Excuse me but this representation of Karen Armstrong’s work immediately makes me discount anything else the author has to say. Granted Armsrong is NOT a believer, but she is extremely well educated about the 3 faiths and shares her knowledge with great insight.
This guy is just sharpening his own warped axe.
Spengler ping
I see Christians rushing to the aid of møøslimbs after the tsunami.
I see wounded møøslimbs escaping Gaza to go to Israeli hospitals.
I see møøslimbs wrapping their own children in explosives to kill, Jews, Christians and other møøslimbs.
I know the tree. I don’t need to read the leaves.
Islam is a death cult. Just look around the world and you can see it. It is a mind numbing exercise in submission, ignorance, cruelty, and evil.
Hey Spengler, you would make a good democrat. See no evil, hear no evil, and denounce any action that is taken against those trying to kill us. Excuse me while I barf.
But it is horseshit. Our God is NOT their god. And the "Say to them" part is direction; it is instruction to do taqiyaa to the infidel. What is so hard to undertand about this?
As I wrote on Spencer's website, there are any number of factual problems in his approach, of which two stand out:
1) Mohammed may never have existed, and
2) If he existed, he may have had nothing to do with the Koran, which well might be an 8th- or 9th-century compilation.
....
One reason that the Koran contains so much contradictory material (such that the odious Karen Armstrong can quote it as readily as the estimable Mr Spencer) might well be that it is a later compilation derived from disparate sources. Ibn Warraq, the scholar of Islam who wisely employs a pen name, has assembled the scholarly evidence to this effect in a single convenient volume [What is the Koran?].
....
A religion is not a text but a life.... Rosenzweig [in The Star of Redemption] explains that [for Jews] the sanctification of daily life attempts to bring the Kingdom of Heaven into ordinary existence. Christians, by contrast, bring themselves to the portals of the Kingdom of Heaven through Communion, through the miracle of Christ's blood....
What is it that Muslims do to bridge the great gulf fixed between the eternal realm and ordinary human existence? ... My conclusion was that Muslims sacrifice themselves, in a benign way through pilgrimage to Mecca, but also in a malignant way through jihad.... It is that self-sacrifice in the form of violent death in warfare is the Muslim equivalent of a sacrament.
As far as Karen Armstrong goes, I have issues with her assumptions and methodology, and I told her that at a conference once. Good professional historians, especially religious historians (of which I am one), have to be careful to not let their biases show. Armstrong's biases are so blatant they detract from any valid point she may have.
The Orthodox Jews, through mishnah have reinterpreted the meanings of the ancient texts. Christian fundamentalists believe it was prescriptive for ancient times, but that that Christ's gospel supercedes those requirements.
I am sure you can find a small handful of kooks in the Idaho woods with a different view, but they would be the tiny exception that proves the rule. You would have to visit thousands of fundamentalist churches or orthodox synagogues in the nations of the world before you would find a preacher calling for the "smiting of the Amalakites"
Visiting the mosques of the world would yield a different result.
This misconception occurs when one reads the koran as organized rather than as chronologically written. Unlike the bible the Koran is organized by the length of the Shuras with the longest coming first and the shortest last. If read in chronological order one would see that the people of the book comments occur at the beginning and change into hatred after the "prophet" was rejected by jews and christians in medina after his "flight". The early passages were an attempt to win over jews and christians. But after jews and christians saw what a pos moohamad was they turned against him. Thus the later hateful passages.
It sounds to me like Spengler is unnecessarily disgruntled. Perhaps he could do more good by attempting to collaborate with Spencer. Spengler complains that Pope Benedict threw fat on the fire, then “backed off.” I don’t consider what the Pope did to be a “backing off.” He said what he said, then ventured to Turkey even though there were assassination threats. What did Spengler want him to do? Carry a sword with him? As my good-natured adversary here at FR says in his tagline - “history takes time.”
By their fruits you shall know them.