So.. this is totally unrelated to the thread, but my problem with Islam has nothing to do with Muslim people or even really specific acts of terror. It is systemic. I assume that it's the same for many others. People just use examples of terrorism to make their points with an appeal to emotion. I'm not about that. The Quran is not compatible with Western culture. Due to abrogation, the more war-mongering and violent parts of the Quran supercede the peaceful ones when there is contradiction because they were written later. Individual Muslims who fit in with Western culture are able to do so by altering their religion. At its core, Islam is not a religion of peace. When Christians do heinous things they are acting in violation of the New Testament so the religion really can't be blamed. The same often cannot be said if Islam.
This is not entirely true. For one the Qur'an itself is relatively peaceful when compared to the injunctions derived from the canonized hadith literature which emerged about 200 years after the Prophet's lifetime. Muslims who follow only the Qur'an are called Quranists and tend to have less problematic interpretations than those who rely more heavily on the hadith. For instance, your point about abrogation tends to be derived from hadith literature which attempted to contextualize the Quranic verses and sometimes that context lead the theologians to abrogate certain verses.
However orthodox Islam is built largely on the hadith literature and the Quranists are a tiny minority and considered heretics by mainstream Islamic theology. Which is unfortunate not only because of their less problematic interpretations but also because I believe they have a stronger argument given the stronger historicity of the Qur'an when compared to the hadith by modern Western standards.
Second, its not really true that its the violent Muslims properly following the religion while the peaceful ones are the one deviating from it, especially in the context of countries like Syria. Most Islamist violence ends up affecting other Muslims and that's very much a huge break from tradition where spreading discord among Muslims was considered a great evil. 99/100 the religious establishment would preach that rebellion against a legitimate Muslim ruler was a greater evil than oppression by said legitimate Muslim ruler and tbh when you look at the hellscape that is Syria you have to wonder if they had a point.
Modern Islamists argue their way out of this conundrum by relying heavily on
takfir, or excommunication, and hence the use of the term
takfiri to describe such Islamist movements. But this is a relatively recent shift and it was not the orthodox position. The Prophet was supposed to have said that if a Muslim accuses another of
takfir then one of them is guilty, with the implication being that the charge is so serious that a false accusation is a grave enough crime to warrant excommunication. Even the founder of Wahhabism was criticized by his own brother for assuming
takfir when Muslims deviate from orthodoxy instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt.
The traditional caution and restraint in accusations of
takfir are completely ignored by militant Islamists who essentially claim that the vast majority of the world's Muslims, and especially the leaders of Muslim majority states, are worthy of
takfir and thus they are legitimate targets of violence.
