Islam does not oppose pluralism

Once again, Con has ignored almost every single point I made. In addition to this, he violated the rule of sources which states that "Sources cannot substitute arguments, only support them." The links that Con provided give arguments that he didn't make on his own. He used the sources as his arguments, which is wrong. I'll analyze it further.  Rebuttals Islam strictly advocates peace Everyone should note that Con did not cite any verses from the Quran to support his arguments. The violence in the Quran that he refers to is nothing but call for self-defense. The problem with Con's response is that it is extremely short, and for me to make my point strong I have to simply use the verses that he cites and show that they don't call for aggression, but self-defense. Since he cited none, I'll do the favor and show how the Quranic verses are taken out of their textual and historical contexts. Quran, chapter 8, verse 60: "Against them [i.e., the unbelievers] make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly." This is a perfect example of a verse that is taken completely out of its textual context. Verse 60 in chapter 8 seems to say that Muslims should prepare an army against unbelievers, and wage war against them. However, the verse right after, which is 8:61, says the following: "But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, and trust in Allah: for He is One that heareth and knoweth (all things)." Judging the Quranic verses merely from their textual contexts, we get the image that every time the Quran calls for fighting, it does it only in terms of defense and to stop oppression of innocent people. Had the Quran been calling for aggressive use of arms, there would have been no such verse as "Accept peace if the enemy offers peace." Since there are tons of such verses, we can easily conclude that the Quran never defines war as an oppressive and aggressive tool. Besides the textual context being enough for justifying the Quranic view on war, there are also important historical contexts to take into account. But since my opponent did nothing to give a detailed rebuttal to anything I said, I will refrain from getting much further into this. What's more, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) forbade any kind of murder on innocents, even during war. And Muslims are instructed to offer refuge to the enemy soldiers who give up and do not wish to engage in further battles against Muslims. This is mentioned in the 9th chapter of the Quran. I don't know any other religion which obliges its followers to do this kind of an act. If Islam opposed pluralism, it would never go as far as to command Muslims to help enemy soldiers who refuse to engage in further battles. "During some of the Ghazawat of Allah's Apostle a woman was found killed, so Allah's Apostle forbade the killing of women and children." [1] I can go deeply into more details, but Con has offered very few arguments, and the ones he wrote are very short and not very detailed. No social classes Con's rebuttal is a mere question, so there is not much to say here. Note that Con did not argue against my argument that Islam does not recognize race or cultural superiority. This is clearly in favor of pluralism, since Islam freely let's people act as individuals and have their individual rights. Moreover, an Islamic state is an ideological state, which means that only certain laws will apply to the society as a whole, while a great deal will be entirely subject to preferences of people belonging to different ideologies. Con did not dispute this either. Con did not argue much against the fact that Islam supports a free market, and that this enables individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, to prosper economically. This also creates peace between different countries because they begin to depend on one another for their own good. "Between the 8th and 12th centuries, he elaborated, the Muslim world was the globe’s most advanced region. According to Akyol, much of this prosperity can be attributed to the fact that the Muslim world was the center of global trade." [2] Con falsely argues that the reason why the Sunni and Shia Muslims are in conflict is simply because Islam recognizes discriminative social classes. This is not true whatsoever. The Sunni / Shia conflict started mainly because Muslims were confused about who the right person to lead the Muslim nation should have been after the death of the Prophet, which is 14 centuries ago. The Sunni Muslims believed that the very close companions of the Prophet should have been the caliphs (which turned out to be the case), while the Shia though the correct choice would be that Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, should have been the leader. This has nothing to do with social classes. In addition, Shia and Sunni Muslims believe in different texts beyond the Quran (all Muslim believe in the same Quran, because it has never changed), which is another reason for their conflict. Finally, I think Con might have misunderstood the term "social classes." While every society has social classes by nature, such as those concerning economy (upper class, middle class, etc.), in this debate we are talking about discriminative social classes. That is, dividing people by say, race. There is no rational basis for this, thus it is discriminative. On the other hand, separating Muslims and non-Muslims by law has nothing to do with discriminative division by social classes. It is the exact opposite. In an Islamic state, Muslims are obliged to follow certain rules that apply only to them. For example, drinking alcohol, paying the obligatory charity, and so forth, are laws that Muslims have to follow. However, by saying that the non-Muslims should be different by law in the sense that they should be allowed to follow their own ideologies, this is not discriminative social division in any way. Islamic societies In the first round I made it clear that this debate had to rely on Islam primarily, not Islamic societies. However, Con kept bringing up the current situation of Islamic societies. I have no need to defend them, simply because they are Muslim majority countries - NOT societies that follow Islamic law. If anyone wishes to find out how Muslims prospered in the Middle Ages, read something about the Islamic Golden Age. Islamic societies were the most prosperous. The resolution is affirmed. [1] http://www.cmje.org... [2] http://www.wrmea.com...