What is Islam??????????????

[Purgetroy]

well i dont have time to read the whole topic, but i'll reply to whatever i have time for right now,

They gay thing, are you against gays personally or for religious reasons or not at all, you accept people being gay. Because I am pretty sure a lot of religions are not keen on homosexuality.

my personaly 2 cents, we do have a problem with gay people. i'll make it closer to you. did you read the book The Silmarillion by Tolkien? In that book, the Illuvatar (god) created the elves. the elves were taken as realy highly creation for the Illuvatar. one of the Illuvatar's servants (higher than the elves (can be compared with angels)) called Morgoth, turned evil and wanted to insult the Illuvatar. What did he do? he took the elves (no he did not rape them ) and mutilated them into an extent that he turned them into evil twisted creatures called orcs.

now comapre that with real life. God created man and women, one half to fullfil the other. He created them to be together and to breed and bring life to the earth. then, when man twists his way and starts acting with another man in the same way a husband acts with his wife, he is, in a sense, insulting God and they way he created us with each organ to be used for a specific reason. using something for that which it was never meant to be is abusing the body God gave you.

Is that true ? Does Islam not teach that non believers are sent to fire ? Followers of false gods and all that ? What about religious cults, are they not wicked ?

consider looking through the eyes of Islam for while. just suppose, that Islam was the true religion. and then you have all other religions. one religion claims that a human prophet is god. another religion claims that there are several gods and godesses. another religion believes that aliens from outerspace created humans. all these accusations are false (remember you are considering that Islam is true), yet you are arguing that they should not be punished. what your saying, my friend, is that a person that knows and follows the truth with all its laws, should be equaly rewarded to a man who spends his life praying to a flase god, getting drunk and sleeping with whores. i dont see justice in that. a muslim sacrifices alot and abids by certain laws that takes him away from the pleasures of the earth. certainly he should be rewarded to a greater degree for his patience and love for the true God.

any religion which does not punish those who break its laws surely is a pathetic useless religion. to hell then, why should we abid by any law if we're going to end up just the same as those who live their lives doing everything?

Not so much modern, there are many liberal parts to Islam. I saw a great documentery about divorce in Iran. Two cases of women wanting to divorce their husbands and how it was handled. It was very insightful. I will watch it againwhen it next airs.

I read in the begining of the topic you saying that you will judge Islam by the Qoran and not by the followers. what happened to that?

concerning the "brutal" punishements. answer this, if your a criminal, where would you rather commit your crime? in a country where the sentence is choping your hand off (lets say you want to steal) or in a land where the maximum punishment would be a few years (or even months) in jail?

i believe that answers that. "brutal" punishments are not an act of punishing the people mainly. its mainly an act of stoping the crime before it happens. a person who is given a choice of either working hard to get fair money or risking loosing his hand would think a thousand times before stealing. the society is MUCH safer this way. believe me when i tell you man, here in saudi arabia, alot of stores close for prayer by just placing a cloth over their goods and then they go to mosque to pray.