Cyprus-Forum.com

[Sotos]

...i would say they had their wars. This kind of extremism has evolved, so that they are apart, and while they may disagree, they recognise that without the conflict among them they all thrive.

If the parallels between what is happening with regards to Islam today and what happened with regards to Christianity previously are of interest then the following article may be of interest

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-mile ... 91160.html

It is in a way a depressing thesis , that Christianity had to mass kill its way through its sectarian divisions before being able to live in relative peace with such divisions and thus so too will Islam have to go through a similar process before it can achieve a similar 'equilibrium'.

Islamic countries seem to be several centuries behind in certain aspects. There are many reasons for that but can we discount the possibility that their religion is one of the factors? I think that religion is a factor and not all religions are the same when it comes to how peaceful and tolerant of others its followers are. It seems to me that something like Buddhism would influence people in a less negative way... other things equal. Christianity was historically pretty bad... but could it be that Islam is actually worst? And if it is worst then maybe it will never evolve in the same way as Christianity?

[erolz66]

Islamic countries seem to be several centuries behind in certain aspects. There are many reasons for that but can we discount the possibility that their religion is one of the factors? I think that religion is a factor and not all religions are the same when it comes to how peaceful and tolerant of others its followers are. It seems to me that something like Buddhism would influence people in a less negative way... other things equal. Christianity was historically pretty bad... but could it be that Islam is actually worst? And if it is worst then maybe it will never evolve in the same way as Christianity?

It could be that Islam is worse. The again you could argue that Islam is only several centuries behind Christianity in terms of reaching a point where schism and sectarianism have to inevitably be purged by mass killing before reaching an equilibrium, because it started several centuries after Christianity did. Islam started around 600 years after Christianity. Mass killing spread through the Christian world driven by sectarianism of that faith from around 1500 through to 1700 (in very rough terms). So if Islam takes around the same time to reach that point then we are just at the start of a very rough 200 years or so within the Islamic world

Oh and do not think that Buddhism is inherently a less 'violent' ideology. There are many examples of violent extremist Buddhists. Me personally I do not think any of religions are better or worse in this regard, I think it is people who are the 'problem'. They can be Christian people, Islamic people, Buddhist people, agnostic, atheist. I think the drive to use / abuse / pervert any given ideology or belief system to promote and justify violence is universally human myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence

[Bassman63]

Islam is a blatantly sex discriminating religion, thank goodness we have people like Miltiades around.

[Bassman63]

Be careful when talking about the 1.5B adherents to Islam old man.

Most do not adhere to the principles of DAESH or support it in any manner.

You're a racist and ignorant fool![/quote]
So why aren't they out demonstrating against muslin terrorists like they did over a silly book and a Danish cartoon?

We know not all muslins are terrorists but 99% of terrorists are muslins