[OutOfHere]

I think we as a people have to keep working to weaken and replace religious identity with belief in a private god. Belief in a divine power must not leave one's home, and must not extend into the public sphere where it can lead to divisions. This is where polytheistic religions win because they allow for a private god while being entirely compatible with someone else's private god. If I can look at a person's clothing or hairstyle and guess their religion, it means the tenet of privacy is violated, and division is sowed.

Fwiw, ancient Egyptian religion in the Levant region was polytheistic. So many ancient religions were polytheistic, thereby more flexible, decentralized, and pluralistic. Monotheism in contrast is largely inflexible and risks breeding conflict in the name of religion.

As for the adherents of Yahweh, i.e. now called Judaism, they have been using violence to displace other forms of the polytheistic Canaanite religion for three thousand years. What is happening now is just more of the same. Even two thousand years ago, the Jews pressured the Romans to crucify Christ. The point is that there is zero tolerance among monotheists for innate religious diversity.

An analogy for monotheism is everyone worshipping the dollar, whereas polytheism is whereby people have more choice, even multiple choices.

[khaledh]

Believe it or not, jews and christians were practicing their religion freely and were protected during the Islamic golden age. What we're seeing today is extremists (in any religion) rising to position of power (or taking up arms), thus skewing the view that this is how all followers of that religion believe. It's much more nuanced than that. Most people are peaceful and happy to coexist as long as they're respected and their rights are not violated. Take that away and extremisim will rise.

[22122]

what does it tell you that the jews who were accomodated from the start by muslims in lands stretching from maghreb to transoxiana are now fighting muslims like muslims were their enemy since day 1? the jews who the muslims took in after the christians kicked out are now pushing for christian armies to fight their wars for them in muslim lands? i would say christians are the most innocent, christianity is the real religion of peace, although christians themselves are a mixed bag, muslims are par for the course, it is a religion of conquest, but it tends to conquer fair and square as is normal throughout history, while jews are the least innocent, parasitizing and betraying the nations.

[OutOfHere]

For the record, when it comes to modern-day Muslims and Jews, both of their respective religions are bottom-scrapers when it comes to religious tolerance and plurality, both internally and externally. It is in their engineering itself that all other gods are bad. This is in stark contrast with polytheistic and indigenous religions, both ancient and current, that welcome other gods or spirits, and are centered more toward following an overlapping set of moral principles.

[khaledh]

In the Quran it says "You have your way, and I have my Way" (or roughly "You have your religion, and I have my religion"). It also says "There shall be no compulsion in the religion". Islam doesn't want to force itself upon those who do not believe in the One God. It just calls people to believe if they choose to do so.

[OutOfHere]

Wouldn't it be nice if that were actually true!? Maybe it was true once upon a time, but is it still true? People routinely get killed in Islamic countries for not adhering to Islam. Terrorists seek out "unbelievers" and execute them. Even among those adhering to it, they keep killing each other for having differences in the nature of their beliefs.

[khaledh]

Acting in a way (by a minority, some of which are in power) that is clearly against the teachings of the religion doesn't mean it's false. It's the other way around: it makes their actions a sin. If you take a wider look you'll see that the majority are trying to adhere to the true teachings, which when implemented on a large scale you get what is known as the Golden age of Islam: a period of over 1000 years of prosperity, compassion, and advances in almost every aspect of life, some of which is still benefiting all humanity until today.

[OutOfHere]

Legally safeguarded tolerance goes a long way. When legal protection and enforcement of minority rights perishes, the bigger groups will next find themselves fighting each other.