All religions lack self-criticism. It is one of their primary features.

Once you start looking at: virgin births, people coming back from the dead, burning bushes telling you what God thinks, God giving you special dispensation for sex with slaves at the precise moment your wife catches you rooting one your maids, etc the whole thing seems a bit absurd.

Lack of self-criticism is mandatory in the faithful - that is what faith is for - belief without reason - because if you have good reason to believe something faith is unnecessary.

Rob... we have umpteen zillion theologically liberal academics criticizing those things every day. Evangelicals do not reject the virgin birth or resurection, or healings etc.. specially me, who has experienced the divine touch and an instantaneous healing.

Among Evangelicals, we even have Philo here, who does not share what I would describe as 'orthodox' views about Christ. No offense to him.

F.H. Living together is no problem as long as Muslims are a small minority. When they are a majority, such verses as I showed will form the basis of 'hit squads' and rabble who invade Christians businesses, extract 'Jizya' from them, burn their churches and generally mock them. You, coming from Egypt should especially know this, if you don't then I'll provide you with abundant real world examples including a young Copt from Knox city who suggested he would like to burn every mosque in Australia.

Just like the communist manifesto, it all comes back to fundamentals.

The problem with the Islamic position is not the 'nice things' the Quran says about Jesus, even they are an insult to the Son of God. You say its no secret that Islam rejects the idea of 'partners' with God etc.. well shock horror, so do we. But you used a Red Herring there.. 'trinity'.. don't even think about that in relation to this discussion please. Its purely about ONE thing.
-Christians say Christ is Son of God.
-Quran and Hadith/MOhammed curses them for this specific core belief.

Communism is political "Religion is the opiate of the masses"
Islam is Political "May Allah destroy them" (Christians and Jews)

"Our Lord, has commanded us to fight you until you worship Allah or pay the Jizya" (ref previously supplied)

I suggest Mohammed HAD to reduce Jesus to the level of Prophet, to boost his own status as 'Last Prophet' this is basic psychology and unfortunately neglects the reality of Christs life, and His atoning death for our sin; but most of all His resurrection.

To be a muslim, "a way of life", is to submit to the koran. Most muslims play the charade, pray for a new car, whatever, but when the hard questions have to be answered there won't be an uscarved head in the place.
moderate muslims? islam doesn't provide for degrees. You are or you die. Too much time and nonsense. muslims need to seperate themselves and put some efort into organisng their medieval theocracies instead of generating violent psychO-sexual death cults.
religions always have at least one foot in perversity. Glad we have those fat kids down at the mall to protect us.

>>Pericles, You have your own axe to grind and so too does "The Economist"<<

Aquarius, neither I nor The Economist makes our daily bread from spruiking anti-Muslim propaganda. I might also suggest that their fact-checking department is somewhat more rigorous than that of Mr Pipes, possibly for the same reason.

>>Daniel Pipes defends the religion of Islam...<<

... in much the same way that Shakespeare describes Mark Anthony defending the actions of Julius Caesar.

"I come not to bury Islam, but to praise it...", and we know how that speech ends, don't we?

In order to preserve some market value in the battle for podium dollars you need to adopt at least a superficially neutral stance on one aspect of your position. You then earn your appearance fees by bagging every other feature.

Boaz, if he had ever managed to get around to reading Oswald Mosley's autobiography, would have been able to show how it can be done. You say "I've nothing against the Jewish faith" out of one corner of your mouth, while stirring up hatred against Jews from the other.

>>Hmmm. 2 million or 1.6 million. It seems you win on the math providing your source is absolutely correct and there is no margin for error.<<

Don't be ridiculous. Your own "2 million" referred to Muslims in London. 1.6 million is The Economist's total for the whole of Britain.

And how you can still pretend that I "loose [sic] in the context of the point BOAZ was trying to make" is beyond reason. Just to remind you:

>>The current polling suggests 50% of UK muslim youth want to live under Sharia Law. That probably represents over a million people<<

Note: he calculates a million to be 50% of Muslim youth, not the total Muslim population. I lose? C'mon!

You then try a retrofit justification:

>>read 2 differing reports of Hindu population in Britain. One gave a number of 366,000, the other, 800,000<<

Of course you did. One lot was counted by Daniel Pipes.

Pericles, Your bias and presumptions are as blatant as is BOAZ David's religious belief. You may suggest till your blue in the face but, suggesting don't make factual.
A little heads up here for your future argument. That 1.6 mill you want recognized is from UK 2001 census. This being 2007 means some increase in population in Muslim religion. Right. You and The Economist chose old material to reference as fact.
Considering that Muslims having large families and that the UK is the number one destination for migrant Muslims from around the world. The 2 million is very realistic.
The differing Hindu population counts I gave were from the BBC reports on UK demographics. Not justification.
If you google BBC news, Muslim. All the recent articles or news reports will show. Many, as I have found question Muslim community integration vis a vis British values. Many offer community polls. The info I gave in post (aqvarivs, Tuesday, 6 February 2007 5:43:03 AM) is from both non-Muslim and Muslim polling.
The polls combined concluded that,"in sum, more than half of British Muslims want Islamic law and 5% endorse violence to achieve that end. These results demonstrate that Britain's potential terrorists live in a highly nurturing community."
Now you may quibble about numbers as you will but, there is no doubt that the militants are out and about and have chosen a side anathema to established governance. Democracy, human rights, liberal justice, feminism, and free speech. Little things like that.
Now, don't you think Muslims not in favour of loosing these rights ought to speak out.

Boaz,

Now you are turning it a Jesus debate so I will disengage on the basis that 2000 years later we are still here: Islam, Christianity and Judaism. We are all one of the same fabric and we need to learn from and about each other and co-exist.

I will only correct an incorrect statement about Islam that you made:

"I suggest Mohammed HAD to reduce Jesus to the level of Prophet, to elevate his own status"

That is not correct, Jesus position is a prophet even in the bible.
in fact Jesus miracles in the Quran exceeds the ones mentioned in the bible by 3. The "son of God" status is 4th century philosophy and you should know better. As for the 'status' statement, well, the Quran mentions Jesus 33 times while Mohamed (pbut) was mentioned only 4 times. Anyway, its amazing you "self proclaimed experts on Islam" studied very little.

Peace,

T