Aafke Said:
Ratherdashing: I love your last comment!

go ahead and “pour verses on me.”

How’s this for a start? But, if you chew on these examples below for a while you will miss the point of the discussion. I’ll re-state it. A death penalty for apostasy is one of the central ideas of the “radicals” that you claim to oppose. In most of the world it is a violation of the most fundamental human right. The right to choose one’s religion (or no religion at all) is preserved in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This is a basic freedom that I want more people to have.

You can keep being ambivalent about it, but this only emboldens the very people that you oppose. They appreciate the leeway they are given by “moderate” muslims.

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FROM THE QURAN:

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.

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Then as to those who disbelieve, I will chastise them with severe chastisement in this world and the hereafter, and they shall have no helpers.

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We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve, because they set up with Allah that for which He has sent down no authority, and their abode is the fire, and evil is the abode of the unjust.

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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.

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So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

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Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

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O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination.

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O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil)

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O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be hard against them; and their abode is hell; and evil is the resort.

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- Walt Whitman

Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?

- Walt Whitman

God rest his sweet soul…

I think I am better off listening to Walt Whitman at this stage of my life.

Every religion has and has had lunatics.

just because a verse can be taken out of context makes a religon wrong? have you read your bible?!?!!?

If the quran had sad kill apostates, then i would have said you had to kill them. (although, if it had, there might be a chance i wouldnt be muslim either.)

I refuse to say something is true or false if i cant prove it.

oh and your list… sorry, but it is not a list on how to be a moderate muslim, sorry.

It is more like a list of how to look like a patsy muslim who gives up their faith and even in some cases goes against true islam just to fit into what non-muslims want you to look like.

Religion isnt a popularity contest. Religion is about God and doing what he wants. ALL religions are like that. Just because you feel insecure and worried that somehow your missing out on something or your discrimated against or whatever your reasoning that you feel we have to change our religion to fit your views, it doesnt mean we should.

1. Acknowledge the existence of and repudiate the traditional Islamic imperative, taught by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence that Muslims recognize as orthodox, to impose Islamic law upon non-Muslims, whether by force or by stealth.

2. Renounce any intention, now or in the future, to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law.

3. Clarify, and call upon other Muslims in America to clarify, what is meant by the words “terrorism” and innocent” in Muslim condemnations of terrorism, so that it is clear that what is being condemned is the murder of American and other non-combatants by Muslims acting in the name of Islamic jihad.

4. Repudiate the idea that Muslims have a divine mandate to force, when possible, Jews, Christians, and other “People of the Book” to pay a special religion-based tax from which Muslims are exempt (Qur’an 9:29).

5. Call upon Muslims in America to institute comprehensive, honest, and transparent programs in mosques and Islamic schools, teaching the virtues of the non-establishment of religion, and teaching directly against Islamic supremacism and the idea that Muslims must fight against Jews and Christians until they “feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).

6. Call upon Muslims in America to institute comprehensive, honest, and transparent programs in mosques and Islamic schools, teaching against honor killing, and against the idea — which is enshrined in Islamic law — that a parent faces no penalty for killing his or her own child (see ‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).

7. Call upon Muslims worldwide, including in Saudi Arabia, to end all institutionalized discrimination against and harassment of non-Muslims, and to allow churches and other houses of worship to be built in majority-Muslim countries with an ease comparable to that with which mosques are currently built in Western countries.

8. Repudiate the idea that a Muslim who renounces Islam and adopts any other faith or no faith at all should be killed — as is the teaching of Muhammad and all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence — and call upon Muslim groups in America to teach the freedom of conscience as a God-given right in American mosques and Islamic schools.

9. Call upon Muslims in America and worldwide to drop the traditional and authoritative Islamic prohibition of marriage between non-Muslim men and Muslim women, and to repudiate and teach against the idea of divinely sanctioned wife-beating (Qur’an 4:34).

10. Condemn Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist organizations, and the Islamic Republic of Iran for its continuing the barbaric practice of stoning people to death. Call upon Muslim groups to teach against stoning as a punishment for adultery or anything else in American mosques and Islamic schools.

You make a bold statement, but are you sure your right? Are you god? You speak only from your belief system, and what you want to believe, but can you prove it? What if God did want them killed? wouldnt you be teaching people against God?

TPG,
Bold statement? You declared that nowhere in the Quran does it say to kill the apostate. I can pour verses on you directly from the Quran calling for the killing of unbelievers and kafirs. Apostates can be easily labeled as such. Whether these verses arise from an old battle does not change that they exist for the twisting of the “radicals.”

So, you have a chance here to separate yourself from these “radicals” on a single key issue – the treatment of apostates. Equivocating on this perpetuates the mentality of the radicals. If you supposedly oppose them so much (as stated in your first post) then take a stand against them on this issue.

I’ll go first and say: “People should not be killed for rejecting Islam.”

It’s your turn.