You're this DattaSwami?

[dattaswami]

Btw, 'Jihad' in the Quran literally means "striving".
But it is only in the full context that 'jihad' become a war cry for killing non-believers.

I asked again have you ever read the 6236 verses and analyze the >77,000 words of the Quran thoroughly?
If not, it would be wise for you admit you just don't have any credibility to jump to conclusion re the above.

Today also, many religions and many Gods based on wrong spiritual knowledge exist, but, the situation is not as worse as that of that time.

In that context, wars and severe punishments were inevitable and in this context of today, propagation of right spiritual knowledge is sufficient. You should not extend the statement of one context blindly to other different context of the same event also. Today, the solution can come by cutting the wrong arguments with the help of right arguments and hands and feet need not be cut with knives. The whole problem arises by blindly bringing the comments of God made in one context to another different context due to ignorance without little common sense and a trace of analysis!

Similarly, issues of inheriting the property, control of women, concepts of marriage, the status of adopted sons etc., present in that context and in that region were analysed with justified logic and judgements were passed by the divine Prophet Mohammad. Everywhere, every time, we must not miss the basic point that these judgements were specific to those situations only. If the situation is exactly same, anytime, anywhere, you can simply extend and apply the same judgement word to word. But, if situations were different, the same judgement of past different situations should not be applied to the new situations without suitable modifications.

[Veritas Aequitas]

As I had stated I have done detailed researched and analysis of the Quran 6236 verses and >77,000 words.
>3400 of the verses i.e. 55% contain elements which condemned the non-believers [kafir] with intense hatred and negativity.
>300 verses are condoned violence against non-believers.
>50% of the verses imply if believers do not comply with the literal words of God they will be doomed to terrible hellfire.
the Quran is worst than Mein Kempf

With the above, how can one overcome and interpret the above to be non-violent.

It is possible to convince Muslims to be good humans but there is no way one can change what is inherent in the Constitution of the Religion.
The fact is in any human population there is always a small % of evil laden people. If there are various degree of evil prone people say, 20%, that would be 300 million of them all around the world feasting on those literal verses which are immutable.
It is a fact within psychology 1% of humans are psychopaths.

Please do not think that I am criticizing the divine scripture by lowering its value. I have to say this because peoples's blind fascination for the scripture, setting aside logical analysis, must be condemned. I am not criticizing the divine scripture. The wrong concept is not genuinely part of the genuine scripture. It is only an insertion made by an ignorant person who wants his wrong concept to be accepted by people like you. He inserted it in a genuine scripture so that people will accept it without question. He is exploiting the position of sacredness given to the divine scripture.

You must realize one basic point: How can God, the author of the divine scripture speak such illogical wrong concepts? Such wrong and illogical concepts were definitely not told by Him! This one point makes logical analysis occupy a higher place than the scripture. The logical analysis reveals what is actually spoken by God and what is inserted by ignorant or crooked people in the scripture. The purpose of giving this entire background is to emphasize the point that a concept supported by sharp logical analysis itself is the scripture. Whether such a concept is found in the divine scripture or not is not important. In any case, there is always the possibility of insertions and corruption of any scripture, so accepting any statement from the scripture without analysis is foolish.

Btw, I am a non-theist, so your points above just do not work with me.

The more you try to defend the religion, the more you exposed your ignorance.

Just like Christianity, it is very explicit within Islam, one can only be a Muslim upon entering into a divine 'Contract' or Covenant [Mithaag] with Allah.
https://the.ismaili/usa/covenants-mithaaq-the-qur
which is repeated in many verses in the Quran.

There is no real absolute God;
God is an Impossibility [to be Real]
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=24704

The God of Islam is the God as reflected in the Quran and nowhere else, it is the same for Christianity and Judaism.
The God of Islam cannot conform to what YOU think God should be.

When one is contracted to be a Muslim one must comply fully to one's best abilities to the terms of the contract which are the relevant verses in the Quran.
When one has entered into a contract one must abide by the terms of the contract literally and not by one's own interpretation using logical analysis as you recommend.

In the above sense, one cannot call oneself a Muslim unless on comply with the specific terms [in the Quran only] one has contracted to be a Muslim.

