Frazz, (may I call you Frazz?) you and I have had very little interaction, but I suspect that we see eye to eye on a whole lot of things. What I think I need to clarify is that I'm not a black and white thinker. When it comes to my current opinions about Islam, it was a hard and difficult road going from a live and let live mindset to acknowleding the fundamental issues with the religion that leads to the extremists doing the awful things they do. I will still stand up for the rights of Muslims to practice their religion, but not without pointing out serious flaws within that religion and hating what it does to people because it creates black and white thinking - even at the most westernized level. Which is why I've repeatedly compared it to JW's and other cults that force their adherents to turn away from rational thinking on pain of some horrific state where their deity hates them.
Whether or not the Quran contains pretty passages is irrelevant because they will always be superceded by the violent ones in the minds and actions of the extremists and flipping from fundamentalist to extremist is a relatively easy road in high control groups. This is my problem with Islam.
And let's not go down the fatwa road. Unless you want to compare all of the other fatwas out there, including this one:
A Grand Ayatollah in Iran has determined that access to high-speed and 3G Internet is “against Sharia” and “against moral standards.” In answer to a question published on his website , Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, one of the country’s highest clerical authorities, issued a fatwa, stating “All third generation [3G] and high-speed internet services, prior to realization of the required conditions for the National Information Network [Iran’s government-controlled and censored Internet which is under development], is against Sharia [and] against moral and human standards.”
http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2014/08/makarem-internet/
