For the sake of simplicity (And not being that much of a wall) I'll respond in subjects instead of specific phrases and such.Char-Nobyl said:
A. The "You Brought Bad Historical Christian Stuff Out" front
If you read the whole thread, you will see that I was very reluctant to do that. There were quite a few arguments trying to wrap islam as a whole (The entire religion and it's practitioners) in some kind of special "hate-bubble", and I repeatedly pointed out that any belief structure can be warped and used in that kind of way. When questioned and outright demanded for examples, I brought examples.
I'm not gleefully justifying murderers, nor am I saying one religion is more evil than the other (Which would be merely arguing for the same thing the other guy was arguing, just reversed...), I was correcting people who seemed to believe that there is something inherently evil in islam (And not in other major religions).
B. The Persia-Greece tangent
Seriously, this chunk of the conversation got a bit scary for me. First it seemed like it was being used as an argument for arabs, as an ethnicity, being inherently evil (Despite it being a persian empire, not arabic?).
We were, after all, discussing moral relativism as pertains to religions, with me taking the stance that no group is inherently wrong. You brought a bunch of examples to try and refute me... One of which was before the foundation of either religion, which can only lead me to believe that you equate the religion with the ethnicity directly, and morality as well. Which is a pretty scary way of thinking.
The bit about Persia being possibly a better gig than the ancient greeks... Well, a few arguments:
1. Diversity
Persia allowed member-states to be basically free. You can have your laws, live your way, do your thing. Just don't war on each other, swear fealty to the king of kings, and pay taxes. Not a bad deal, considering those taxes did revert into benefits for your people, with better infrastructure, etc. Come to think about it, in this aspect the Persian Empire was the less evil version of the latter Romans ("Yeah, they took over the land. But they gave us aqueducts and roads and academies...").
Greece, on the other hand, is a bit tougher to classify. Each city was it's own thing, but it is pretty clear that they had a hard time tolerating each other, and by and large saw the entire rest of the world as barbarians only fit for being enslaved.
2. Slavery
Persia outlawed slavery. Member-states could possibly have slaves, and it is likely a black market of sorts existed, much like it does today. However, widespread, state-instituted slavery simply did not exist.
Most Greek city-states were basically slave states. Especially the currently famous one which later became the leader of their entire federation.
3. Religion
Persia is perhaps the first documented case of full-on freedom of religion. Want to believe in your own god, do your own thing? Sure.
Greece... Not so much. They did have a good thing going with the whole syncretism thing, I'll give them that, but it only went so far.
All in all, from what we can know about those two states, Persia seemed to be the one who was, for lack of better words, far more enlightened. The Greek-Persian war was a war between a free, tolerant empire and a slave-state federation.
A federation that did include dictatorships, monarchies, and only arguable democracies (in that they were not very inclusive at all).
C. The Janissary-Mamluk front
The fact is, those guys had a lot more benefits and a lot more rights than the usual european serf. We can throw words around and apply all kinds of spin on it, but that fact is just gonna sit there staring at you. So if the creation of these groups is a bad thing... Well, Europe must have been hell, what with creating and maintaining a far more widespread, more enduring, and worse thing.
Just as a side-note, the bit about them ruling Egypt is quite literal. Mamluks ruled what might have been the largest muslim empire of their time for a long time. The sultan was a mamluk. Most officers and local leaders and rulers were mamluks.
Also, the Ottomans may not have had a Janissary emperor, but they had a lot of very distinct government officers and regional rulers. Being a Janissary was not just a military position, it was a distinguished public office.
D. The Golden Horde Vs. Khwaresmid side-note
Yeah, I do have to agree with you, the Khwarezmid were total dicks. The whole "It was the golden horde, man!" thing distorted my view on that. People are people, you don't do that.
E. In more recent news... (i.e.: Great Game, etc.).
It is not so much "European powers were waging wars in my ancestral land", rather "An european power tricked my father into fighting a war for them, he died, and my homeland (which I hear was a pretty sweet place to live in) was bombed and shelled and robbed until it turned into the present-day hellhole".
Put yourself in those shoes for a second. Imagine you have a kid. Then some other nation does all kinds of hijinks which result in you dying, and the nation you live in turning into hell on Earth. Do you think there is a slight, faint chance that your kid might find that situation to be less than satisfactory?
None of that justifies shooting innocents in the head (Obviously), but it's not like western powers (And Russia) can just wash their hands of all this. They're the Doctor Frankensteins who created this monster, however inadvertently.
F. Conquering the "Mountain of ass" quote
Yes, we can agree the "Mountain of ass" concept is a fabrication. Someone said "The afterlife is gonna be awesome, it's gonna be like constant ecstasy" and people took him out of context, translated him literally (Which is always a great way to remove meaning from things) and disseminated it.
No, that paradise is not what you get for killing a ton of people. It is what you get for living a good life and obeying god. Most muslims will argue that most instances of killing people will outright prevent you from ever getting that.
The reason I nitpick on this thing is because it is a dirty, false concept that only serves the purpose of tarnishing and ridiculing other people's beliefs. Why would someone spread this tale, if within context it is pretty obvious that there is no literal truth to it? Why indeed?
G. Western difficulties with the Qur'an
1. To the best of my knowledge (And someone may correct me on this), there is no accepted translation of the Qur'an to any language whatsoever. As far as I know, knowing enough arabic to read the Qur'an is indeed mandatory to being a good muslim. If you just want to be a "normal" muslim (read: Not a particularly pious one), you can just never read the holy book, like most christians do.
2. I believe there is sufficient cultural difference that we (Meaning Westerners in general) should not attempt to read an interpretation of the Qur'an without some form of aid. We've both grown up surrounded by all the symbols and factoids that surround and form the Bible (And Torah, actually). We grew up with christmas, and with taking saturday and sunday off. We grew up within our legal and moral system. We watched movies and heard stories which either represent or form allegory for biblical passages. Thus, we read the bible and we can derive a heck of a lot of understanding from it. We have the repertoire. We know what these people were, what some of the weird, kind of untranslatable things mean.
We did not grow up with ramadan, or with a lunar calendar, or with sharia law, nor have we (by and large) grown up with stories and movies culturally influenced by the Qur'an. Hence we could not read it and derive the same amount of understanding as someone who has.