You may interpret your own way with Hinduism or Buddhism* rationally [even for these discretion is limited] but not in Christianity, Islam or Judaism which is grounded Constitutionally upon the holy texts supposedly from a God [regardless real, true or not].

• *The Dalai Lama has stated his position succinctly: “If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change.”

The only solution to avoid the violence by SOME Muslims is to convince all Muslims to convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, other pacifist religions or be a non-theist.

[dattaswami]

The only solution to avoid the violence by SOME Muslims is to convince all Muslims to convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, other pacifist religions or be a non-theist.

Today, the difference between religions has gone to the level of terrorism and the peace is not only cracked into pieces but also ground to fine powder. The ignorant fanatics of a religion are killing the innocent people of other religion. Such killing is not Jihad of Islam and also not Dharma Yuddha of Hinduism. You may argue that Mohammad brought the unity of religions through sword and therefore conversion of other religion into your religion must be through violence.

In the time of Mohammad, the religions were many and were quarrelling with each other by swords and that was affecting the peace to a great extent. Mohammad preached the unity of religions and finally had to use the sword only to stop several swords fighting with each other. That is not the situation in the present time. In every country all the religions are co-existing peacefully like the different members of the same family. The reason is that the humanity is well advanced in education and improved a lot in the faculty of logic through advancements of science and technology. Of course, you are free to teach your religion or even prove the defects of other religion through arguments and debates. If people are convinced, they will follow your religion. If not, you have to leave them peacefully.

Q’ran says that one should preach about Allah and leave the person with safety. Mohammad never said to use the sword when the religions are co-existing with peace and love to each other.

Gita came out from a war. But the war was not based on the deference in the religions. It was based on eradicating the injustice used to grab the property of some brothers by their brothers. Lord Krishna tried a lot for compromise.

It was a war based on the division of property and not on the division of religions. Even in that war, innocent people living in villages and cities were not killed through terrorism. Only selected soldiers fought with each other in a selected place called Kurukshetra. You should not say that Aswatthama killed the people in sleep in the midnight and this is a part of Dharma Yuddha [Jihad].

But Aswatthama killed the soldiers of other side only and never entered the city of Pandavas and killed innocent people as done by terrorists today. Seeing these cruel activities of terrorism based on the difference in the religions, all the three human incarnations [Krishna, Jesus and Mohammad] from heaven are deeply pained because the same absolute God exists in all the three forms, who is the single creator of the entire humanity. The father is terribly pained if one of his sons kills the other son.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Does it matter which face is used to represent this concept?

Love it

[Veritas Aequitas]

Btw, 'Jihad' in the Quran literally means "striving".
But it is only in the full context that 'jihad' become a war cry for killing non-believers.

I asked again have you ever read the 6236 verses and analyze the >77,000 words of the Quran thoroughly?
If not, it would be wise for you admit you just don't have any credibility to jump to conclusion re the above.

Today also, many religions and many Gods based on wrong spiritual knowledge exist, but, the situation is not as worse as that of that time.

In that context, wars and severe punishments were inevitable and in this context of today, propagation of right spiritual knowledge is sufficient. You should not extend the statement of one context blindly to other different context of the same event also. Today, the solution can come by cutting the wrong arguments with the help of right arguments and hands and feet need not be cut with knives. The whole problem arises by blindly bringing the comments of God made in one context to another different context due to ignorance without little common sense and a trace of analysis!

Similarly, issues of inheriting the property, control of women, concepts of marriage, the status of adopted sons etc., present in that context and in that region were analysed with justified logic and judgements were passed by the divine Prophet Mohammad. Everywhere, every time, we must not miss the basic point that these judgements were specific to those situations only. If the situation is exactly same, anytime, anywhere, you can simply extend and apply the same judgement word to word. But, if situations were different, the same judgement of past different situations should not be applied to the new situations without suitable modifications.

You still don't get it.

The Quran is claimed to be Perfect and an exemplar for all humans till eternity.
The Quran never claimed it is applicable to that specific time.

Btw, the current Quran was only finalized many year or even possibly hundred of years after the death of Muhammad.
The hadiths were written down >200 years after the Quran.
If that is the case, the compilers should have excluded and modified many the supposed time-based verses related to the wars, social customs, etc. then.

Your time and context based interpretation has too many holes in it and do not hold water.

