[Skybird]

Originally Posted by xrvjorn

Neither am I, but that wasn't the question. We just learned what it takes to be a real muslim, so I'm curious what it takes to be a real christian. Can a christian disregard the old testament and still be a real christian?

The core of the question is, if a real muslim has to buy the Sharia and all that fundamentalist cr@p, does a real christian have to do the same?

I want to know if the criteria for being a 'real' follower of a religion is different depending on the religion you follow.

bible and Qu'Ran do not compare. IMO the whole Qu'ran is of the quality and style and level like the Old testament. Also, you cannot separate Sharia and Qu'ran, like you try to do. Sharia is meant as a tool to make the believer sticking to the belief that the Qu'Ran is the only valid source of truth and devine enlightenment, by putting sanctions on not believing so. Sharia is the form, Qu'ran is the essence, the content of the form. Sharia and Qu'ran work hand in hand, cannot be seen as two separate qualties. They are like two sides of one and the same coin. In contrast I would reject a statement saying that Jesus' sermon on the mountain, or like he is described in the four gospels, reflects the old testament. Both parts of the bible speak of two very different ideas of an idol, the one a punishing, egocentirc, revenging vulcan-God whose good will miust be bought by obeying him and doing sacrifices, the other a metaphor for a raise of inner mental evolution, or a higher state of mind, if you want. That's why I do not get christian fundamentalists and the message of Jesus together. I would even say: if you want to be a christian in the understanding of following Jesus - you even must reject the old testament. Christian traditon came up with something that leads beyond that old testament. But Islam did not come up with something that leads beyond it's version of an old testment, the Qu'ran. It was so rigid from the beginning on, when Muhammad was trying to justify his demands by religious means to easily prohibit any opposition to them, that Islam was not able to form a higher developed view that could take over from this Muhammadian centre of views. It started to release rules prohibiting to do so very eraly, and this prohibitions still work today. There were attempts by clerics in the early centuries to implement alternative interpretations and schools and another form of theology than the circular-thinking orthodoxy - they got wiped out more effectively than the church had been able to supress opposition to it'S power monopole in europe. What survived these early attempts in Islam, let's call it the attempt to form an Islamic mystic, had then been battled down and often executed by Sahaladin ("defender of faith", which means he killed all heretic views on Islam, and whose perception in the West also is not in correspondence with the harsh and brutal historical reality of his person), and later during the mongolian attack on Persia and the destruction of Bagdhad, were major parts of the leading representatives of Islam of that time got killed, and almost all clerics represrnting the mystical side that they tried to establish. One could truly say that Islam has no mystic (the Sufis are not that mystic). A religion that has not mystic heart and centre, is a hollow body only. It'S rite, no experience. It is cult, no culture. It is satisfied to simply believe, it does not seek knowledge and insight. and all this primitivity it declares to be a virtue, of course. but it remaisn to be the mental horizon of people living in a hostile environment, 1400 years ago.