Islam is Bad?
First up, the author of this article is a non-secular, natural Australian who was originally indoctrinated as a child into a strict Christian religion that practices many biblical 'laws' that might otherwise be mistaken as Sharia Law, without any background information.
To clear up any misconceptions: Islam is a religion. It's not 'a people' - that is - they don't come from a specific country. Muslims, like Christians, practice in many countries around the world, including those countries who fought along side Australia in WWI (approx. 1 million Muslims), WWII (approx. 2.8 million Muslims) and the current war (41 Muslim-Majority nations). That much is not opinion, it's recent history.
The threat that we are facing in the West is not from Muslims, but from puritanical Sunni Wahabism which interprets the Islam scriptures differently to the way modern Muslims interpret them.
Just like the Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses (for example) broke away from mainstream Christianity, the extremist Sunni Wahabism that attacks the West is a break-away of Islam. Which came first is totally beside the point; the point is, many Christians interpret bible scriptures differently, so too, do Sunni Wahabism Muslims.
Many Westerners claim they have read the Qur'an and have interpreted it as evil, violent, dangerous and incompatible with the Western world. This article aims to demonstrate how 'literal' interpretation can be totally misguided, as can personal interpretation and, quite often, even religious interpretation.
Aside of Islam and Christianity both sharing the same modern principle: Respect the law of the land - they also share many other 'literal' similarities.
Polygamy
The Old Testament of the Christian bible explicitly permits polygamy. Exodus and Deuteronomy lays out the rules of multiple wives and the sons born to them.
Over 40 important bible figures had more than one wife, such as Esau (Gen 26:34; 28:6–9), Elkanah (1 Samuel 1:1–8), and Solomon (1 Kings 11:1–3). Moses had 3 wives; Zipporah (Exodus 2: 21), the daughter of Hobab (Numbers 10: 29) and the Ethiopian woman (Numbers 12:1).
The New Testament does not explicitly forbid polygamy, except for church leaders who can only take one wife (1Timothy 3:2, 1Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6).
Adultery & Domestic Violence
Many important bible figures in both Testaments also took a concubine; they were slave women who the married men committed adultery with and even bore children with. In fact, the wise King Solomon had 300 concubines and 700 wives; 1 Kings 11:3.
Concubines were not willing participants, they were owned objects. Judges 19:22-26 depicts Gibeah and the Levite Concubine, in which a man sends out his concubine to a group of angry men, where they gang rape her. Afterwards, the man cuts up the body of his concubine into twelve pieces and sends them to the Twelve Tribes of Israel as a call to war.
Wives and concubines who were accused of adultery, were publicly stripped, violated and stoned to death (Ezekiel 16) without any kind of trial or hearing.
Ezekiel 23, a story about two adulterous sisters, turns the tortured, raped, and murdered wives into a warning sign for all women. It teaches that women better obey their husbands, stay in their houses, and forgo any signs of adulterous behaviour.
Rape & Slavery
Genesis 19 describes a father's God-given power over his daughters when Lot offers an angry mob his two virgin daughters to rape. In Genesis 34, Dinah is abducted and raped by Shechem, who is then avenged by her brothers who, in turn, capture and rape other women.
In Numbers 31:15-18, Moses, after exacting revenge on the Midianites, commands his army to kill all the boys and every non-virgin woman while telling them to capture for themselves every virgin woman. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 presents laws regarding marrying a captive woman.
Jeremiah 13:22 describes how a raped woman has brought this fate upon herself and she is to be blamed for it, while the prophet sides with the sexually violent perpetrators, viewing the attack as deserved and God as justifying it. Isaiah 3:16-17 describes God's vow that women who bring rape upon themselves will be struck with genital scabs.
Other types of slavery are rampant throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. Leviticus 25:44-46 of the Old testament describes how foreign slaves and their children could be bequeathed to the owner's family and be made to serve for life. In the New Testament, Jesus approves of beating slaves (Luke 12:47-48).
So numerous are the scriptures, in later times, the Bible was cited as justification for slavery by defenders of the slave trade (Stringfellow, A Scriptural defense of slavery, 1856).
Incest
There are numerous examples of incest in the Bible.
The most commonly thought-of examples are the sons/daughters of Adam and Eve (Genesis 4), Abraham marrying his half-sister Sarah (Genesis 20:12), Lot laying with his daughters (Genesis 19), Moses’ father Amram who married his aunt Jochebed (Exodus 6:20), and David’s son Amnon who raped and married his half-sister Tamar (2 Samuel 13).
After the Great Flood, Noah's grandchildren also married first cousins to repopulate the earth (Acts 17:26).
Genocide
The Christians waged many wars on the infidels. In Exodus God beset Egypt with a series of devastating plagues, and then destroyed Egypt’s king and his army in the Red Sea (Exodus 3:7-10).
On other occasions, he authorized the slaughter of the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 9:5; 20:17, 18), the Philistines (2 Samuel 5:17-25), the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:7-8) and countless other peoples to secure and defend the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 7:1, 2; Joshua 10:40).
In Isaiah 14:21 it reads "Make ready to slaughter the infidel’s sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and possess the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants."
In Ezekiel 9:5 God instructs the men to enter the city and "kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children.”
And again in Numbers 31:17-18, it reads "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."
Interpretation Means Everything
It should be evident by now, neither the Bible or the Qur'an paint a pretty picture of life led exactly according to scripture. In the literal interpretations of the associated ancient histories, both texts present as equally brutal, violent and savage as each other.
To suggest Christians evolved but Muslims didn't is also to suggest Muslims are somehow impervious to human evolution, or vise versa. In-arguably, all of us are human and all of us have evolved. Again, that is not opinion, it's recent history.
As both Christians and Muslims will surely agree, modern interpretation of their scriptures is required, by many hours of study and discussion, to fully understand the implications on modern life. Nobody can read either text and take the 'literal' meaning as evidence of anything other than historical scripture.
Defining the Enemy
The majority of modern Muslims are immigrating to democratic countries to be free to practice their religion peacefully - just as Christians are able to do.
In Australia, this is FACT. Of 604,200 Australian Muslims only 12 attacks have been recorded - this equates to less than 0.00002% of Muslims who follow ultra extreme Sunni Wahabism. The other 99.99998% ARE trying to integrate, all be it under constant attack by fellow (supposed) freedom-defenders.
The media has done a great dis-service to all Australians by not naming the threat directly: extreme Sunni Wahabism. Why? Because Australia is currently selling weapons to their Saudi Arabian counterparts. Australians rubbishing the Arab Sunni's would quickly destroy the trade agreement.
All Sunni's, extreme or not, take great pride in the Western persecution of those considered to be deserters. And Australians are only too glad to oblige, they barely need a reason. We are creating our own enemies by being as intolerant as the enemy itself and pandering to its desires.
Conversely, by accepting those Muslims who are already here and embracing their attempts to integrate, take jobs, pay taxes and contribute to our democracy, we would not only be demonstrating the multicultural nation that we've become known for, but also be sticking it to the enemy.
Humanity is our virtue.