But the point is, since being a Muslim is entering into a contract with the God in the Quran, the contracted Muslim is duty bound to comply with whatever the term that is literal in the supposedly perfect eternal Quran in order to reap the promise reward.

Note the offer was made and the Muslim accepted the offer; ignorance is no defense; as such one is obligated to comply with the terms of the contract one has signed.

[dattaswami]

The only solution to avoid the violence by SOME Muslims is to convince all Muslims to convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, other pacifist religions or be a non-theist.

It is better to take the spiritual practices and concepts of all religions and study in depth so that all can find the basic essence to be one and same. When this is done, though it is a tedious process involving hot arguments, finally, the discovered basic essence brings wonderful correlation between religions so that a permanent solution comes out to establish unity among the followers of all religions. A permanent solution always needs time and strain, but, permanent is permanent and temporary is temporary.

The main problem for the differences in the religions is that the present day religions are not the pure sacred original religions established in the past by the original founders of religions, who were human incarnations of God. In the past time, even the followers were very pure implementing the original concepts of their religions without any extra interpretations and extra insertions.

As time passed on, selfish wrong followers came in to every religion and inserted their opinions in the name of original scripture. As a result of this, all the original religions are adulterated. Unless we do sharp analysis to remove the bad present in every religion, the good in every religion will not come out. When the basic good truths originally established by the founders come out, you will find unity in all these good truths so that the differences between followers disappear resulting in excellent correlation and mutual love in the entire humanity.

Before doing this sharp analysis, we must have open mind to receive truth as truth and false as false, whether the truth or false belongs to our religion or to other religions. We must be prepared to accept the truth of the opposite side and false of our side with a view that such acceptance need not be considered as self defeat and victory of others. We must be favouring such angle with a view that such a result benefits us to rectify our mistake with the help of others. Unless this attitude is developed before such correlation-analysis, people will not even proceed into the analysis and even if they proceed, very shortly, quarrels appear. We must have very broad and very open mind because there is only one God, who created this entire humanity as said by every religion.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Blah blah blaaah (pause) dee blah dee blah dee blaaah....

I went to the supermarket today and there was no bread, no lemons, and no eggs. What do you think of that?

[Veritas Aequitas]

The only solution to avoid the violence by SOME Muslims is to convince all Muslims to convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, other pacifist religions or be a non-theist.

Today, the difference between religions has gone to the level of terrorism and the peace is not only cracked into pieces but also ground to fine powder. The ignorant fanatics of a religion are killing the innocent people of other religion. Such killing is not Jihad of Islam and also not Dharma Yuddha of Hinduism. You may argue that Mohammad brought the unity of religions through sword and therefore conversion of other religion into your religion must be through violence.

In the time of Mohammad, the religions were many and were quarrelling with each other by swords and that was affecting the peace to a great extent. Mohammad preached the unity of religions and finally had to use the sword only to stop several swords fighting with each other. That is not the situation in the present time. In every country all the religions are co-existing peacefully like the different members of the same family. The reason is that the humanity is well advanced in education and improved a lot in the faculty of logic through advancements of science and technology. Of course, you are free to teach your religion or even prove the defects of other religion through arguments and debates. If people are convinced, they will follow your religion. If not, you have to leave them peacefully.

Q’ran says that one should preach about Allah and leave the person with safety. Mohammad never said to use the sword when the religions are co-existing with peace and love to each other.

Gita came out from a war. But the war was not based on the deference in the religions. It was based on eradicating the injustice used to grab the property of some brothers by their brothers. Lord Krishna tried a lot for compromise.

It was a war based on the division of property and not on the division of religions. Even in that war, innocent people living in villages and cities were not killed through terrorism. Only selected soldiers fought with each other in a selected place called Kurukshetra. You should not say that Aswatthama killed the people in sleep in the midnight and this is a part of Dharma Yuddha [Jihad].

But Aswatthama killed the soldiers of other side only and never entered the city of Pandavas and killed innocent people as done by terrorists today. Seeing these cruel activities of terrorism based on the difference in the religions, all the three human incarnations [Krishna, Jesus and Mohammad] from heaven are deeply pained because the same absolute God exists in all the three forms, who is the single creator of the entire humanity. The father is terribly pained if one of his sons kills the other son.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

What the fuck is happening? No bread? How does that work?

