Islam...an inherently violent and sexist religion, or only because of extremists?

Question

Is islam fundamentally "wrong", or only because it appears that way due to extremists focusing on certain passages of their holy book rather than the whole of the quaran which may, like the bible, contradict these corrupt morals elsewhere?

Answer 1

I know a few Muslim people, and can tell you on the whole that Islam is a peaceful religion. They believe in peace. Extremists are not real Muslim, as they do not believe this. The only reason they go around killing people is because they enjoy it.

Answer 2

It is the extremists who rubbish the name of Islam. I'm a christian and when the Iraqui war began I was so interested in what the the religion really meant, their laws and such. The best place as always is to check wikipedia.

Basically the Muslims call their God "Allah" which literally means God in Arabic. It is said that Muslims, Christians, and Jews all worship the same God, though they hold different concepts about Him.
Muslims believe that they should repect the religions of Jews and Christians as they are similiar to the Islamic faith. However they see that the Jewish and Christian texts have corrupted over time.
Islam believes that men should subdue unbelievers during war (just like the Christian Crusades in medieval times), but they also believe that there should be a respect other religions and they have been shown to be much more tolerant of other religions in the past.

Answer 3

Islam is a religion that stems from Christianity. Much in the same way as Jews and Christians have relationship - the Jews know and believe about Jesus, just as a person though, and not the son of God - Islamic people know and believe in Jesus, except they ALSO know and recognize Mohammed as a prophet of God, the same God as the Christians.

In fact, the Islamic religions believe in the Old and New testament in the same way Christians do - except they have "extra information" they believe in from Mohammed. Christians do the same to Islam as Jews do to the New testament - they think it's fine and dandy information, but it's not "the word of God."

Anyway, Islam is a very beautiful religion - and it expands on the New Testament and Old Testament with many many life giving, loving, etc issues. It doesn't have as many holes as the bible does, either.

The problem? We live in a country that is Christian, and all we see is the extremists.

Don't forget that in the middle ages and afterwards, Christians did exactly the same thing Islamics are doing now - they killed people, towns, etc by the thousands, because they did not believe in God. They massacred children, women, etc, because they refused to say Jesus was their savior. Thats where the "dark ages" come from - it was a pitiful point in the world, were everyone in Europe feared Christianity, but followed it because they feared death by the hands of priests, etc.

It's just a different point in life, and all we see is the extremists. There are people of every flavour in the religion, including some really awe-inspiring believers.

Answer 4

I don't know a single religion that has given women more rights than Islam.
Anyone is up to take the challenge?

Quran came 1400 years ago and there is not a single book written against the status of women in Islam until 1860... Why do you think that?
And even so, the "freedom" that most non-Muslim females received have been rights of Muslim women since past 1400 years.

If dressing up like something that attracts rapists and thugs is "degrading" then all I can say is we are rather off with having a sexist label on us than having one of our sister, mother or wife getting rape every 12 minutes (according to USA rape database)

Answer 5

Islam is almost exactly like Christianity. Both are generally religions of peace but both tell their followers 1)everyone else is wrong and to do anything conceivable to convert others 2) Their holy book is 100% accurate and true (which makes 21 century people following 2000 year old advise).

The absolute nature of these texts leads to people declaring war on anyone who does not agree with them...maybe if the clergy of these religions taught that the books are not to be read literally and that they are to be taken in context with peace a lot of blood shed could be averted.

Answer 6

You can't really stop at Islam with a question like this. As a Christian, I can say that even Christians use the name of God to benefit themselves. Look at all the things that get carried out in His name.

The simple fact is, there have been plenty of people, be they Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, etc that have done horrible things. It's easy to pick a single verse, take it out of context and use it to defend yourself. Islam is a peaceful religion, but any time something gets taken to the extreme it's bound to get off track. Any extremist, no matter what they claim to be fighting for, only has their own agendas in mind. Don't listen to the media or uninformed people unless you can take it for what it is: uninformed and biased.

Answer 7

Islam is a beautiful religion.

I have been reading the answers to this question and it doesn't surprise me most of the negative answer's to this question are most likely from people who know nothing about Islam itself but what they read in the papers and listen to on the news.

As for extremists this is how i see it,to the western countries if Muslims were trying to change your regimes,occupy your land and take take over your oil would you be sitting with your hands up your ***,so if your fought back to defend what was yours or had a strong opinion you would be branded extremists?

That's what it comes down to.It's amazing how what people would do and believe are 2 completely different things !

Answer 8

It has nothing to do with extremists only.

The whole of their movement is a conspiracy to take over the world and kill as many people as they can in the process if the people do not believe in islam.

Everyone is allowed to believe in their own religion.

But islam is a religion that kills people if people do not believe in Islam and their terrorist ways.

That is what is wrong. Muslims have rights but do not allow other people to have rights.


Are they going to threaten the rest of the world? I guess so because they know nothing about equal rights.

If you tell muslims to go back to saudi arabia, do you think they are going to do it to us too? What else do they know except hurt others who do not believe in their religion.

Dont ever discount the muslims and their actions? There are the non extremists who are right now moving into your home and country and forcing you to accept them whilst they occupy more land.

Think very carefully of their cunning ways.

I am not making this up. It is recorded in history and in people's lives. IF ONLY WE CAN OPEN OUR EYES.

Answer 9

I think that any religion which seeks to control how someone lives their lives is wrong. However i don't think that Islam is overly violent or sexist, at least any more so than any other religion.
Islam actually seems more humanistic than Christianity to me, especially with the whole no original sin thing.

Extremists will always make a religion seem bad.

Answer 10

I think the extremists give it a bad name. I wish that Islam would learn from all the mistakes Christianity has made on the tolerance front to prevent the needless loss of blood!