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Dan D, I'll tell you the point.

As I've said, Islam comes as a complete finished package.

The comparison with Christianity persists, very well, then let's compare:

Again, since the Quran is the object of a prophecy, it was brought to the world by a prophet, Muhammad, this prophecy is the main event.

Christianity spreaded as a news of something that has happened. There was a guy there, he said he was the son of God, he did a bunch of miracles and died and then reappeared. What else did he said? Some say he said this, some say he said that.

There were alot of versions of that event, and because of these many different versions, each of them had to be examined and compared. And so only very slowly and gradually the Christian doctrine came to be and Christianity spreaded as only the news of a fact that took place.

In the Islamic world that's not how it happened, the event is not transmitted as a narrative of a fact, it's an already complete, prepared book, and the Author placed the final dot after dictating the last sentence, you cannot touch the text anymore. That's why there is no substantive variation between any version of the Quran since the 7th century. To avoid any doubts, the first successor took the version the people closer to Muhammad considered most trustworthy and burned every other version, and everything to this date must be copied from there to avoid any problems, Sunni and Xiite. This means the phenomenon of prophecy and the phenomenon of the holy book are the fundamental events in Islamic history.

Naturally, this became the object of philosophical reflection and for centuries you had exactly what Skybird calls "Muhammetism", a philosophy of prophetology that remained almost entirely ignored in the Occident untill the 20th century.

Now that we finally started to study it and compare it, some are quick to accuse us of anti-Islam and anti-etc.?! What is suggested? That we ignore Islam and let the 25th century investigate it instead? Let's live our normal lives without thinking, using our brains hurt too much? Let's suppress intellectual activity because the conclusions might offend somebody?

Even in the Islamic world Muhammetism was ignored because of the specific conditions under which religious and philosophical activities develop inside the Islamic context. Because of the simple fact the book was already completed, from Day 1 a doctrine was established that outlawed questioning, and allowed only to question the interpretation of the doctrine. You cannot compare and examine, question, if Jihad is necessary AT ALL when the days of tribal wars are gone, you must either accept it or simply ignore the fact Jihad exists and pretend it to be a spiritual struggle for self-improvement.

Scandium picked a Muslim crying over Jihad. Jihad is a fact, are we going to face it or pretend it's irrelevant? You cannot pick some elements from one religion and drop others. That is heretical, if you don't accept the religion as a block, and include Jihad and it's significance and meaning, then it is no longer Islam we're talking about. Compare: When Catholicism is not accepted as a whole block, you get Protestantism, Lutherans, Anglicans, when somebody believes there must be a focus on re-incarnation, you loose Catholicism and get Spiritism. To ignore Jihad and pretend it doesn't mean what it means, it's not what it is, and isn't called what it's called, is to deny Islamic doctrine and therefore heretical.

Anyway, the same ready-book phenomenon does NOT happen in the Christian world. To reach a more or less stable text was already a very complicated problem, so the text itself became the object of discussion. There is no such thing in the Islamic world. Therefore, from the beginning it is formed, with greater ease, an Islamic moral and an Islamic Law, an Islamic jurisprudence, by the direct application of the word of the Quran.

Compare: In the Christian world it took centuries and more centuries to reach a Christian moral and a Christian Law. It was in the 18th century that St. Alphonsus Liguori started the first sistematical formulation of the Christian moral. He was the confessor of Priests so he managed to discover each Priest was teaching a completely different moral, and this in the 18th century! This problem never existed in the Islamic world because everything came organized from inside the principle.

Because of this phenomenon of a unified Islamic Law from the beginning, the Islamic society organized from day one based on a large moral and juridical cohesion, on a very rigid orthodoxy, which means the possibility of free intellectual investigation was problematic in this context.

What was the solution found? The solution was to consider groups of investigators, be them mystical or philosophical, as special human types that conducted their activity inside their own club in such a way that this shouldn't interfere at all in the order of things. This means the deeper discussion activity was considered limited to a specialized circle and the rest of the society didn't had to even understand such things. From then, quasi-monastical orders were formed to discuss with each passing generation those same subjects only for their own eyes and ears and without any tendency of influencing the rest of the society. This right was granted as long as they didn't change the right itself, the moral, because everything was fixated.

This means in most Islamic countries all this mystical and philosophical tradition is totally ignored by the population and in many cases the entire material, the internal discussion, is passed from generation to generation, for centuries, as a simple manuscript that nobody ever thought about copying or editing to the outside world.

In 1930, by an accidental coincidence, French ambassador to Iran, Henry Corbin, became interested in translating this material, and he released it in French first, and later Persian. But as I've said, the Aiatolahs not only stopped this research, but destroyed the translated material.

What do we do? Leave it at that? Cry too bad? Ignore all this history and reality? Deny? Close our eyes?

We need to SOLVE THIS CONFLICT!

In the Occident we reached logic, the Orient also reached it without ever reading Aristotle, Plato or Socrates. For example, in China and India the Vedanta and Bhuddic logics are exactly the SAME logic discovered through entirely different ways.

The Aristotle tradition works with the linear idea of identity, if it's yes, it's yes, if it's no, it's no. Dialectical science developed very little compared to logic, but it's where the conflict between yes and no is present.

In these other contexts it is called Logic the study of what we call identity with its 3 possible denials. If it is, it is, if it isn't, it isn't. If it is and isn't at the same time, that's a dialectical problem, the confrontation of contraries. In the Bhuddist world this is also, however, called Logic. The Bhuddist admits 4 possibilities: what is, what isn't, what is and isn't, and what isn't nor is.

We must not silence, nor listen to the voices who are quick to pull hate, prejudice anti-this and anti-that flags to accuse us because only through this discussion and only if we continue to investigate Islam, pick up from where it was dropped, and reach the same conclusions a Muslim who is interested in his philosophical and mystical material will also reach, otherwise we are doomed to this conflict because Islam is what it is, in essence, nature, name and meaning, and it will not tear down the barriers that separates it from Dar al-Harb if the folks from the Iranian Revolution continue to run the show.

Unless you want to ignore the reality, ignore all this history, unless you want to do like Scandium and his Muslim and pretend it's all an economical issue. All this philosophical difference I shared with you means nothing, it's all because they are poor, rich Muslims don't practice terrorism, rich Muslims integrate, rich Muslims vote for moderate candidates, discussion is the only way.

I'll learn what Islam is to be able to speak with Islam and with the Muslims who dropped Jihad and formed their own new heretical religion. You can go live your normal life and pretend it's all about poverty, the fact Persia has had more philosophers than Europe is irrelevant and what not. But since it's not only through Aristotle that you can develop logic, it's perfectly possible for Muslims to turn Islam upside down not just personally, it is necessary to break the cohesion, the bond that keeps them all glued to each other, and draw the line, on this side Jihadists, on the other side all who despise the entire concept of Jihad, do not accept it, submit to it or believe in it.

The problem is exactly the lack of mystical and philosophical study by the Muslim society in the Muslim world, silencing debates just like they were silenced and kept to minimal in the Islamic world through the centuries will only serve to maintain the status quo.