Should you be worried about the hundreds of millions of people who subscribe to a religion whose “holy” book includes this?:
“Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones … cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.”
That same “holy” book also says this:
“If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ … do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death.”
And this:
“If you hear it said … that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ … you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock.”
Surely there is reason to fear anyone who would openly profess a belief in such a barbaric religion! Would not belonging to such a death cult, in and of itself, constitute a threat to all free people, and would not holding such beliefs justify defensive force, to keep out or forcibly evict such believers from civilized, enlightened society?
Well, no.
No, you don’t need to worry about them. And no, you don’t need to violently attack them for merely subscribing to a religion. In fact, it would be absolutely immoral for you to do so. Unless and until an individual uses or directly threatens violence, it is not morally justified to attack him merely for the label he uses to describe his faith. If you disagree, there's something you should know...
I don’t mention this only as a “gotcha” thing (although that in itself can be entertaining). Having publicly quoted those passages on several occasions, I find that only a tiny percentage of self-described “Christians” even know that the Bible says such things anywhere in it. So no, we don’t need to be scared of all of the Christians who revere the Bible—the book which includes the savage, brutal quotes shown above. Why not? Because what that book says does not match what the vast majority of self-described “Christians” believe, and does not match how they behave.
Most of the time I avoid talking about people’s religious beliefs, because it usually just offends people and makes them defensive, rather than making anyone think about anything. However, this point justifies making an exception. It was only a couple of years ago when something rather significant occurred to me:
There are plenty of passages in the Bible which can be used to justify being a judgmental, obnoxious, hostile, uncaring, even violent asshole. At the same time, there are also plenty of passages that instruct people to show empathy and compassion, exercising kindness and forgiveness. And most of the self-described Christians I know try to abide by the latter, and essentially ignore the former. In other words, they pick and choose which parts to believe and follow, and their picking and choosing makes them far more moral and righteous than if they literally followed everything the Bible tells them about how they should behave.
To be blunt, most people who call themselves “Christians” are Christians purely by accident, and by default. They grew up around people who held certain beliefs, and naturally tended to just adopt those beliefs, and articles of faith, without question. They didn’t choose it at all; they merely accepted a system of faith handed to them by others. And that is true of most members of most other religions, too. If it wasn’t, the world wouldn’t look like this, with one's place of birth being the primary determining factor in what religion one subscribes to:
Furthermore, very few “Christians” even know what all is in the Bible. They remember a few of the nicer passages about “love thy neighbor as thyself,” “turn the other cheek,” and even “love thine enemy,” and then they try to be good, charitable people. Brace yourself, because here comes the part that the statist fear-mongers don’t understand, or don’t want you to understand:
Most people, regardless of what word they use to describe their faith (or lack thereof) try to be nice, try to be good and loving, and for the most part practice “live and let live.” Of course, this is not true of everyone. It is easy to find people of every faith who are nasty and violent. And while the percentages may differ (for example, I haven’t come across many militant Buddhists), the fact is that most people follow their own consciences more closely than they follow whatever church, religion, or “holy” book they claim to believe in. And the world is a lot better off because of that. If, for example, most Christians followed the literal instructions found in chapters 12 and 13 of Deuteronomy (excerpts shown above), we would be seeing hell on Earth.
Of the Muslims I have met personally, most behave in a kind and considerate manner, just like most Christians, and most Jews, and most atheists, and so on. As a result, I don’t really care what labels people use to describe their religious beliefs. If they believe in and abide by some variation of “do unto others as you would have done unto you”—as most of them usually do in their daily lives—then anything else they profess to believe in is, to me, secondary and unimportant.
Even if there are passages in the Koran that condone intolerance and violence (as passages in the Bible do), being afraid of anyone who calls himself a “Muslim” is still just as ridiculous as being afraid of anyone who calls himself a “Christian.” Unfortunately, fear really is the mind killer, and those opportunistic political parasites in the U.S. who have been using scare-tactics to demonize all Muslims have done such a good job that there are many millions of scared Americans crying to Big Daddy Government to save them from scary brown foreigners, while failing to notice many self-evident truths. For example, if the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world all actually wanted to murder all Christians, you would already be dead. They don’t. And claiming otherwise is just laughably stupid, given the numbers involved. As another example, the over three million Muslims currently living in the U.S. must be amazingly incompetent and/or lazy, if their goal is really to slaughter all “infidels,” since bathtubs kill more Americans annually than radical Muslims do. (Maybe they should take some pointers from bathtubs.)
Some will of course respond with stories of self-described “Muslims” doing violent, nasty things. And the individuals who do such things should be condemned, and their acts of aggression should be combatted with whatever level of force it takes to stop them, up to and including deadly force. But to point to such stories and say, “See what Muslims are like?” is no more reasonable than pointing to such stories and saying, “See what men are like?”, or, “See what vertebrates are like?”
In conclusion, what most self-described “Muslims” believe is the same as what most members of other religions believe, and what most atheists believe: try to be good, and nice, and live a peaceful, productive life. And while most religions have teachings that are downright nasty and violent, most of the people who say they subscribe to such religions either ignore, or don’t even know about, such passages. So no, someone choosing to describe himself using a certain religious label does not by itself mean you have to be scared of him, or condone state violence against him.
There is one big exception: all statists advocate the initiation of violence against their fellow man. Every single one. So if you really want a religion to be scared of, be scared of the cult of “government.” The average person walking into a mosque, or a temple, or a synagogue, or a church, is a trivial threat to humanity compared to the average person who walks into a voting booth.
