Hot Lunch,
1. I am a former Jesuit seminarian and am educated in Catholic schools. I am well read in theology, the Bible, the Qur’an (Yes, I’ve read it in its entirety), and philosophy. This is not a boast. It is the truth. Most of the books that Cato mentioned in response #10, I have read also. So, it would be difficult to kick sand in my eyes or attempt taqiyya successfully on me.
2. The last “revelation” given to Muhammad, according to the Sunnah, is Surah 9:5. Orthodox Islamic scholars hold that later revelations abrogate earlier ones, which means if a later revelation contradicts an early one, the later one cancels out the earlier one. This is complicated by the fact that the Qur’an is not arranged chronologically. One has to go to the traditions and the scholars for an understanding of when a certain surah and verse occurred. As best as we have been able to determine, 9:5 (and many others like it)is a universal injunction to slay the unbelievers, wherever they may be found. The option to offer the Dhimma is restricted to “the People of the Book.” Pagans have only one choice: convert or die.
3. The Bible is not regarded by most Christians as a divine dictation. Some Christians do come close to holding it as a divine dictation, but they are not the majority. There is a very large difference between holding the Bible as divinely inspired versus how Islam regards the Qur’an as a divine dictation. Those who do not grasp this difference are badly in need of a theological education. I believe most of the arguments of moral equivalence that show up in these debates derive from exactly this kind of ignorance.
Finally, this is not the DailyKos or the HuffPost or the Democratic Underground. You are going to have to present a much more educated, sophisticated argument here. We have higher standards in forums such as these.