[dattaswami]

Note the offer was made and the Muslim accepted the offer; ignorance is no defense; as such one is obligated to comply with the terms of the contract one has signed.

If a person belonging to one religion scolds another religion, such person shall understand that he is indirectly scolding the heart of his own religion. When there is only one earth with one humanity, how can there be several Gods? Each religion says that its God alone created this earth with humanity.

[Veritas Aequitas]

The only solution to avoid the violence by SOME Muslims is to convince all Muslims to convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, other pacifist religions or be a non-theist.

It is better to take the spiritual practices and concepts of all religions and study in depth so that all can find the basic essence to be one and same. When this is done, though it is a tedious process involving hot arguments, finally, the discovered basic essence brings wonderful correlation between religions so that a permanent solution comes out to establish unity among the followers of all religions. A permanent solution always needs time and strain, but, permanent is permanent and temporary is temporary.

The main problem for the differences in the religions is that the present day religions are not the pure sacred original religions established in the past by the original founders of religions, who were human incarnations of God. In the past time, even the followers were very pure implementing the original concepts of their religions without any extra interpretations and extra insertions.

As time passed on, selfish wrong followers came in to every religion and inserted their opinions in the name of original scripture. As a result of this, all the original religions are adulterated. Unless we do sharp analysis to remove the bad present in every religion, the good in every religion will not come out. When the basic good truths originally established by the founders come out, you will find unity in all these good truths so that the differences between followers disappear resulting in excellent correlation and mutual love in the entire humanity.

Before doing this sharp analysis, we must have open mind to receive truth as truth and false as false, whether the truth or false belongs to our religion or to other religions. We must be prepared to accept the truth of the opposite side and false of our side with a view that such acceptance need not be considered as self defeat and victory of others. We must be favouring such angle with a view that such a result benefits us to rectify our mistake with the help of others. Unless this attitude is developed before such correlation-analysis, people will not even proceed into the analysis and even if they proceed, very shortly, quarrels appear. We must have very broad and very open mind because there is only one God, who created this entire humanity as said by every religion.

You are still exposing your ignorance on Islam.

It is only Islam which claim that the Quran reflect the verbatim words of God word by word and alphabet by alphabet via the angel Gabriel via Muhammad as a 100% absolute copy of the original in the hands of God.
As such Islam claim the Quran is never adulterated nor corrupted.

As such a 'contracted' Muslim must comply with the literal words of God as the contractual terms in the Quran.
I presumed you understand, if you enter into any contract for any exchange of promises you must comply with the terms specified in the contract where you would keep a copy and ignorance is no defense.

No other religion as I know of made such claims, even Christianity which relied on the spiritual principles and essence rather than on what is written literally.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Note the offer was made and the Muslim accepted the offer; ignorance is no defense; as such one is obligated to comply with the terms of the contract one has signed.

If a person belonging to one religion scolds another religion, such person shall understand that he is indirectly scolding the heart of his own religion. When there is only one earth with one humanity, how can there be several Gods? Each religion says that its God alone created this earth with humanity.

Where did you get the "shall".
On whose authority do you depend to insist you are right and will succeed?

A Muslim will have no hesitation in condemning whichever religion other than his own because his God said so and he has to comply because he is contracted to do so.
He has to comply with what his God commanded otherwise he might end up in terrible hell.

To the Muslim, as the Quran dictated there is only ONE God, i.e. Allah and all other gods are fake Gods or they have followed a fake god of a corrupted book.

You just cannot rationalize with a Muslim with views other than those his is contracted to.

For example,
A rational person did blasphemy to Islam.
Unfortunately he came face to face fanatical Islamists who knew of his blasphemy.
They are about to behead him,
Do you think he can use logic and rationality to change the Islamists mind?

Take the case of Salman Rushdie, he was attacked 30 years after he committed the supposed blasphemy.

You are now preaching you need to and can change the mind of Islamists with logical and rationality.
When do you think your expectation will come through?
In 10 years time?
In 50, 100, 150, 500, 1000, 5000 years time?
Note many had tried to change the minds of violent Islamist since 1000 years ago and they have not succeeded till the present and I don't see the possibility in the future at all.

