more than it being mostly in Byzantine territory made it "ON THE CHRISTIAN WORLD". The greatest farce of all are Christian apologists trying to whitewash the crusades."
The Byzantine world, AKA the Christian Eastern Roman Empire, was certainly the Christian world. The First Crusade was preceded by many Byzantine defeats in the East, including the loss of the major city of Antioch, and the Byzantine emperor himself called Rome for help against the invading Muslims. The First Crusade was the Pope's answer to that call for help, and an attempt to unify Christendom. This has little to do with pilgrimage routes, which anyway would have been made dangerous not because of "nomadic invaders" but because of a conflict between two Muslim empires, the Fatimid and the Seljuk.
"No matter how many times you try to assert some simple objective quality to Islam it won't make it true. Its every bit as varied and messy as all the Christian splinterings, up to and including bizarre Mormon like offshoots."
Not really. around 90% of the world Muslim population is Sunni. 10% are Shia. And both Sunni and Shia both claim the Quran is the direct word of God, though they have different books of hadiths. Some have a more fundamentalist interpretation of the texts, but there is not a huge amount of variety in basic beliefs. Some say you can have sex with your wife when she's 9 lunar year old, others say you have to wait until you and her father agree she can withstand penetration, that sort of thing.
"Also Arab is not the same thing as Muslim! Gosh that's a funny mistake for some sort of expert on the subject to make! "
Never claimed it was, but the Arab world has been so long dominated by Islam that it is the single best example of Islam's influence on a society.
30
@sagas
I'm not going to answer all of your whitewashing attempts, my time is too precious for that.
"lol if you think the Koran is consistent. Nothing says "I am clueless about religion" or "I am a literal fundamentalist" louder than believing for a second that any religion has a basic objective reading with no conflicts and grey areas."
The Quran is generally consistent, not surprising considering it is the work of one man. Some point for example to the verses saying "there is no compulsion in religion" and the verses against apostates and "hypocrites" or for war against people of other religions as an example of contradiction, but it's not really a contradiction. The first verse can only mean that you cannot forcefully convert anyone, but you can fight them and force them into submission. Which is what islamic societies did for centuries.
"What in the sexual intercourse are you talking about. Is the only Christian violence you've ever heard of the Crusades or what."
There were wars of religion later on, but this is confusing because of the secular implications. Otherwise, examples of clearly religiously motivated Christian violence are not that common in history.
"It would have been the absolute norm across the board prior to modern secularization of the west, nothing to credit Christianity with."
Nope. Before the Reformation, most people didn't even know what was in the Bible, since Mass was done in Latin and thus priests could control what people knew of the Bible. Try and find any major religious denomination that claims that the Bible is the verbatim word of God.
"And really this cuts to the problem with half your approach, because the west (for the most part) has introduced secularism and such on wide and deep scale by the present day...you seem to credit the resulting moderated and fairly liberal Christianity...to Christianity. Rather than seeing the pattern here suggests the issue in most of the Muslim world has been a lack of that process, and if anything an increase in fundamentalism in the last 40 years. Its extremely history illiterate."
Christianity does indeed have seeds of secularism (as in separation of Church and State) and liberal attitudes in it. Things that Islam doesn't have. There is no wonder then that the Islamic world was frozen in time for centuries, especially when the previous populations of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians started losing influence and disappearing through gradual conversion over time.
"And Jewish. But yeah forgetting how the Jews were treated in the Christian world is another convenient amnesia that you need for your argument to function yes."
The first recorded massacre of Jews in Europe was in 1066 in Granada, and it was done by a Muslim mob. Jews, being minorities, were always vulnerable to repression from the majorities, that's true in Christian and Muslim countries. Funnily enough, the case of Spain shows Jews first welcoming the Muslims, then gradually migrating North to Christian kingdoms to escape Muslim oppression, then helping the Christians kick the Muslims out only to often flee to North Africa to escape the Spanish Inquisition.
"The pilgrimage routes becoming dangerous because of nomadic invaders was not "MUSLIM AGGRESSION" any more than it being mostly in Byzantine territory made it "ON THE CHRISTIAN WORLD". The greatest farce of all are Christian apologists trying to whitewash the crusades."
The Byzantine world, AKA the Christian Eastern Roman Empire, was certainly the Christian world. The First Crusade was preceded by many Byzantine defeats in the East, including the loss of the major city of Antioch, and the Byzantine emperor himself called Rome for help against the invading Muslims. The First Crusade was the Pope's answer to that call for help, and an attempt to unify Christendom. This has little to do with pilgrimage routes, which anyway would have been made dangerous not because of "nomadic invaders" but because of a conflict between two Muslim empires, the Fatimid and the Seljuk.
"No matter how many times you try to assert some simple objective quality to Islam it won't make it true. Its every bit as varied and messy as all the Christian splinterings, up to and including bizarre Mormon like offshoots."
Not really. around 90% of the world Muslim population is Sunni. 10% are Shia. And both Sunni and Shia both claim the Quran is the direct word of God, though they have different books of hadiths. Some have a more fundamentalist interpretation of the texts, but there is not a huge amount of variety in basic beliefs. Some say you can have sex with your wife when she's 9 lunar year old, others say you have to wait until you and her father agree she can withstand penetration, that sort of thing.
"Also Arab is not the same thing as Muslim! Gosh that's a funny mistake for some sort of expert on the subject to make! "
Never claimed it was, but the Arab world has been so long dominated by Islam that it is the single best example of Islam's influence on a society.