Drawing upon sixth century thinking

I came across this and felt a need to respond.

Five Ridiculous Things You Believe About Islam


If the intention of the article is to convince me that there are any number of reasonable, rational, compassionate, educated, civilized Muslims in the world – we can shake hands and consider it a job well done. The problem is, this is not news! Any reasonable person would have ceded this ground a priori. However, I suspect that the true intention was to bolster respect Islam in general from the perspective of an apologist. I do not find the arguments helpful in bolstering respect for the brands of Islamd currently practiced in a number of places. In short, I suggest the whole article is based on a strawman argument.

We are meant to suddenly have a positive feeling about Islam based upon the amplification of some positive behaviors practiced by some adherents in some places. However this simply throws the real problem into stark relief. Simply stated, the underlying belief system comes from a text (Koran) which can, too easily, be interpreted to justify all manner of violent and heinous acts. Thus, arguing that some of the disciples, during some periods of time, in some places, choose to view the message in a more moderate way does not diminish the original argument.

If the reader has jumped ahead of me and has inferred that this same proposition would hold true for other religious texts (ie; Bible, Torah, etc.), Bravo. We are in lock step. It is not a matter of opinion to state that the people of the Middle East (Muslim and otherwise) have a strong case against the Christian world with regard to terrorism and religious zealotry. For the historically challenged, Google The Crusades.