Well, to tell the truth I don’t see what the difference is between that and something like an atheist group that has a website that points out the problems with Christian belief.

true, or points out the problem with any religion. RRS does the same thing, though they don’t seem to focus on islam too much unfortuantely. as long as this website isn’t preaching violence maybe it’s not such a bad thing. if this were a website criticizing evangelicals would it bother anyone other than them? probably not. as much as I can’t stand evangelical xtianity, overall in the world right now, islam is a much bigger threat, and people need to stop this “criticizing islam is hateful” stuff. the veil’s been pulled off of criticizing xtianity, judiasm, and other religions in this country. good. now it’s islam’s turn, here and in Europe.

that’s exactly how I see the Islamic religion, as a form of slavery.

yes, but the same can also be said of christianity (submittance to god, jesus, priest, man as head of household, etc.). there are things in the qu’ran that i see as being preferable, from a feminist/liberal point of view, to christianity – such as adam causing the fall, rather than eve, in their creation myth, and muhammad calling for peace and tolerance between people of his faith and ‘the people of the book’ in a hadith. when a man came to see one of muhammad’s wives, it was he who had to sit behind a veil, because it was he, as a man, that could not be trusted to behave decently. whilst i don’t know of any major world religion that isn’t patriarchal in nature (possibly some of the pagan forms, but i haven’t studied those yet), the biggest difference between christianity and islam appears to be their followers, of whom i’d say muslims seem to generally be the most intolerant and bigoted. there are those that interpret the qu’ran in much the same way people like Mike C. can interpret the bible, but that doesn’t make the religion itself any worse. nor any better.

Mriana said,

I’ve read the Quran and did not see anything favourable to women nor did I see anything favourable to “losers”, which includes Christians and Jews.

I can’t let this go by (because I’m studying the history of Islam right now). The Qur’an actually was a step forward for women at the time. It gave women divorce rights (compare with early Christianity), inheritance rights, and outlawed infanticide. I think the problem is that the Qur’an is considered to be the final word of God, so its women’s rights have been greatly outdated. Also, I believe that some parts of the tradition say God is merciful to Christians and Jews (though admittedly it’s not emphasized).

That said, I don’t buy the argument that all religions are equally bad. Next you’ll tell me that all meta-narratives are equally correct.

Religion, in general, has a very violent history. I have yet to read or hear about a non-theist war.

Humanity, in general, has a very violent history. I suspect that you haven’t heard of any war between atheists because there simply haven’t historically been many (if any) atheist nations or ethnic groups. When leaders want to go to war, it becomes necessary for them to give the people a reason to fight; often religion is a good motivating factor, but it’s certainly not the only one.

There have been many, many wars fought over political (non-religious) issues; in fact, I’d bet money that you could count on your fingers the number of wars fought *only* over religion. Even when a fight is nominally religious, I have always found political underpinnings.

It’s funny that you don’t hear more people rejecting politics, if it is so dangerous, in the way that many atheists reject religion.

I sincerely hope that this site is a hoax or parody, but I’m at work and can’t pull it up.

However, that said, I think Islam is far worse in the violence dept than Christians are. I’ve read the Quran and did not see anything favourable to women nor did I see anything favourable to “losers”, which includes Christians and Jews. Who are losers? Those who don’t believe in Allah and I can’t imagine a Christian or Jew converting without realizing that Allah is NOT the same god. It is a totally different deity and they would be ignorant to think otherwise. And don’t tell me I don’t understand the Quran and need some crazed fascist Muslim to explain it to me. I CAN read.

Islam means submit. The thing is, one submits to a form of slavery. It is very oppressive in my opinion. More so than Christianity. Again, that is just my opinion and not even a prof or two profs can change my mind about that.

OK that’s my own diatribe on the subject.