I try real hard to separate Islam and the Koran from the people who practice the religion in these backward societies.
Can you point to some specifics? Ie. versus from the Quran, and then the practice of these people?
Look at Saudi Arabia for example. Women can't drive. Yet Muhammed (to whom be peace) allowed women to ride camels, donkeys, any form of transportation.
Also, in some countries, women can't be passengers in cabs alone with a male driver. Yet the example from Hadith is that a man who doesn't know a woman, let her ride on his camel while he walked it. Both, alone together travelling.
These rules come from people who have their own ideologies (say, that women are so tempting and that we have to go to extremes to ward off this temptation), rather than scripture.
However from the little ive studied the religion it seems to be a religion of accepting violent means, not necessary promoting it. What it says of taking women slaves for what I interpreted to be rape really bothers me.
I don't understand what you mean here...Islam doesn't promote rape at all in any circumstance, it's considered a major sin.
The rise in rape and other crimes that correlates with Muslim immigration in some European countries really bothers me.
Perhaps the biggest thing that should bother you is that maybe these people lose their religion when they come over, and turn into hooligans.
You have to keep in mind the nature of the immigration to begin with. 20 years ago, many Western countries saw an influx of Muslim immigrants, many of them highly educated people from the Indo-Pak region. Before that, an influx of Lebanese came to the West, with a lot of investment capital. There were little issues with their immigration, mainly because their skillsets were embraced by employers and there was a need for workers, educated people, and business. Fast forward to today where anyone and everyone comes in, and secondly they are automatically marginalized (as in the cases in Europe) by an increasingly Xenophobic population. So this time they can't find jobs (which also leads to integration problems), they find themselves handicapped simply because of their race/religion, and they grow resentful towards a host population that isn't afraid to show what they think of immigrants. It's this sort of stuff that leads to friction and boiling points are hit.
AndyIsTheMoney said:
What bothers me most is I see no important Muslim groups or leaders really taking a stand agasint extremism, it almost seems as if their secretly accepting it.
I can't think of a Muslim organization or leader that hasn't taken a stand against terrorism, besides those who themselves are involved in terror groups such as Al Qaeda or Hamas.
I admit I could be wrong, and don't want to offend any peaceful Muslims, I really don't. But I think the rise of Islam and its spread by the sword mentality is most likely to lead our world to a third world war.
There is no "spread by the sword" mentality in the religion, this term came from people who claim that Islam was spread through conquering of lands. I find it hard to believe that 10,000 men could have taken over the whole world (Spain to China) in 100 years with the sword. Much of these lands turned to Muslim lands because the people accepted Islam in droves. To my knowledge many of Eastern European Christian countries had a form of Christianity that wasn't influenced by politics, or ideas such as God being in the form of a Trinity. If you look at the Indo-Pak region, home to currently a 1/3 of the modern day Muslim population, it was a bunch of travelling businessmen that prompted conversion for many people, simply due to their conduct. There definitely were some over zealous leaders, hundreds of years into Islamic history, but they can't be considered as examples that Muslims look up to. Most Muslims look at the Prophet and his Companions as examples we should follow.
