Persian

lol I was talking about god sending messages to people by choosing a person as the messenger!

Persian

0- "Clash of Civilization" is a wrong term for referring to conflicts between west and Islam, this is the "Clash of the civilized and the uncivilized" since I find it hard to call Islamists "civilized" people. This term does not only refer to the conflicts between west and Islam but also to the conflict between secularist Muslims and ex-Muslim Atheists like myself with fundamentalist Muslims aka Islamists whose only crime is to take Quran and Hadith literally.

1- Provide evidence for your statistical claims, <edit> even if I take what you are saying for granted, the growth rate of a religion does not mean it's a good religion nor does it prove that it's a true religion. Here is one intresting thing for you 75% of the people who convert to Islam leave Islam after a few years according to this academic Muslim study=>
http://www.radioislam.com/_asx/Publi...ynewmleave.asx

Some Christians do claim that their religion is the fastest growing one, and I have seen their statistics:
http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-myth...st-growing.htm

Most non-Muslims converting to Islam are either prisoners who prefer to bend for Allah instead of bending for some other reasons in jails, or Afro Americans who feel oppressed by white people and are in search of a new identity (Arab Wannabes?), or extremely ignorant and unintelligent people who lack critical thinking abilities just like the rest of the Muslims.

No Muslim has ever presented a proper piece of evidence for the claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion- meaning that non-Muslims convert to Islam to me, let's see if you are an exception.

2- Islam has failed miserably till now since only 20% of people are Muslims, I did not talk about the future, and by the way the reason that there are many Muslims in the world is that there are many unintelligent people in the world, around 800,000,000 Muslims can't even read and write in their own mother tongue let alone be reading and understanding Arabic, which is the language of Quran, in other word, they are Muslims because they don't know anything about Islam. And Muslims multiply fast that's why Islam grows fast, Bin Laden's father had 55 sons. Imam Hassan the grandson of Mahomet had around 90 wives.

The other reason is the fact that apostasy is punished by capital punishment in Islam => http://www.light-of-life.com/eng/ilaw/ so no one dares to announce his apostasy except a few (www.faithfreedom.org). The other reason is that Muslims (Probably being the most uncivilized and unethical people on this planet) have no respect for freedom of speech, criticizing Islam and enlightening people is almost impossible in non-free Islamic country that are hmmm all of them? lol and since Islam is based on ignorance, superstition, cruelty and terror fighting Islam is very hard, and when there is no cure(e.g. rationalism), the disease(e.g. Islam) will grow!

If god existed and wanted to guide people by sending a book (e.g. Bible or Quran) the book being written by an all-knowing being would convince at least majority of people that it is a book written by god. In fact when I read the Quran I want to throw up, I don't want to disrespect you but your god seems like an irrational thug who threatens to harm people instead of arguing rationally for them (This is only because the creator of this god was a thug remember Spinoza's famouse quote "If triangles could talk they would say god is triangular") , I think Theodore Drange's argument from divine hiddenness is very similar to this.

Persian

Many modern Zoroastrian scholars do not believe Zoroaster was a prophet in fact he never does say he is a prophet he calls himself a teacher, only traditional Zoroastrians believe he has received revelations and stuff, the only remaining part of the Awesta (The Zoroastrian scriptures) which is believed to be written by Zoroaster is "the Gathas", Not all Muslim scholars believe Zoroaster was a prophet either.

The message of Jesus, is not similar to that of Mahomet, it would be highly offensive for Christians to say that that Jesus was similar to Mahomet with his morally corrupted wicked character.

The concept of god, afterlife and many other things are very different in Zoroastarianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Bahai faith.

However the similarities do not imply that these religions are from god, would you as a Muslim believe Bahaullah was from god simply because he believed in the same deity that you do and he accepted Mahomet?

Buddhists are Atheists, Araha is not a deity. The Arabic Allah and the Aramaic Allaha are not from the same root, the Aramaic Allaha is equivalent to Al Ilah in Arabic, Allah is a proper noun while Al-Ilah is derived from Ilah (god, goddess). Try the following website may be you could some more deity names starting with A and having similar sounds lol www.godchecker.com

River

I am not here to argue about the title of Samuel Huntington's book.

jdeverse

All people have received guidance from God, we are just aware of those Messengers that had the greatest effect on history. Everyone, including the Native Americans have their divinely sent Messengers. Another confusion is that when they came, they indulged the stories and traditions of the peoples past so that they would understand. A good example is a Messenger taking one of a cultures polytheistic gods and saying this one is the God that rules over all. The lesser gods then begin to represent attributes of this all-powerful God.

River

LOL...easy for you to say...you should come down to NY...

well anyways theres been a handful of converts in my medical school...

and my undergraduate university had a ton...mostly from european

or mixed ethnicities....

River

I think you are missing the big picture...and similar to the masses...you

are also getting bogged down by trivial details.....

River

well the data needs to be updated...but it is from U.N

http://www.a1realism.com/ENGLISH/OTH...population.htm


the U.S CIA data has the global Muslim population at 1.48 Billion (2005)

and growing....

River

yeah..maybe in Iryan...

but certainly not in the U.S or UK where Islam is experiencing robust conversion rates...

-Persian,

Your views are not very representative of the muslim population. First of all Iran had a major dichotomy between the Shah and Khomeini....thus, the persian people don't even know what the heck they want anymore..there are so many of them that have become "white washed"...going around spreading lies...about how the arabs forced Islam on them (yeah and they say it soo vividly and wide eyed (starry eyed) as if they were alive at the time...) and then they go about converting to Christianity ( cuz Christianity is an easy religion where you can do whatever the #$% you want (drinkin' lots of booze and partying till fajr) without worrying about consequences cuz some "white" dude died for your sins)...or they might do something funky and convert to Zoroastrianism...cuz according to them that was their original patriotic persian religion..( yeah so much for Universalism)...so, rebellious persians are nothing new..just like rebellious algerians...its a cultural phenomena ...and a reactionary movement more than anything else...and it not the result of free thinking...your views are more of the same...and saying that you thought of all this on your own....yeah..right...I bet you are just following the youths....Its no surprize that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) stated that the evil Dajjal ( Anti-Christ) will gather his troops from Ishfahan...you guys are nuts....

River

Alot of Christians respect Muhammad (pbuh)...many of whom are members of the IIDB forums..maybe you will bump into a few of them.....