Recently 3 Christian missionaries were murdered by a Muslim suicide bomber in Yemen. In CHristianity a martyr is someone who dies for their belief in Jesus. THey died while peacefully passing God's word to other people. But Muslims seem to need to kill to become martyrs. I would like a Muslim out there, if there are any in this forum to explain why they can't peacefully spread their religion like Christians do.

Interesting question, HeatherRob. I know we have no one on this forum who has stated if he or she practices Islam, but that doesn't mean we don't have any.

I've always liked what George Bernard Shaw had to say about martyrs, "Martyrdom is the only way a person can become famous without ability."

HeatherRob, I don't know if there is anyone on this forum that practices Islam, but there is an active discussion board at http://www.islam.com that is often frequented by non-Islamic people asking questions much like the one that you have just presented. Perhaps, you could ask the question there.

I will say, however, that this is a question that is going to receive many different responses. Technically, martyrdom is defined as sacrificing some part of one's self in order to further a cause or a purpose. Sometimes this involves death, but not always, and not all Muslims feel the need to violently spread their religion. Just like any religion, there are extremist sects and there are moderate sects, but you more often hear about the extremist minority, because the actions of these groups are newsworthy.

I also want to add that in most circumstances, Muslims don't have a problem with Christianity or Judaism. They revere Jesus Christ much in the same way that they revere Muhammed. You need to take into consideration time and place. A modern Muslim in a country like the U.S. is not going to react in the same way as a Muslim who lives in a developing country. There are underlying psychological influences there.

According to Islam teaching, if an Muslim dies in a holy battle, he will automatically go to paradise.

http://answering-islam.org.uk/Index/J/jihad.html

Otseng,
The Koran expounds on that issue quite a bit. Here is another article with a differing perspective.

http://www.discussingdifferences.com/clips/cult874.htm

Otseng, that makes me wonder if Muslims are becoming martyrs for selfish reasons. Is their whole purpose on earth to simply get themselves a good place in heaven. In the CHristianity I practice, we are all already saved by the death of Jesus on the cross. It becomes incumbent upon each one of us then to accept Jesus as savior, and to accept him means to accept all his teachings of humility, self sacrifice, glorifying God, loving your fellow man as if he were Jesus himself. Being human and a sinner, I fail in these things all the time. But my acceptance of Jesus has saved and nothing I do, short of denouncing him(which could involve many things) can change that.

A few hundread years ago Christians were out rampaging through the Rhineland killing as many Jews as they could lay their hands on. Islam is no more or less evil then the people who practice it. Hitler was a catholic, did that stop him from mass murder?

oh boy

When i saw this post title, it made me think of this:

9/11 Hijackers in Hell

Hitler's mother may have been a catholic. But I guarantee neither Hitler nor his creation the National Social Democrats(Nazis) believed in God. Hitler's state of Germany was set up exactly like a communist state, a small central dictatorship, worship of one main leader(Hitler, Stalin). Unlike America and its roots in Christianity, Hitler's Germany was based on the decidedly unchristian tenant that the aryan race is supreme, and all other races are garbage. You can lay a lot of blame and criticism at the feet of the catholic church over the years. But that is why a reformation, begun by Martin Luther in 1517 in Worms, Germany, was born. I can counter your anecdote with the facts that no religion has done more to help Jews in the last 100 years than the Christian religion.

It may be true that Christians have helped Jews but, the Bible doesn't say kill Jews or Love Jews. All three of these religions are so similar one is not nicer then another. A christian or jew is not more likely to be a nice person then a Muslim. People can be evil regardless of what religion they practice. Being American protestants didn't stop the clan from killing anyone. If you really obey the rules of any of the three main monothestic religions you wouldn't be a suicide bomber.

It can certainly be argued that for Hitler, Christianity was merely a clever justification. Perhaps a more clear example is the genocide of the Native American tribes, which was very explicitly carried out with so-called "Christian" motives. Christian churches, Catholic and Protestant both, have indeed believed in the tenet that white Christians are the supreme race, and all others are subhuman.

As for "christianity" helping the "jews," maybe since the late forties, but not really before that. When Hitler began his pogrom against the Jews, it was first a pogrom of getting the Jews out of Germany. There were many many Jewish refugees. In 1940, the US decided to allow zero Jewish refugees. We had a very antisemitic immigration policy, one which was supported by the same old antisemitic ideas about Jews and how undesirable they were.

I agree, RancidUncle, that any given Muslim, Christian, or Jew is equally likely to be either a good or bad person. There is a certain thinking among SOME Muslims that twists the theology of the Koran into justifying suicide bombing. There are SOME Christians who twist the theology of the Bible into justifying the bombing of Abortion clinics. The capacity for evil has no preferred group or religion or creed.

Quarkhead, the destruction of the Native American way of life cannot be blamed on "Christian motives". The need of European settlers to multiply and spread butted heads with the nomadic, subsistent lifestyle of the American Indian. The Western man, in a purely secular sense, has always strived to discover new lands, colonize new land. True, evil people exist in all religions. So I look at it as a whole. The countries that are run by either Muslim religous leaders or majority Muslim populations are the ones who finance, engage in, and condone terrorism. Plus the populations of these countries, mainly in the Middle East, Africa, indonesia, are undernourished, poorly educated, live in unsanitary conditions. Islam is the common denominator in all that.

The history of the world, in the last few thousand years, has been of agrarian societies ousting nomadic ones. I recommend Diamond's "Guns,Germs and Steel".

Not all Muslims kill.

CP

Thank you for adding that. I doubt that any Muslim who would visit these boards can answer the question originally posed because the sort of radical Islamic fundamentalism that is practiced by suicide bombers is about as far removed from most Muslims as David Koresh is removed from most Christians.

a martyr is someone that dies for a cause, any cause, no matter HOW they die.

HR, the American destruction of native Americans lifestyle CAN be blamed on christian/catholic motives. have you ever met an Indian? I know several who's parents were FORCED to go to religious schools, read the Bible and NOT talk their tounge. the were considered HEATHENS thus had to be forcibly converted (they wouldn't willingly convert)

are you aware of what the term "redskin" means? it was a native term meaning "animal" the white man often referred to natives as "redskins" they were calling them animals, non-humans. Christianity isn't as squeaky clean as you think it is.

( http://www.iwchildren.org/redskinhate.htm )

I don't see the connection between white men killing Indians and martydom, unambomber. Please clarify.

I was refutting heatherrob's accusation that the slaughter of the indians was not driven by christian motives. sorry I got off topic. Perhaps I should have put the sentences in reverse order? maybe it was the fact that I included them in one paragraph (which is nw fixed) that caused the confusion.