Yes, You Are Taking Those Verses out of Context: A Muslim Responds to Atheist Ali A. Rizvi

[DetlefK]

17. His "debunks" are mind-boggling and utterly ridiculous:

Claim 1: The Quran calls all non-believers “The worst of beasts”:

“Verily, the worst of beasts in the sight of God are those who conceal (the truth), and do not acknowledge it. These are those whom you have made a peace treaty with, but they break their treaty at every opportunity and have no fear of the law.” (Quran 8:55-56)

Here, the debunker masterfully lays out that this is obviously not hate-speech, because the Quran gives a good reason to call non-believers the worst of beasts: Because every single non-believer is a criminal and traitor against Islam. Every single one. That's just the way it is. That's not hate-speech! How dare you!

Claim 2: “The reality is, religious moderates take their scripture “out of context” more than they’d like to think. Islamic apologists, for instance, like to quote the verse 2:256, which says there is “no compulsion in religion.” They won’t tell you (and many don’t know themselves) that the very next verse, 2:257, says that those who do choose to disbelieve will be ‘companions of the Fire; they will abide eternally therein.’”

Here, the debunker masterfully defends against the slander of taking Quran-quotes out of context by declaring that he takes this quote out of context for discussions.

And then the debunker attacks Rizvi for pointing out the out-of-context-taking rather than ignoring it for the sake of allying with islamic reformers who take quotes out of context. Seriously, how dare Rizvi make a religious argument that ignores politics???

Claim 3: The Quran—respected and revered by billions worldwide—prescribe the killing of disbelievers (Quran 8:12-13, 47:4 ; order their adherents to fight and enslave those with differing beliefs, a la ISIS (Quran 9:29-30)

Here, the debunker masterfully points out that the Quran clarifies that killing, fighting and enslaving unbelievers is only okay when done in self-defense.

(Ignoring that the Quran has above very clearly established that unbelievers are criminals and traitors who shall not be trusted and may turn against you any moment.)

And then, the debunker once more attacks Mr Rizvi for not taking politics into account when making a religious argument.

Claim 4: When confronted with these facts, apologists will often respond by saying these texts should not be read “literally”—a concern that is certainly well-founded considering their contents. They know how terrible these books would sound if they weren’t liberally “interpreted” (read: distorted, sanitized), or read the way one would read any other book.

Here, the debunker masterfully suggests that the Quran should not be taken literally because that might lead to misunderstandings.
Also, the Quran should be taken literally because then the believer woud take the whole of it into account instead of cherry-picking.

The debunker ends this article about religious arguments with a political plea: Please stop criticizing religion so atheists and liberal believers can join forces for a better world.







That's some incredibly weak sauce. His best argument is that it's politically unwise to criticize Islam theologically?