Qu'ran is available online and searchable, search for the word "slay" for example:

http://quran.com/search?q=slay

"And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers."

Also search "disbelievers."

And on sunnah.com search "stoned."

Seriously, you are picking and choosing. Did you check the Sure before this one?. I will help you out:

[2-190]:Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.

[2-191]:And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.

[2-192] And if they cease, then indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

[2-193] Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah . But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors.

So what's better when all the four verses are quoted? Muslims are to fight and kill until "worship is for Allah" (your [2-193]). (The words "acknowledged to be" aren't actually in the original Arabic verses). Peace once everybody is a Muslim? That's why it's the "religion of peace?" How do you understand the verses?

At least when "al-Masjid al-Haram" remains untranslated it can be considered to be only valid around the Great Mosque of Mecca. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masjid_al-Haram But it's just where "do not fight them" is.

I'm very aware of those passages and others that reflect the religion's violent origins, having actually read the book, or most of it (have you?).

If you were disagreeing with me, did you miss the part of my comment where I said I shared the parent's opinion of Muhammed (and yours as well, I presume)?

I simply was encouraging someone wondering about the Quran to read it himself so he could make up his own mind, regardless of our opinions.

Obviously, in the interest of fairness, similar passages about stoning/slaying can be found in the Tanakh/Old Testament. Luckily, few Christians or Jews take those passages literally today.

Yes, reading the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Quran and comparing them is really instructive. However Quran is just one of the two primary sources (the messages received by Muhammad), you'd have to read Sunnah for the deeds of Muhammad during which he received the messages (the second primary source). It's only there that you'd find the beheadings and stonings by Muhammad. Just like "the New testament" isn't just one of the gospels, but the four gospels and all the other books, including the Apocalypse of John and all the epistles.

Sunnah are also searchable online.

> Quran is just one of the two primary sources (the messages received by Muhammad), you'd have to read Sunnah for the deeds of Muhammad during which he received the messages (the second primary source)

Are you addressing this to me, in response to my comment, or to HN in general?

You said "I was encouraging someone wondering about the Quran to read it himself so he could make up his own mind," well, just reading just the Quran is not enough, as a such a reader would miss all the behadings and stonings of unbelievers by Muhammad and his soldiers that are the part of the primary sources of the religion.

The only laypeople who use the Koran and Hadiths as sources for direct personal understanding of Islam are literalist Salafist/Wahhabist types including ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Islamic exegesis, which has led to the day to day fiqh that governs religious life for the vast majority of Moslems is a very complex field that has evolved over more than a 1000 years and takes years of study to master and is not as straightforward as you are portraying it. The "CTRL-F...gotcha!" approach that you seem to be advocating would be regarded as absurd not only by Moslems, but by anyone who has to deal with the interpretation of complex texts.

A layperson with no knowledge of Arabic and lacking the toolkit for understanding is not going to get very far in understanding Islam using Hadiths and the Koran, and you'd be doubly disadvantaged using an English translation.

An analogy would be the average American citizen, unschooled in law, being asked to derive the Miranda Warning from the Bill of Rights, or providing a reasoned opinion about the scope of the Interstate Commerce clause. Sure, it's great from a Civics perspective to read the Constitution, but if interpreting it was straightforward we'd be able to shutter the Supreme Court.

> The only laypeople who use the Koran and Hadiths as sources for direct personal understanding of Islam are literalist Salafist/Wahhabist types including ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

And Saudi Arabia which finances with billions (?) of dollars the religious education of Muslims around the world? Even in the Muslim religious education in the countries which don't use Sharia the first thing the kids learn is to differentiate themselves from unbelievers.

Then even as the layperson you can easily count how many statements there are in the holy book in which the Unbelievers are "liers" and will be "painfully punished" for which is "fire" etc. It's not written in parables or anything it's completely and plainly explicit.

Ditto for the practices of stoning, beheading in Sunnah etc.

The layperson doesn't have to practice Islam, or know their religious discussions to get the rough idea of the content.

Billions may be overstating it, but you do have a point, Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of that movement and does promote the literalist approach, along with its Gulf neigbours. However, it wouldn't surprise me if Moslem countries carefully watch their madrasah syllabi to make sure that Saudi influence does not infiltrate.

In the case of France, as the article points out, Islamically ignorant, disaffected Moslem youths are easy pickings for Salafists.

Edit: as for the rest you are again ignoring the context in which then verses were revealed, and their practical interpretation.

> it wouldn't surprise me if Moslem countries carefully watch their madrasah syllabi to make sure that Saudi influence does not infiltrate.

But you don't know. As I speak a few languages, I was able to check the instructions on one local language and I was able to see that among all the content that is supposed to be less fundamentally oriented there is this nice "kids, now we will learn who is unbeliever, think about those who you know who aren't Muslim" etc. Then you can actually check what the religious text tell about the unbelievers.