Your logical and rational in changing the minds of Islamists is merely wishful thinking and dreaming the impossible.

[dattaswami]

Do you think he can use logic and rationality to change the Islamists mind?

I agree such hard core terrorist cannot be changed in a flip of a second. The wrong knowledge is injected into his brain by others over a period of time and it is strengthened like a hill. In such situation it is very difficult to break that hill, but not impossible. Even a terrorist has some logic by which only he is practically behaving in that particular way. By your sharp analysis, you have to change that logic and then only reformation and realization comes even in terrorist. You must enlighten the misinterpretation of the scripture like Jihad, which is the fight for justice in the context of killing each other due to difference in the religions existing in the time of Prophet Mohammad. The situation of killing each other can be controlled by fight and sometimes in extreme conditions by removing some limbs like hands, legs etc. Killing can be stopped by fights or such severe punishments. Today when such context of killing is not there, you cannot bring the concept of Jihad to the context of today.

[dattaswami]

Your logical and rational in changing the minds of Islamists is merely wishful thinking and dreaming the impossible.

If few of the islamic leaders are convinced that will be the stepping stone, if leaders are convinced they will easily convince multitude of followers. Even 1 or 2 leader who is convinced will be sufficient to achieve world peace. That is my aim.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Do you think he can use logic and rationality to change the Islamists mind?

I agree such hard core terrorist cannot be changed in a flip of a second. The wrong knowledge is injected into his brain by others over a period of time and it is strengthened like a hill. In such situation it is very difficult to break that hill, but not impossible. Even a terrorist has some logic by which only he is practically behaving in that particular way. By your sharp analysis, you have to change that logic and then only reformation and realization comes even in terrorist. You must enlighten the misinterpretation of the scripture like Jihad, which is the fight for justice in the context of killing each other due to difference in the religions existing in the time of Prophet Mohammad. The situation of killing each other can be controlled by fight and sometimes in extreme conditions by removing some limbs like hands, legs etc. Killing can be stopped by fights or such severe punishments. Today when such context of killing is not there, you cannot bring the concept of Jihad to the context of today.

Trying to change the mind of present terrorist prone individuals is a lost cause.

The current Perfect Quran which is immutable cannot be changed or altered since no fallible humans can change the words of the infallible God.
As such as long as one is a Muslim [as defined] as contracted that Muslim must comply with all the term of the contract as stipulated and agreed as in the 6236 verses of the Quran.
There is no question of misinterpreting the Perfect immutable Quran.

The only possible change for good is to change average moral competence [MQ] of humanity.
The change is moral competence can only be done with changes in the neuron connection in the brain and genes in the DNA. This is possible in the future, next 50, 75, 150 years or more from now.
I have been discussing this possibility of change in increasing the Moral Quotient in the Ethical Theory Section.

One clue you can note is how long term meditation can change the brain structure for good.

• http://www.andrewnewberg.com/
  Dr. Andrew Newberg is a neuroscientist who studies the relationship between brain function and various mental states. He is a pioneer in the neurological study of religious and spiritual experiences, a field known as “neurotheology.” His research includes taking brain scans of people in prayer, meditation, rituals, and trance states, in an attempt to better understand the nature of religious and spiritual practices and attitudes.

Not sure you are aware or not, meditation like Vispassana [& others] can improve one's impulse controls thus can inhibit evil impulses at source.

The concept of mindfulness is based on Vipassana, a Buddhist meditation technique. The present study examines the physiological indices of attention and autonomic regulation in experienced Vipassana meditators to test the claim that mindfulness is an effective therapeutic tool due to its effects on increasing awareness of present experience and emotional self-regulation.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 6013002146

Such meditation at present are crude and not specific. It may not work with everyone.
In the future, I am very optimistic humanity will have the knowledge to assist the individual[s] to self-develop his moral quotient [MQ] brain and genes wise up to 100 times higher than our current average MQ.

A person with high MQ will definitely find that the morality level in the Quran abhorrent and will definitely leave Islam voluntarily and naturally; perhaps convert to Christianity or other pacifist religions with higher moral standards.

Your apologist attitude toward that religion is a lost cause and in a way is an insult to your intelligence in trying to squaring the circle.