Finally, this is what the Quran teaches me to say to those whose beleifs differ from mine:
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Say: Oh you who turn away
I do not worship what you worship,
nor do you worship what I worship.
And I will not worship what you worship,
Nor will you worship what I worship.
Your way is yours, and my way is mine.

On that we can agree.

Thanks, it was a pleasant conversation. Fare thee well.

Waheed Uddeen Khan said, “The idea that life happened as a result of an accident is like saying that you could get a dictionary as the result of an accidental explosion in a printing press.” Even mathematicians say it is impossible for this universe to come into existence by chance. Christie Morrison, an American scholar, explains “If you take ten coins, and write on them the numbers from one to ten, then put them in your pocket and mix them well, then you try to take them out of your pocket in an ascending numerical order, the chance of you taking out the coin on which is written the number one on the first attempt is one in ten. The chance of you taking all ten coins in numerical order (1,2,3,4 … ) is one in ten billion.” It is ironic to me that you beleive in the theory of evolution of the dark ages while you're agains our 'teachings of the dark ages'. And the theory of evolution has been proven wrong numerously so don't tell me it explains our existence!

The ultimate test is to worship Allah without seeing him. However the signs of the existence are surrounding us and it’s a matter of us opening our minds and paying attention to them. Not only the signs are logical but evident in the nature.

Finally, this is what the Quran teaches me to say to those whose beleifs differ from mine:

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

Say: Oh you who turn away

I do not worship what you worship,

nor do you worship what I worship.

And I will not worship what you worship,

Nor will you worship what I worship.

Your way is yours, and my way is mine.

So Phillipe, to you your religion and to me mine! And this closes my comments on this post. It was fun! Enjoy happily the rest of your life

What’s barbaric to you might not be barbaric to me! Then again, that’s a whole different story

That's partly why followers of your religion are at odds with other cultures. We have mostly dispensed wth treatments such as stoning, amputation, décapitation and torture. And we are working at getting rid of whatever inhumane treatments we still use. We are not about to bring back things that we have determined to be inhumane centuries ago, that would be regression, not progress. No offense, but you should really wonder when some of your beliefs are met with revulsion from other people.

Certain muslims dream of a world caliphate. To us, that would be a return to the dark ages.

Just curious thoug, if you don’t beleive in God, what do you beleive in? Who created us? and what do you beleive happens when you die? Don’t take my questions eprsonaly, Im just trying to understand your perspectives. Thanks

I don't feel any offense at your curiosity, it's only natural. Though I don't subscibe to any religion, I do subscribe to a moral philosophy called objectivism. This is a brief overview:

Objectivism holds that reality exists independent from consciousness; that individual persons are in contact with this reality through sensory perception; that human beings can gain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation; that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest; that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez-faire capitalism; and that the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and respond to.

As a whole, I don't believe in the supernatural, no God or devil and no afterlife. I believe in pursuing my own happiness on earth, not in a reward beyond to be taken on faith. How man came to be has been sufficiently explained by evolution. I also believe force and violence should only be used in self-defense and that individual rights must be respected above all.

What's barbaric to you might not be barbaric to me! Then again, that's a whole different story As a woman, you're telling me about gender equity? I think I love myself way more than you will ever love me and I think that Islam gives me all my rights as a woman and is far more just towards me than any other ideology. So who are you to tell me that my gender is not respected because men's testimony is worth 2 women's. This is why I said before I can't debate with you what you dont comprehend. There is a reason for this, and I will not even waste my time trying to explain. Im kinda sleepy right now, no offense  I think I would've known if my rights were taken away from me, but that again is for another day, another time

Just curious thoug, if you don't beleive in God, what do you beleive in? Who created us? and what do you beleive happens when you die? Don't take my questions eprsonaly, Im just trying to understand your perspectives. Thanks

Didn;t you read < One of the difficult ones is that the punishment cannot be enforced unless there is a confession of the person, or four male eyewitnesses who each saw the act being committed.> This is the mercy of God, even though the crime is horrible, He still makes the punishment hard to implement. Who’s gonna commit adultery in front of 4 people? Hence the shariah punishment for adultery can not even be applied today. You need 4 people who were in presence of the adulterous couple while they were having sex! Trust me, adulterous people if anything will go hide when they’re committing their adulterous act ,no invite viewers. Hence, scholars say that it is very difficult to punish someone for adultery unless they confess it themselves! They have to come on their own and confess it and ask for the punishment

Oh I read it all right. Yet, amazingly people still manage to get convicted… Any chance some confessions were coerced? And btw, I don’t consider adultery a crime, let alone condone punishment by lashes or stoning. And unless you haven’t heard, jews have given up stoning long ago.  Maybe you should give that some thought.

Know the history! And that’s the reason why I told you I can’t discuss with you what you don’t comprehend coz its a waste of time. Just like I wouldn’t ask you to write me a prescription for Cancer JUST because you read a book about cancer!

Be it known that one does not need to be a lawyer to understand the main concepts of British common law. So don’t presume I’m not able to understand Sharia, just because I don’t live under it.

