Is Islam unique?
My "brief" response to your three questions/comments, Canuckus,
1. Islam is defined by obedience to Muhammad's teachings and worship of no other god but the one he proclaimed, Allah.
It somewhat resembles the Mormonism of Joseph Smith. Satan recycles his lies, with slight changes.
Although there are as many as 1.6 billion expressions of Islam in the world, Muslims are not themselves Islam.
The answer to what Islam is lies not just in what Muslims practice, but in what Islam teaches.
2. The Qur'an never says, "Islam is a religion of peace, nor do the traditions of Muhammad."
Apart from the first thirteen years of Islamic history, when there were not enough Muslims to fight, Islam has always had an elaborate practice or doctrine of war.
No one can claim that "Islam is a religion of peace," i.e., historically devoid of violence, either in its origins or in the history of the global Muslim community.
3. The lie of an Islamic golden age; The myth of Islamic science is widely believed and taught (even in India), - that there was a golden age of Islamic learning that made a major contribution to science and the arts.
Many inventions have been attributed to Islamic inventors, which either existed in pre-Islamic eras or were invented by other cultures. This is historical revisionism.
That is not to claim that Muslims have never invented anything but definitely challenges the idea that Islam is an ideology that actively encourages learning and discovery.
The intellectual flourishing of the Islamic world came about because the territory under Muslim control was inhabited by millions of people representing diverse cultures and languages, not because of the religion that ruled over them.
This "golden" period in question largely coincides with the second dynasty of the Caliphate or Islamic Empire, that of the Abbasids, named after Muhammad’s uncle Abbas, who succeeded the Umayyads and ascended to the Caliphate in 750 AD. They moved the capital city to Baghdad, absorbed much of the Syrian and Persian culture as well as Persian methods of government, and ushered in the "golden age."
A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule, by no means all of them "Muslims" either nominally or substantially, played a useful role of transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic fruits of knowledge to Westerners. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. But in doing this, they were but transmitting what they themselves had received from non-Muslim sources.
Canuckus Deploracus wrote:
1. All religions are amalgams of social, political and judicial systems as well as being a belief system. Islam is not unique.
2. No two rrligions are the same... Is there a chart that shows the gradual differentials if various religions? It's morality equates with that of the other Abrahamic religions...
3. All religions have periods of peace and periods of disharmony... Is the author unaware of the Golden Age of Islam?
Was there a question that was left out at the end?
1. All religions are amalgams of social, political... (
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