[Elissetecausa]

Apples and Oranges.

I only meant to say that different Philly neighborhoods expose you to varying degrees of violence. Different countries and areas within countries in the Muslim world expose Christians to vastly different degrees of violence. Better to be a Turkish Christian than a Coptic Christian than an Afghani Christian.

Look at whats going on in the middle east to get a good picture of "them".
Also Christ preached "love your enemies" mohamed preached "kill infedels that do not worhship allah".
And since when does Christianity have a set of laws like the Shirah laws that many islamic countries follow?
Generalizations my ass. People preach about islam being peacefull but they are killing each other as well. No two tribes can get along! What Muhammad or Christ preached is pretty irrelevant. What's relevant is the interpretations of followers and how they act upon it. When it suited Christians Christ brought the sword. When it suits Muslims Muhammad is God's warrior. And when it doesn't they're both bringers of peace and justice. I may have my ideas about the eternal message of Islam but I'm not stupid enough to disregard the fact that interpretations have shifted innumerable times over the centuries. And it strikes me very odd that as a non-Muslim you would think you know the eternal message of a prophet you don't believe is a prophet. I would never ask you to think Islam is peaceful because I would never ask you to essentialize Islam. Islam as a social phenomenon is what's important. You seem to have the cabal-istic view that there is a true meaning and once I discover it I'll slit your throat. Good news for you, bro, I get to follow the schools of thought I want and assign meaning to my religious experience so your throat's safe from me.

I should also mention I wouldn't want to live most places in a Muslim country. Is this because they're Muslim and I'm afraid? No. It's because they're a third world countries and third world countries have all types of violence, poverty, quality of life issues we just don't have here.

Regarding shari`ah it's just a general term for religious law. You need fiqh to give that concept content. It's not like Canon Law that's well laid out. There are competing conceptions. Falsafa and kalam are competing non-legal conceptions. Most people don't know usul al-fiqh and popular religion is a mix of different practices derived from culture and happenstance. To think there's some slavish following of a billion people to evil woman stoning, gay killing sharia is as stupid as assuming that many Catholics care about Canon Law or that New Gingrich applies Rerum Novarum to his public policy views.