Rest assured that my intent was never to offend anyone's faith here. But I hear Muslims say things that are far, far more offensive to me than anything that I have said on this message board. I know that I cannot blame all Muslims for what some Muslims do, but still I find it silly to take down my post which had an abrasiveness very mild compared to what I hear from most Muslims today.
Masboot, I am sincere, but I am not neutral. How could someone be neutral on such a serious subject as religion unless they had absolutely no information. I am attempting to keep an open mind, but at any one time on any given issue a I probably not completely neutral. I am troubled by some things, and I have come for open honest discussion, perhaps someone will quell those troublesome feelings in me by convincing me of how they see it.
You can say that a Kafr is not a pejorative word, but every time I have heard it it has sounded quite derogatory to me (and i have heard it a lot). Before I knew what it meant I asked a Muslim friend of mine what it meant, and he paused, then told me that it meant "an atheist or something like that." I can only assume that he said this in order not to offend me, and therefor he must have considered the term to be pejorative. Infidel is the English translation of the word kafr
http://www.answers.com/topic/kaffir-2 that is why you only hear non-muslims say it, because muslims say kafr, but NOT because infidel any more of a "bad term" than kafr.
The reason that I did not ask "why he [Mohammad] married a nine year old" was because according to the hadith he did not marry a nine year old, but a six year old. he first had intercourse with her when she was nine. the reason i used the word "sex-partner" was to differentiate between the time that she was merely married to Mohammad and the time that she was having sexual relations with him. i didn't mean to offend anybody by saying what i said, but honestly i didn't know that the word sex was still so offensive. Beyond that, "sex-partner" is a totally neutral term. in my culture a man who has sex with a nine year old is deemed a "child molester." I refrained from using this culturally biased term in describing Mohammad, and instead said "sex-partner" which may sound derogatory to you, but to me is totally neutral.
"We do give people a chance to speak, but there is a line drawn when people have no idea how to speak with civility."
i hate to repeat myself here, but i think that with all of the words coming out of the muslim world today which are largely totally lacking in civility, for you to accuse me of having "no idea how to speak with civility" is completely preposterous. considering what many of your brothers are saying you should be a little bit less likely to jump the gun in being offended.
to those encouraging me to continue searching for the truth: thank you! it is appreciated. I see many good and loving things come from Islam. if you are interested, i have been particularly inspired by Yusuf Islam. when listening to Cat Stevens songs he seems to be deeply searching for answers, and somehow he ended up deciding Islam was the answer, so that has sparked a lot of interest from me!
Salam.
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