> ignoring the context in which then verses were revealed, and their practical interpretation

Sunnah is the context and they are even searchable online. So please don't scare people from reading Quran. They will surely understand more than when they don't even attempt to see what's inside. They can also search for the context and interpretations elsewhere, even Wikipedia has some:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Muhammad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Campaigns_led_by_Muha...

Interpretations abound:

http://mercyprophet.org/mul/node/1640

"Those who ridicule Prophet Muhammad and defame his life and message drive people away from virtue and deprive the world from stability and tranquility. These people are condemned and threatened by the Qur’an. Allah says in His Glrious Book, : {The ones who prefer the worldly life over the Hereafter and avert [people] from the way of Allah, seeking to make it (seem) deviant. Those are in extreme error.} [chapter of Abraham, 14:3]"

I actually want to be free to "ridicule" that self-claimed "prophet": I don't believe in him. He was only a mortal, and he was not more connected to God than Joseph Smith. And Joseph Smith was a fraud too, even if the guy who believes in him almost became president of US. And gods are just a human invention anyway. Imaginary beings who as the messages stumble to give "Guide us to the straight path The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians)" but never even a single scientific hint for anything, like, why wouldn't any "God" leave the message in his holy texts "you don't understand now, but once later you'll see that the light has always the same speed." The humanity discovered it around a century ago. Imagine that this simple words were in some holy text. Wouldn't it simply prove that the imaginary beings called by us gods even exist? The major problem with Islam is that I'd be dead after saying former sentences in front of most of the "submitted" (which is the meaning of the word "Muslim"). It's true that I'd be dead for the same words in Europe of Middle Ages, but that only proves that we know what we know today because we dared to stop being the "believers" or the "submitted."

Feel free to that, just be aware that your approach lacks any kind of validity and would be regarded as quixotic at best.

Most hadiths (I think that's what you are referring to) have weak veracity and weighted accordingly.

As I stated elsewhere your approach shares a great deal with the Salafist/Wahabist doctrine but, sadly, not a great deal with 1400 years of Islamic thought. Once again, to use the analogy of the US Constitution, your approach is akin to finding a copy of the Constitution in 2015 and trying to produce a functioning government from scratch with no prior knowledge. Sure you'd be able to produce something, but th chances that it would remotely resemble the real thing are slim.

I can read the constitution to get the ideas of those who wrote it just like I can read the Islamic text to get their ideas. To know the exact implementation of the ideas we'd have to study the US law or the law of some other country (and we are sure to see that not all ideas are even implemented in practice). But to learn about the general ideas, reading the original material is actually enough.

And it's actually a good exercise to read both the US constitution and then read Quran and compare the ideas in them.

Let's start with the constitution. I can search through that too.

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.txt

God is never mentioned, religion is mentioned twice:

"no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Fortunately, there are better ways of trying to figure out Islamic exegis is on this issue than randomly searching for words in the Koran: http://www.lettertobaghdadi.com (via http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-is-... )

The list of all signatories is telling. The only one from Saudi Arabia is:

Al-Sayyid Abdallah Fadaaq

"Differences arising with the current Wahabi regime forced him to leave teaching at the Grand Mosque in Makkah like his ancestors, to teach privately from his home in Jeddah"

The Saudis released their own letter:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/17/saudi-clerics-f...

And they definitely avoid to sign many of the claims from the other letter.

And the other letter is bad enough:

"21- Armed insurrection is forbidden in Islam for any reason other than clear disbelief by the ruler and not allowing people to pray."

Imagine that I'm a president of, for example, Turkey, and I just say that I'm an atheist. And that the Muslims should pray in their homes and not in the university (the women weren't actually allowed to cover their head in universities in Turkey since the 1920s, as introduced by Kemal Pasha, I don't know if the current government reverted that recently). From the letter it can be concluded that the Muslims are supposed to organize armed insurrection in Turkey.

"9- It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non-Muslim unless he (or she) openly declares disbelief."

So imagine I say I'm an atheist openly. And that god doesn't exist and that Muhammad just invented what he claimed that came from god. What does the letter imply? That then I'm to face the Islamic treatment of unbelievers?

Quran: 5:33 "Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment,"

In reality, Allah really doesn't exist. Otherwise he would leave us a message or two about the speed of light or the atoms. Instead he supposedly said (hey, Muhammad said so it must be true) that Muhammad's uncle will burn in hell. Now that's really important for humanity. No joke. (the sound of some ears closing singing I can't hear you)

I have news for you possible martyrs: if you go around and get killed, you'll just die. No 72 virgins, no heaven. Try to be nice to the people around you instead, this is the only life you and others have. And you believers, that simple fact is the basic source of the existence of morality, not your religion.

Now imagine I've said all this publicly. There's chance I'd end up like Theo van Gogh. That's why a lot of people are scared to say it. But it's so simple and it's true.

I understand that people find their religion part of their identity. We all have to learn how to respect and recognize everybody's identity but to leave the 3000, 2000 and 1300 years old superstitions behind.