I understand that many things that Sharia considers crimes are not crimes by my own stantards. I understand that punishments prescribed under Sharia for those crimes are cruel and barbaric for the most part. I also understand that under Sharia, a man’s testimony is worth two women’s. So much for any pretense of gender equality.

Maybe you think capital punishment by hanging or fatal injection, or electric chair thats done in the west is more honorable

For your info, there is no capital punishment in Canada, and no I don’t condone those methods of execution either.  So the «you guys do it too» argument doesn’t carry any weight with me either, but even in the US, they don’t execute people for being gay (they’d have to wipe out half of San Francisco) or for just changing their faith, which americans do an average 4 times in their lifetimes.

But here is what I really think:

You say that Islam can’t be judged by the acts of it’s followers, which I understand to mean that you excuse the acts committed by those followers as misguided even though they are committed in the name of your God.  You also said that your God guides my footsteps wether I choose to believe in Him or not. Now if that is true of Islam’s followers, how can any of them be misguided? You don’t have to answer that.

What I really believe is that in human history, too many atrocities have been committed in the name of God, whatever the name you choose to call him. I also believe that Christianity and Islam both have more than their fair share of blood on their hands among those religions. I believe both Christ and your Prophet would probably be ashamed of the way their teachings were perverted. Saying the atrocities were comitted by misguided followers is no consolation for the victims.

For these reasons, I rebel against the very idea of the existence of a God.  Any God.

If you understood shariah, trust me you would love it because there is no law more just than shariah law.

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From Wikipedia:

In accordance with hadith, stoning to death is the penalty for married men and women who commit adultery. In addition, there are several conditions related to the person who commits it that must be met. One of the difficult ones is that the punishment cannot be enforced unless there is a confession of the person, or four male eyewitnesses who each saw the act being committed. All of these must be met under the scrutiny of judicial authority[115] For unmarried men and women, the punishment prescribed in the Qur'an and hadith is 100 lashes.[116]

Similarly, under Sharia a woman who is accused of adultery cannot be punished unless there are four male eyewitnesses to prove she did commit adultery.[citation needed] The "four witness" standard comes from the Qur'an itself, a revelation Muhammad announced in response to accusations of adultery leveled at his wife, Aisha: "Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah."[Qur'an 24:13]

This is your perfect law in action. With a man holding a Quran and saying matter-of-factly «this is Islam». Please don't insult my intelligence.

Philippe, Thanks for the link on muslim terrorist acts This website will give you a list of Christian terrorist acts as wellhttp://www.commonplacebook.com/current_events/politics/christian_terro.shtm

Not to be touchy, but one list is much longer than the other.

Again, same countries that we see every day on the news with instability, oppression, terror! What you failed to notice is these people were not born terrorists but they grew up with terror. These are people who were terrorised just because they held a muslim name, or were muslims. These are poeple who never got a chance to be anything else! This is again how you breed terrorists! When people feel hopeless, oppressed and have no other means than blowing themselves up, instead of accusing a beleif system i-e Islam, maybe you should stop a minute and ask yourself why? Why is it that poeple in this region do this? These people commit these desperate acts because at a point in their life, they lost control of everything, they got tired of being oppressed, they did not see an exit nor did they see a solution. I told you before, do you think Hamas would’ve existed if everything was fine in Palestine?

There has been oppression in other parts of the world. Tibet, for instance. Yet I don’t recall ever having seen a tibetan blowing himself up in Beijing, but uyghurs have… And I’m sorry, Palestine’s situation is not all Israel or the US’s fault. To hear some people, muslims are the only oppressed people on earth.

But this is not just about terrorist attacks. We don’t spray acid in women’s faces for refusing to cover up with a veil. We don’t whip them after being raped, just because they happened to be accompanied by a man who was not a member of her family when she was attacked (he was beaten up to by the rapists and condemed to receive lashes by the court, btw), as was documented in Saudi Arabia. We don’t whip people. We don’t amputate limbs. We don’t decapitate people (or at least not for centuries). We don’t stone people. We don’t have capital punishment for being gay, or for adultery or for just wanting to change your religion. These things are all in force under Shariah law. Whatever our faults, we have outgrown such treatments. Whole countries live by those laws, and more so than ever before.

It’s not that I want to insult your faith. It does have it’s good sides. But it also has it’s (very) ugly ones. And denial won’t help get rid of them.

I would also fight tooth and nail to defend your right to believe whatever you choose, could you say the same? (Or maybe you can, living in the US, but would some of your fellow muslims?) Because respect for other religions is not exactly the norm in muslim dominated countries (and I do know that for a fact because my mother currently sees a certain widower who is christian and who happens to have emigrated here from Syria and returns there every year. Suffice it to say he’s intimately familliar with the dhimma).

I respect your tenacity in defending your religion. I would’ve been disappointed if you hadn’t. It’s obvious you have faith, and, believe it or not, I respect that. It’s some of the doctrines of your religion that I criticize, not you personnally. I, on the other hand choose to live for the living and the real, not the supernatural.

Peace be with you.