@Nordic Entrepreneur The context is in the first paragraph. Just as you can't understand Christianity, without Jesus Christ. Buddhism without Buddha, Confucianism without Confucius. You can't understand Islam if you don't understand who Muhammad was.

@Nordic Entrepreneur Islam is not merely a religion. It is a socio-political ideology with an embedded legal and governing system, and its historical and doctrinal foundations are inseparable from violence and coercion. That isn’t conjecture—it’s baked into the source material. Full stop. That reality shouldn’t shock anyone who has actually examined the life of its founder. Muhammad is not just a spiritual figure; he is presented within Islamic texts as a political ruler, military commander, lawgiver, and moral exemplar. His actions, rulings, and conduct are explicitly held up as a model for Muslims to emulate. Former Muslim and Islamic scholar Ali Sina summarized that record bluntly—based not on Western polemics, but on Islam’s own canonical sources. His critique is harsh because the source material is harsh. Sina described his this way: "𝑴𝒖𝒉𝒂𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒅 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝒏𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒔𝒕, 𝒂 [𝒎𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓], 𝒂 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒔 𝒎𝒖𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒓, 𝒂 𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕, 𝒂 𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒐𝒈𝒚𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒕, 𝒂 𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒓, 𝒂 𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒕 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓, 𝒂 𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒎𝒂𝒏, 𝒂 𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒊𝒔𝒕, 𝒂 𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒓, 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒓." To put his money where his mouth is, Sina famously offered $50,000 to anyone who could refute his conclusions using Islamic texts alone—Qur’an, Hadith, and accepted biographies. No spin. No apologetics. Just the sources. That challenge has stood for years. The money remains unclaimed. People can insist Islam is “peaceful” all they want—but when doctrine, law, and historical precedent say otherwise, slogans don’t override evidence. Ideologies should be judged by what they teach, command, and produce—not by how uncomfortable that judgment makes their defenders. And if that standard feels unfair, remember: it’s the same one applied to every ideology that demands power over others.

@Far Seer lets talk about the Crusades because it provide a counter point. In Western academia, popular media, and much of the Islamic world, the Crusades are routinely portrayed as wars of naked aggression—bloody campaigns waged by fanatical Christians against an otherwise peaceful Muslim world. While the Crusades were undeniably brutal, this narrative is historically incomplete and fundamentally misleading. They are better understood not as an unprovoked Christian assault, but as a delayed Western response to centuries of Islamic jihad and territorial expansion. Muslim rule in the Holy Land began in the mid–7th century during the Arab conquests under the second “rightly guided” caliph, Umar, following the capture of Damascus and Jerusalem. These conquests were violent, but after the initial jihad, Christian and Jewish communities were permitted to survive under the restrictive system of dhimmitude. While second-class status was imposed, Christians were generally allowed to continue pilgrimages to their holy sites—an arrangement that proved economically advantageous to the Muslim authorities. This fragile equilibrium began to collapse in the 11th century when control of the Holy Land passed from Arab rulers to Seljuk Turks amid internal Islamic civil wars. The Seljuks pursued a far more aggressive policy. Throughout the latter half of the century, they pushed violently into Byzantine territory, seizing Antioch and much of Anatolia. In 1071, the Byzantine army was decisively crushed at the Battle of Manzikert. The renewed jihad that followed brought widespread abuse, enslavement, robbery, and slaughter of Christians across Asia Minor and the Levant. Christian access to Jerusalem itself—particularly to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, rebuilt under Byzantine patronage after its destruction by Caliph al-Hakim in 1009—was increasingly threatened. It was in this context that Pope Urban II issued his appeal in 1095, calling on Western Christians to aid their Eastern co-religionists. This call, framed as an “armed pilgrimage,” was not originally conceived as a doctrine of Christian holy war. Only later did the idea of crusading evolve into a permanent institution with the emergence of military orders such as the Knights Templar. Notably, the most zealous Crusaders—the Franks—came from regions that had endured centuries of jihad and Muslim raiding along the Franco-Spanish frontier. They knew from lived experience what Islamic expansion entailed.

@Francesco Dell'Anna Not exactly. Widespread firearm ownership reduces the likelihood of civil war, not increases it. Why? Because an armed citizenry hangs over government power like a Sword of Damocles. It’s a constant reminder that authority ultimately answers to the people. When citizens are armed, politicians know there’s a hard limit to how far they can push before consequences stop being theoretical. That reality encourages restraint far better than any strongly worded press release or ballot box promise. In short: an armed society isn’t itching for rebellion—it’s insurance against tyranny. And like all good insurance, its real value is that you hope you never have to use it.

@Francesco Dell'Anna I can see why someone might think that—if they ignore one rather inconvenient reality here in the U.S. Out of the 100+ million firearm owners in this country, well over 95% are Republican, libertarian, or at least conservative-adjacent. In other words, the people who own the guns are not the political Left. The folks pushing to gut constitutional protections are banking on the military to do their dirty work for them… against the very population that’s armed. Minor problem with that theory: most of the military votes Republican. There’s a massive cognitive disconnect baked into leftist thinking here. First, the fantasy that “hunting rifles are useless against a modern military,” as if guerrilla warfare hasn’t been the dominant model of resistance for the last century. Second, the equally magical belief that American service members will just shrug and obediently enforce whatever authoritarian nonsense comes out of D.C., no questions asked. History, voting data, and basic human nature all say otherwise. The Constitution wasn’t written with the assumption that power would always be benevolent—and the Second Amendment wasn’t designed for duck season. It was designed as a reminder: government rules by consent, not force… and it forgets that lesson at its own peril.