Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
Also, the Tanakh contains plenty of violent and bloody-minded passages where people are told to kill others for religious reasons (often quite horribly), but no-one uses this as a basis to accuse Judaism of being a "religion of violence". So the fact that people try to label Islam a "religion of violence" has more to do with stereotyping, contemporary prejudices, and the current politico-cultural climate than with the actual content of the Qu'ran. If these people were honestly trying to identify "religions of violence" on the basis of scriptural content, they'd be denouncing Judaism right along with Islam. The fact that they're not proves that they're really trying to grind an axe against Islam, not honestly and objectively determine which religions are "violent" in their scriptural message.
Yeah, this is where I was going with that, but you've beaten me to it.