Posted on 08/16/2006 10:02:21 AM PDT by Sabramerican
The carpeted room is full of children in skullcaps crouched on prayer mats, reciting verses from a holy text. Some mumble the words under their breath; others sing them out. They rock back and forth as they chant, their disparate voices blending into an ethereal melody.
The children, ages 7 to 14, are full-time students, in class 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, even in the summer. But they are not studying math, science or English. Instead, they are memorizing all 6,200 verses in the Koran, a task that usually takes two to three years.
It would hardly be an unusual scene in Pakistan, Afghanistan or elsewhere in the Muslim world, where religious schools devoted to memorization of the Koran and Islamic studies are common. But this class meets in the prayer room of a small mosque in Flushing, Queens, that caters mostly to South Asian immigrants and their children.
Schools like this one at the Muslim Center of New York are rare in the United States, but are emerging, especially among South Asians, as the Muslim American population becomes more established.
....By not offering instruction in other subjects,
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I notice some people here haven't read the Koran. Well let me hight some excerpts for you...
Quotes from their unholy Koran
http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/
[9.3] announce painful punishment to those who disbelieve.
[9.14] Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and assist you against them and heal the hearts of a believing people.
[9.29] Fight those who do not believe in Allah,
[9.30] And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!
[9.33] He it is Who sent His Apostle with guidance and the religion of truth, that He might cause it to prevail over all religions
[5.51] O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends
[2.191] And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.
[2.193] And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah
[4.74] Therefore let those fight in the way of Allah, who sell this world's life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward.
[8.39] And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah
[9.123] O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness
[4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
[4.91] You will find others who desire that they should be safe from you and secure from their own people; as often as they are sent back to the mischief they get thrown into it headlong; therefore if they do not withdraw from you, and (do not) offer you peace and restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them; and against these We have given.you a clear authority.
Allow me to fill you in on some facts missing from your analysis:
(1) The Christian Bible and the Muslim Koran are two different books and they say different things.
(2) The Koran explicitly teaches that it is good to either kill nonbelievers or to enslave them, that killing people can be an effective method of getting into heaven, and that it is fine to tell lies to nonbelievers.
(3) The Christian Bible does not contain the teachings outlined in fact (2).
Not mentioned here, nor in other posts is the significant difference in the behavior of the founders of the religion.
Jesus preached quietly, decrying violence of any kind, saying "love your enemies" and telling his disciples to go and teach all nations. If the teachings were rejected they were told to depart, "shaking the dust from their feet". Further Jesus allowed himself to be crucified, neither defending himself nor calling on his supporters to help him. He was betrayed by the one of his followers who most wanted him to physically.
Mohammad led an army to spread his religion. His followers were encouraged to kill any who did not convert or at least submit to his rule. Once an area was conquered, those who did not convert were lower class citizens.
"Beware of false prophets ... by their fruits will you know them."
Personally, unless the book is re-written to take out the killing of Jews and Christians, he can teach his peaceful crap all he wants. It won't change a thing!
They need to get their noses out of the Koran for a while and tramp through forests,play baseball and cavort on the beach.
In other words,BE A KID,not some fundamentalist drone.
Not bad. If you memorize the whole Koran - which isn't much longer than the New Testament - and stay a Muslim your whole life not only are you guaranteed heaven, but you get to pick ten people to come with you.Praytell, where is this promise stated? There are NO guarantees in Islam save one, the very one to which terrorists lay claim. If die and take out the Jew or infidel, you get Paradise.
Exactly.
And to think Muslims claim to honor Jesus as a "prophet" of God.
If they believed what He said, they would not embrace Islam, and if they don't believe what He says, that would make Him a liar of the worst kind.
These people are delusional.
And it was long after when as a young man I began to meet Hindus and Sikhs in the United Kingdom at university and became friends with them that I realized that they in turn looked on us Muslims in exactly the same way.
What part of the following Koran verse does Akbar Ahmed not understand.
"5.51": O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.
It's interesting that Christianity, a religion defined by the death of Jesus, is a religion of life and not death. Why is that? Jesus died once and for all for his followers. There is no need for further sacrifice, animal or human. And Christianity clearly disapproves of killing as a religious act. Jesus refused to condemn the adultress. Jesus rebuked Peter for drawing his sword and cutting off the ear of one of the men who came to arrest Jesus. And on the cross, Jesus asked God to forgive his enemies, for they knew not what they did.
This post is intended for atheists amongst us. If you did believe in something, wouldn't it be Christianity? Is there a better, nobler religion than that of our suffering Lord? Is there a religion that makes more sense of a groaning Creation?
Try reading the article you're commenting on.
Read the article, saw your source for the quote, however, my question still stands.
Perhaps the article cleverly states that it is "believed" and not "it is written".
Leaving aside your curious zeal for Islam, I'll point out that these promises are indeed written in the Hadiths of Islam, specifically the Sunan Abi Da'ud and the Sunan al-Tirmidhi.
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