Quote from Ivanovich:
The religion of Islam IS a peaceful one.
Nah, I'm not convinced. Perhaps you need to use four-point font, underlined and red.
Have you ever read the biography of the Prophet?
I'm familiar with the most significant aspects of his life without having read a complete work on it by any one particular author. Who have you read?
He was the first to bring tolerance, equalization for women (to a point) and understanding of Christians and Jews (by calling them Dhimmi - "protected people") to the arab tribes and the Qurash (the ruling merchant party of Medina at the time). So there were battles. You wanna talk about how many battles there are in the Old Testament? Come on, mate. I suggest you pick up a copy of No god, but God by Azlan. It's an excellent read about the true nature of Islam.
This sounds like a bunch of mushy unreality that the likes of a Karen Armstrong would write.
Come on, do you really expect me to buy into simplistic one-liners like "He was the first to bring tolerance"? What does that even mean? Tolerance didn't exist until Mohammed thought it up? Just what kind of 'tolerance' did he bring, specifically? The claim that Islam improved the lot of women can only be read by westerners as a damning indictment of their treatment by pre-Islamic Arab society; the claim that women are better treated under Islam than under, say, Christianity is so absurd only a committed Muslim could hold to it. The only sense that 'dhimmi' provisions protect Christians and Jews is to spare them the depravities the Islamic religion reserves for pagans; this is not remotely 'englightened' in any modern sense of the word. Yes, there were battles in the Old Testament, but that doesn't spare Islam being called a violent religion, it only means ancient Jews were violent, too. It's veritable fact that the first enterprise launched by the newly minted Muslims of 7th century Arabia was a campaign of military conquest with the purpose of brining the known world under the banner of Islam.
It's not a bad thing as long as the Muslims immigrating realize that the freedom of religion is a sacred thing.
And what if they don't? What if they reject that? If that is the condition on which Muslims are allowed to enter, shouldn't we have someone monitoring them to determine whether they do in fact consider freedom of religion 'sacred'?
And is the mere fact that it's 'not a bad thing' reason enough to bring them here? 'It's not a bad thing' suggests it's merely tolerable, without any actual positive benefit to recommend to it. In that case, society is being transformed for precisely...nothing.
In fact, and I think I mentioned this before, when Muhammad conquered the Qurash and retook Medina, he went to the Ka'ba (which was a square building that housed every statue and icon to every god the people of the land worshipped - they housed them there because the pilgrimage of these people caused trade to their city) the Prophet had his men destroy every and all statue of these false gods until he came to a statue of Mary and Jesus. Here, he paused, placed his hand over the statue and said "destroy all but that which is under my hand".
How do you square such rampant violence with the idea that Muslims are supposed to hold freedom of religion sacred? Or does that only count for Christians and Jews? Hindus, too bad fellas.
He was all about tolerance. And that is why I believe that immigrating true followers of Islam does no harm. In fact, it may bring good as an understanding of Islam - as it is meant to be - will be among Christians and Jews.
He was not 'all about tolerance' at all. That view is demonstrably wrong. If that is only justification for believing Islamic immigration 'might' (might? rather a risky gamble, wouldn't you say?) be a good thing, I think your case just vanished.
I appreciate your comments as well.