Heretics Quotes
This verse is one of those most often cited by Muslim militants justifying terrorism and war against non-Muslims. However, other more modern Muslim theologians cite the unique historical circumstances when the Muslims in Arabia were opposed by all else there. They also cite the end of the verse which tends to be ignored by the militants: “But know that God is with those who restrain themselves.”
While Aquinas brought much wisdom and good to the Church, this statement and others laid a foundation for murdering non-believers and organizing the Inquisition.
This is one of the quotations from the Koran which many Islamic terrorists point to in order to morally justify terrorism. For an example, see {586965}.
This began the Church's most notorious attack on any dissent or disagreement and it was the start of the Inquisition.
At the time Islam was quite conflicted about the role of innovation, science and reform. Innovators were to many theologians as dangerous to society as heretics and had to be refuted. Al-Ashari’s school of thought has prevailed in much of the Muslim world to this day.
The Koran is even more discriminatory regarding Jewish & Christian clerics: {584380}.
This sura is used by fundamentalist Islamic regimes to justify religious persecution and prohibit any public worship other than Islam. Jews and Christians went through this stage and there are still a few fundamentalist extremists who would deny freedom of religion if they could. While the percentage is small, those in Islamic nations are a much larger proportion of the whole.
This sura illustrates why peace treaties between Islamic and non Islamic countries are difficult to negotiate and enforce. For some fundamentalist Muslims, even making a peace treaty with Israel would constitute a transgression of the word of God. Nonetheless, the first treaty that the United States ever made was with a Muslim nation—Tripoli.
Although this verse illustrates the particular enmity that some orthodox Muslims have for Christians and Jews, philosophically the hostility it not unlike that some orthodox Christians had (and still have) for Jews. The theory was that among the more primitive people a certain “ignorance” was tolerable, but “People of the Book” were not ignorant but actually rejected the word of Muhammed or in the case of the Jews vis a vis the Christians, they rejected the word of Christ. The hate message is preached within some Christian circles about Jews and Muslims today, but the overt, visible, statement in the midst of the holiest of Scripture makes the Koranic version even more socially and ethically difficult in a pluralistic society.
