BlueBuckeye73 responded to my previous blog post.  My response below was too lengthy to be posted as a comment.

BlueBuckeye73:

You are correct, virtually anything has been done in the name of religion. Unfortunately, Christianity has its blemishes too. During the Inquisition, apostates were tortured and put to death, and the Crusades included crimes against humanity. I want to emphasize here that these alleged Christians acted in direct violation of the religion they supposedly embraced and betrayed the One whom they claimed to serve.  History and Biblical Christianity rightly condemn their actions. The important point is that there are no teachings of Jesus to support violence; in contrast, he clearly admonished us to love our enemies and to pray for them. Even if one tries to justify inhumanity by pointing to the Old Testament, the passages that promoted violence against unbelievers were in a particular historical setting, against the particular pagan inhabitants of the Promised Land.

When addressing Islam, it is an entirely different matter. The passages of the Qur'an that speak of peace were from the early years (in Mecca) of Muhammad's fledgling movement; when he was forced to be diplomatic due to his tenuous power base. After he was exiled to Medina, he built a powerful army and issued Qur'anic verses that abrogated (a legal term in Islam that acknowledges Muhammad's right to amend and negate earlier verses from the Qur'an) the verses that promoted peace.

Before his death, Muhammad announced Allah's intention of subjugating the entire world under the authority of Shar'ia law. Those who would not bend their knee to Allah were given three choices: 1. To be banished, 2. To be taxed into poverty, or 3. To be put to death. Throughout the 1,400 years of Islamic conquest, the preferred tool of evangelism has been the scimitar.

Regarding apostates: anyone who renounces the authority of the Prophet, or turns away from the strict application of the Qur'an is pronounced a murtadd (an apostate).  Further, any verbal denial of any principle of Muslim belief is considered apostasy. Since the peaceful passages of the Qur'an were abrogated by the later, violent passages, a strong case can be made that peaceful Muslims are apostates.

It is quite clear that under Islamic law an apostate must be put to death. There is no dispute on this ruling among classical Muslim or modern scholars.

Surah 2:217 was interpreted by al-Shafii (died 820 A.D.), the founder of an orthodox school of Sunni Islam law, to mean that the death penalty should be prescribed for apostates. The passage reads, "But whoever of you recants and dies an unbeliever, his works shall come to nothing in this world and the next, and they are the companions of the fire [Hell] for ever (sic)."  Historians Al-Thalabi and al-Khazan concur. Al-Razi, a scholar from the turn of the century, in his commentary on surah 2:217, says the apostate should be killed.

Similarly, surah 4:89 reads: "They would have you disbelieve as they themselves have disbelieved, so that you may be all alike. Do not befriend them until they have fled their homes for the cause of God. If they desert you seize them and put them to death whereever you find them. Baydawi, an Islamic scholar who died in 1316 interpreted this passage to mean, "Whosoever turns his back from his belief (irtada), openly or secretly, take him and hill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel."

In summary, BlueBuckeye73, Christians who promote violence act in defiance of the Bible, but Muslims who do the same operate in faithful obedience to their holy book. As I have one of my characters say in my recent novel, "The Y Factor," the difference between the Bible and the Qur'an is this: The Bible teaches us to love and pray; the Qur'an to hate and slay.

In closing, I'll note that fundamentalist Muslims have expressed their hatred toward infidels and apostates from the earliest days of Islam. This has included assassinations [a term with Muslim origins] of rival Caliphs, Imams and other religious leaders, ethnic cleansing (centuries before the term was popularized), wanton destruction of mosques during prayer, and the slaughter of faithful followers of divergent Islamic sects during pilgrimages. But it doesn't stop there. Even in secular Muslim countries - in the 21st century - it is a holy obligation for fathers and brothers to put to death any family member that converts to a rival religion. This is done with the sanction of the civil government.

As Ravi Zacharias has so eloquently stated: “…any religion not willing to examine itself will gain a following only through intimidation and fear.  It then evicts itself from the public square of honest and truthful debate.  Graves are the legacy of such beliefs… The coercion of religious faith is an oxymoron.  It is then no longer a religion but an ideology of compulsion.”

Sources:

Apostasy, Human Rights, Religion and Belief, a paper delivered at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, April 7, 2004.

Ibn Kathir, L'interpretation du Coran, trans. Fawzi Chaaban (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1998), 2:128.

Samuel M. Zwemer, The Law of Apostasy in Islam (Londan and New York, Marshall Brothers, 1924), pp. 34-35.

Robert Spencer, The Myth of Islamic Tolerance; How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims (Prometheus Books, New York, 2005)pp. 428-437.

Ravi Zacharias, Light in the Shadow of Jihad; the Struggle for Truth, (Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2002), pg. 30.