Boris Johnson "After Rome"

[Pancho]

Intolerance in the Quran

Er, there's 530 odd references there and, while I can't be bothered to check them all, my quick scan has failed to see any that support Liz's claim that "The Koran is equally clear that the faithful are entitled to kill the unbelievers"

And I'm not sure how relevant

Stay away from poets. The erring follow them

  (quote number 350-or-so from your list) is to the conversation.

[clarion]

Sorry - harder to do a more refined search, and there is an awful lot of intolerance in both books.

But I agree.  I can't recall any such comment, and I have read the NJ Dawood (Penguin) translation of the Quran from cover to cover, as well as using two other translations for reference.

[cometworm]

Intolerance in the Quran

Er, there's 530 odd references there and, while I can't be bothered to check them all, my quick scan has failed to see any that support Liz's claim that "The Koran is equally clear that the faithful are entitled to kill the unbelievers"

And I'm not sure how relevant

Stay away from poets. The erring follow them

  (quote number 350-or-so from your list) is to the conversation.

The "Cruelty and Violence" section is more useful. Even there, it doesn't allow a "first strike," as it were.

[clarion]

Good call.  I hadn't considered that, cause in the Bible, it is very long IIRC.

[clarion]

I don't have ready reference to the Hadiths, mind you.  If anyone does, perhaps we can check if there's such an injunction in there.  It's certainly possible.

[Bledlow]

There are an awful lot of awful things in the hadiths, so quite possibly. The stoning of adulterers, for example. The Koran is not always internally consistent, & is a little vague about adultery.  Suggests confining adulterous wives to the house, in one verse, &  forgiveness for truly contrite adulterers in another - and I've not found anywhere that it advocates the stoning of adulterers.

Who mentioned the glimmerings of a renaissance in Turkey? The Turks have recently been working on cleaned-up Sharia law: more Koran, fewer later accretions. Lots of forensic examination of texts to see when things were added. Seems to be aimed at undercutting extremists with their own weapons. It's vastly more liberal than the Wahhabis & others who claim their versions are based on fundamentals.