Islam is a religion of hate and violence

I wonder whether or not I should reply because my opponent makes void claims and ignores my arguments. If he wants to speak negatively against Islam, then he needs to disprove my arguments in favor of it. He has not done that. 1. Rebuttals part 1 1.1 Suppress My opponent rather wanted to spend time providing a definition of "suppress" instead of refuting my other more important arguments. In fact, he even ignored most of my argument concerning that. The Qur'an makes it very clear that this is about suppressing Muslims, and by suppressing Muslims one suppresses Faith. Muslims, during the revelation of the Qur'an, were indeed oppressed by non-Muslims, including Pagans who had a big problem with monotheism. As a matter of fact, we can easily see how different translations reflect this: Comparative translations of a faction of Surah al-Baqara, chapter 2, verse 191: Yusuf Ali: "Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. " Pickthal: "Such is the reward of disbelievers. " Shakir: "such is the recompense of the unbelievers. " It cannot be more clear. There are different translations, and that is due to the historical context. Some translators translate this to reflect the fact that the disbelievers attacked Muslims, while others make it more simple and say "those who suppress faith. " Withal, it does not matter; the context is clear, and my opponent ignores the fact that Muslims were under attack here. They had every right to defend themselves. The Qur'an was their commander. Had it not given them hope, they would not have been willing to fight against the aggressors. [Qur'an 3:123] "Allah had helped you at Badr, when ye were a contemptible little force; then fear Allah; thus May ye show your gratitude. " [Qur'an 8:26] "And remember when you were few, deemed weak in the land, fearing lest people might carry you off by force, but He sheltered you and strengthened you with His aid and gave you of the good things that you may give thanks. " Battle of Badr was the first battle between the Muslims and the disbelievers. Muslims were attacked and they had a little force to fight with, but they managed to win. None has a moral right to attack Muslims and say that their religion is violent for telling them to defend; none. 1.2 Ignoring arguments? My opponent said that I decided to "completely ignore the hadith collection of Bukhar and the actions of the prophet that I listed in round 2. " This is a horrible claim. I never decided to ignore those points. I had no space left for rebuttals, and had he comprehended his points, I might have had a greater chance in rebutting all of it. It is a very bad conduct to claim that your opponent ignores arguments when he attempted to refute all of them one by one. It is not my fault that I had no more character space. What is more is that my opponent was not being kind to leave the last round for rebuttals on my side. What he did was to move much deeper into all of this. Does he expect me to magically increase the character space? 2. Rebuttals part 2 2.1 Fatwa A fatwa is not always correct. Islam does not consider any human being to be perfect, except the Prophets (peace be upon them). A fatwa - as has been correctly mentioned by my opponent - can be issued by a person who is a scholar or shaikh, or one who holds a similar degree. However, since human beings are not considered perfect, it is natural that they commit mistakes or possess views that are not correct. Those who issue fatwas can be very wrong about many things. However, we need to look at the majority. The majority opinion on issuing a fatwa (for capital punishment) concerning a person who is outside an Islamic nation is that it is not valid. Unless someone is inside an Islamic nation and commits the crime of blasphemy, then he is guilty. But if he is not there, his destiny will be met on al-Qiyamah. This is the Islamic view. 2.2 Shari'a Law o Apostasy The Islamic government has the option to choose a form of punishment for apostasy. Some choose capital punishment, and that can be for security reasons. This is in case of a person apostatizing and spreading his new religion in order to reduce the number of Muslims in an Islamic nation. Why should this be prevented? Let us look at the facts in the Middle East: There is most notably one non-Islamic nation there (if we exclude Cyprus), and that is Israel. The population of Israel is a mere number of circa seven million inhabitants, and about five million of them are Jews. Yet we have big issues in the Middle East concerning that. We have Muslims and Jews being in disputes over the land, history, and even theological viewpoints over the land of Israel. Now, Medina in Saudi Arabia is one of the holiest areas in Islam, but that city was once Jewish. If we assume that the Saudi Arabian government let Jews all Muslims for belief in Judaism, and many Muslims followed their way, do people then expect peace in the Middle East? Do people think that Muslims and Jews will be in agreement over the area of Medina, Saudi Arabia, etc. ? I certainly hope not. People can easily come to agreement when the concern is the future, but not history. In this case - as is actually always the case - we cannot change history, and we cannot change the fact that history will always affect our opinions. It will also affect the opinions of Jews if they realized that they have an open way toward getting Medina back. Would Muslims ever approve of this? Not by any means. There are many more things to be said concerning punishment of apostasy. Israel has been plagued by disputes between Muslims and Jews, and will unfortunately continue being plagued by the huge disagreements. If people do not want more conflicts in the Middle East, then they can neither morally nor logically argue against punishment for apostasy and propagation of a new religion in Islamic nations that are in the Middle East. My opponent as a problem with a building being stormed by 10,000 protesters, but how would he react if perhaps millions of Muslims and Jews, and perhaps Christians too, clashed in e. g. Saudi Arabia concerning land, history, etc. ? Will he ever be happy with this? I hope not. Neither should he be happy for his argument against Shari'a Law and apostasy. o Wife beating I have very little character space left, so I will make my next rebuttals short. In Islam, a man is not allowed to beat his wife. He is rather allowed to discipline her, and vice versa. A man has a higher level of testosterone, which makes him more aggressive. It is a fact that the mental state of a person calms down if he/she e. g. throws something or hits something when the person is very angry. Because a man is far more aggressive, he is allowed to do nothing more than to pick on his wife with something that is very light, where the face must be absolutely avoided, and no harm must be inflicted whatsoever. He only needs to calm down, and his wife needs to realize that he is angry. Something light is e. g. a pencil. The wife has the right to refuse to cook and do other things for her husband. Moreover, "if" a wife wants to be unfair toward her husband, she has the right to apply to the marriage contract that he must never "beat" her at all. So, if a woman wants this, there is no problem with applying it. 3. Extremist Under 700 char. left. I would need a lot more to refute all that. However, here are short non-Muslim comparisons: 3.1 Crusades 3.2 WWII 3.3 Yugoslav War 3.31 Srebrenica Genocide 3.4 Invasion of Iraq 3.5 Invasion of Afghanistan 3.6 Popes throughout history condemning works of Muslims 3.7 Christians oppressing Indians 3.71 ---- // ---- Maoris I can go on for hours. If my opponent believes that the actions of few random men in history make a religion what it is, then I do not understand why he indulges in the double-standard and admires Christianity. I have made my case for this debate.