It is not so easy for me,to come up with answers,that will sooth your mind.I wish I could though.Come with some heavy answers,that you may reflect on,and see that there is a chance there is more than one side,to the Quran,than yours only.
Thank you for your answer marleya! While I do not always agree, I think you are a very good person, many Muslims are very good people & good & bad people are to be found in all faiths as well as no faith. Of course it might be probable that I am prejudiced regarding some aspects of the Quran-we're all biased & suffer from a tunnel vision to greater or lesser extents.
Thanks for taking the time & trouble to discuss the Quran with me.
"No true muslim have ever belived that Islam should be spread by the sword.Islam has alwaysed been spread by its inner qualities.Those who want to use the sword to spread Islam,does not know the inner qualities of Islam,and their behavour is like vild animals"
Mirza Ghulam,en amhadiya muslim,said this,and I think he is right.They are also looked upon as kafirs,and get killed around in the muslim world,for being ahmadia muslim.
Well, this is Mirza Ghulam's personal opinion that "Islam
wasn't spread by the sword" & he is entitled to his opinions-that certainly doesn't make his opinions factually correct. However, this is completely ahistorical, even the historical documents written by Muslims prove otherwise. Except South East Asia & parts of Africa, where there were no Muslim conquests-the doors of all the countries' which are Muslim today or have significant Muslim populations were opened to Islamic conversions via "jihad".There was first a Muslim conquest-followed by gradual conversions. What did the Muslim rulers do after the conquest? Often they converted other religious sites forcibly into mosques, destroyed other religious sites, forced prisoners of war to convert to Islam or be executed & of course there was the jizya tax on the non Muslims. Iran was Zoroastrian before the Islamic conquests & many Muslim rulers would offer any Zoroastrian convert to Islam the property of his entire family. Of course, people often converted to Islam because they were impressed by certain "inner qualities" of Islam, but it is completely historically untrue to claim that all conversions happened to to Islam's inner qualities-force & inducements played a big part.Here's a list of places destroyed by Muslims.
http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=4715.0As to Mirza Ghulam, you must be realising that Ahmadiyyas are only a miniscule sect within Islam. Well, you can see how nice "true Muslims" are to Ahmadiyyas from their treatment of Mirza Ghulam himself. The Ahmadiyyas declared themselves Muslims, yet they're regularly discriminated against & killed. In Pakistan, Bangladesh & Indonesia-they've been declared either "illegal" or "non Muslims". If an Ahmadiyya were to convert to Sunni Islam now in Pakistan or Indonesia, would that be for Sunni Islam's "inner qualities" or to escape from the discrimination they suffer as Ahmadiyyas?
Muslims throughout history have called Muslim nations, "Dar ul Islam" or House of Islam, & non Muslim countries "Dar ul Harb" or House of War-which shows how Muslims believed conflicts between them & non Muslims will eventually be resolved-via war & bloodshed.
The muslims were asked to take up sword,in the beginning in selfdefence,from the enemies of Islam,to install peace and safety.The purpose of the sword,was not to use it as a mean for force in religious questions or to control the hole world by the sword.
I am not so sure that the unbelivers,in the quran,is ordinary people who just dont belive in God,or stopped beliving in him,I think that the unbelivers,are the ones plotting against human beings interests in this world.Greed,for example,must be a trait of an unbeliver.People against other peoples skincolour,is an unbeliver.
God say in the Quran,that the spendthrifters are brothers of Satan,and then look at Saudia,the holiest country in Islam,are they not spendthrifters,the king and his alike?They are hypocrits,unbelivers.
I dont think it is you Rashna,God promise hellfire.The unbelivers has certain features,and peace and harmony among people of all nations,is not one of them.A typical ordinary unbeliver is Hesperando.One that spread hate and suffering to other humans.
Well, then the Quran doesn't always speak of what is & what is not the characteristic of unbelievers, it simply speaks of believers & unbelievers. The Quran says, "Muslims are the best of people"(3:110) while the unbelievers are the "vilest of creatures" (98:6) -it nowhere says that bad Muslims=unbelievers or bad unbeliever=Muslims. Try to read the Quran once again today marleya- at least the second half of the book. You'll see that on practically every page, Allah teaches "believers" to despise "unbelievers", on almost every page, Allah prepares the ground for potential religious conflict.
The situation where Muslims were asked to take swords is not decribed in the Quran-it is described in the "hadiths" & the "sira" & I know that you dislike hadiths. But without hadiths we can't understand how & when the first Muslims of Medina went to war. The war wasn't entirely in self defence-it was also forced conversion. Prophet Muhammad declared himself the Jews chosen Messiah & asked them to accept him or pay jizya taxes-& then he killed an entire tribe of Jews when they disagreed. Muhammad also smashed the idolaters' idols & threatened to kill them if they came out to protect their idols. Even after the Jews\polytheists had grudgingly converted to Islam-as soon as Prophet Muhammad died, ridda(apostasy) wars broke out which were ruthlessly suppressed, again by forcing "unbelievers" to remain Muslim.
Where is the "There is no compulsion in religion..." in all these? The Quran preaches tolerant as well as intolerant verses, the Quran says tolerant verses have been abrogated by intolerant ones, the hadiths show Muhammad forcibly converting polytheists & obliterating Jews, most Muslim nations were opened for Islamic conversions via jihad & jizya tax.
Topic: Abrogation in the Quran