https://tinyurl.com/Meme-of-Islam

It considers Islam to be a meme-plex: an idea which is passed from one mind to another, wholly intact.

Which is exactly the way Islam regards itself: The Perfect Book, the Koran, is the Literal, Eternal, Immutable Word-of-God. Islam demands total “submission” (which is the translation of the Arabic word “islam”) to God’s/ Allah’s plan.

The True Believer does not need to understand why Allah said “do thus-and-so”. And it would be DAMNABLY (literally) presumptious of a mere human to approve or disapprove of Allah’s intent or methods. The Believer must submit to Allah and follow His Plan – no “think”, just “do”.

PS- what the Progressives/ One-Worlders don’t quite understand is –briefly– Allah commands Believers to “Force {unbelievers} to convert; if they refuse, impose crushing humiliation and ruinous taxation on them, or else kill them”.

I don’t read classical Quranic Arabic. (And neither do most Muslims.) So I’m not equipped to argue the point.

However, I have read from three Quran translations and the content is consistent, if the music of the original was lost. Perfection is not a word which came to my mind as I read the Quran.

There are beautiful, profound scriptures — the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad-Gita, books of the Bible, Buddhist sutras. The Quran is not one of these. I supppose the Quran makes up for it by providing a full chapter on “War Booty” — a subject inexplicably not covered in other scripturees.

To this Westerner the Quran reads as a bizarre, monstrous book of rants with occasional moments of beauty. I am horrifed that a billion people believe the Quran is the ultimate, unquestionable, perfect word of God.

If that many people really believed a book like the Quran, we would probably live in a world that looks a lot like this one.

In an important early theological dispute, traditional Muslims claimed the Quran is coeternal with God, i.e. the Quran was not created but has always existed just as God has. The rationalist school argued God must have preceded his own speech.

This ultra-strict fundamentalist basis of the Quran is a major reason it will be very difficult for Islam to reform.

Sergey
There is no need to re-write the text itself to change its interpretation. Orthodox Judaism makes the same claim about Hebrew Scripture

Hebrew scripture is based in oral tradition. The same happens with the Christian Old Testament.

Of course, you will always find people both in Judaism or Christianism that claim that those texts should be taken literally. The difference with Islam is that for EVERY Muslim the Q’Ran is to be taken literally, because it’s the direct word of God.

There’s a big difference between a religion with some people taking a literal approach, and a religion where everybody is supposed to take a literal approach.

Hebrew scripture is based in oral tradition. The same happens with the Christian Old Testament.

Of course, you will always find people both in Judaism or Christianism that claim that those texts should be taken literally. The difference with Islam is that for EVERY Muslim the Q’Ran is to be taken literally, because it’s the direct word of God.

There’s a big difference between a religion with some people taking a literal approach, and a religion where everybody is supposed to take a literal approach.

According to the Quran, Allah requires Muslims not just to preach to people but to subjugate the entire world under sharia law — which includes killing gays and apostates and circumscribing the open practice of other religions.

It’s hard for me to think of anything at all comparable under say, Taoism.

I guess you could say Christianity at the height of the Roman Catholic Church’s power was tending towards totalitarianism, but that’s not the way Christianity started nor how it is today.

A key difference between Christianity and Islam was that Christ was a spiritual teacher and Messiah (if one believes) who drew the distinction between church and state — “Render unto Caesar the things which are Ceasar’s and to God the things which are God’s.” Thus it wasn’t too difficult for the Church to back out of the powers of state.

Muhammad was a spiritual teacher but also a warlord and political ruler. Islam is intended to be a religious and a state solution which covers all of life and controls all human beings, whether they accept Islam or not. And that control can be enforced quite cruelly.

I don’t idly call Islam a totalitarian ideology.

“Muhammad did NOT claim that the Koran is the ‘revealed’ word of God.

He repeatedly and consistently claimed that the Qur’an is God’s direct words perfectly transmitted to Muhammad for dictation by the archangel ”

Actually, that is what B16 said. Perhaps I should have been more explicit. Revealed as in direct words, not as in a revelation, not inspired. Thus it requires a literal interpretation. When you get more into the weeds of technical biblical scholarship, you will find the distinction of revealed as opposed to inspired.

Interestingly enough, although nearly all Christians accept Scripture as inspired, but not too long ago (18th Century) a more literalist approach became popular. That seems to me to be at odd with each other.

I don’t think “totalitarian” means what you think it means.

To impose certain restrictions on opinions or attitudes in order to join a group or adhere to a certain philosophy (or religion) is not totalitarian. There is no demand (your word) that adherents be part of most religions today; they have free will, and no one in charge of those religions is suggesting they be killed or imprisoned if they don’t comply.

To the extent that a religion permeates and controls government, and uses the mechanism of a restrictive and aggressive/coercive state to enforce these beliefs (or otherwise kills or imprisons or harms or punishes apostates or nonbelievers), that is the extent to which it is totalitarian.

Plenty of religions don’t do that, and are not totalitarian.

Buddhism would seem to be just one example of a religion that in no way can be said to be totalitarian. Perhaps you mistake a path that avoids pitfalls for “restriction on external acts, but also on thought, opinions and attitudes”?

If free will exists, then you are free to think and opine as you will and even act freely provided you do not impinge upon other people. But though you’re free to try, you can’t bake a cake with cement.

Jesus saith unto him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” i.e. he who shows the path (wayshower) to reconnection with the divine.