In July 751, at the Talas River on the border of present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the forces of the new caliphate met those of the Chinese Tang… - Robert Bruce Spencer

Most local imams in Dagestan shun radical views, but they have found it hard to counter the appeal of radical ideas promoted by the Islamic State. Some imams who spoke against radical Islam have been killed.” Why have they “found it hard to counter the appeal of radical ideas promoted by the Islamic State”? To Western leaders such as David Cameron, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Pope Francis, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and a host of others, it is patently obvious that the Qur’an teaches peace and that Islam is a religion of peace. So it ought to be child’s play for these imams in Dagestan to refute the twisted, hijacked version of Islam presented by the Islamic State. Here’s an idea: why doesn’t Barack Obama send Kerry to Dagestan to explain to young Muslims how the Islamic State is misunderstanding and misrepresenting Islam? Or maybe Pope Francis could go there, or he could send some Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic bishop — say, one who knows that Islam is at its core a peaceful religion and who moves actively to silence and ostracize those who say otherwise — to the Islamic State, straight to Raqqa, to explain to the caliph how he is misunderstanding Islam. That would clear up this problem in a hurry. I volunteer to pay the bishop’s airfare.

However, there are so many grammatical errors and repetitions in the Qur’an as it stands that these cannot make the case for the inauthenticity of these two suras. The strongest case against them is based upon their relatively late appearance and clear apologetic intent, along with the fact that even though these passages are meant to establish the Shi‘ite case, the Shi‘ites reject them. Nevertheless, their very existence is noteworthy, as Islam’s theology of the perfection and unchangeable character of the Qur’an did not deter their author from making edits in the holy text; they could be the product of a time when the Qur’anic text was still undergoing revision, and one was not risking one’s life by making changes. If they originated later, that their author would have dared produce them is all the more striking in light of what were then and still are the prevailing beliefs and assumptions about the immutability of the Qur’anic text. In any case, even if they originated close to the time of the publication of Dabestan-e Mazaheb , and the Arabic version is no older than the Persian, they attest to the fact that in some quarters, changes were indeed made in the Qur’anic text, and that text has never been static.

While human nature is everywhere the same and Muslims can, of course, act as tolerantly as anyone else, the example of Muhammad, the highest model for human behavior, constantly pulls them in a different direction.