I was just wondering if other religions / belief structures advise women to grin and bare an abusive realtionship (physical/mental/both) or if its just and anti divorce catholic thing.
In Islam a woman can divorce her husband for failing to give her sexual satisfaction. As a minimum a man is required to have intercourse with his wife once every 4 days (if she wants it - more than that is ok too lol) and The Quran and hadith are quite specific about the need for foreplay (a man should send messages of lurve first). The is a Hadith (saying or action of the Prophet pbuh) that says paradise is under the feet of the mothers. Unfortunately there are men who forget that thier wives are mothers and that respecting them is an explicit requirement in Islam and far too many Sheiks who tell women to be patient when they should be berating thier husbands. I think those men should have the hairs in thier beards pulled out one by one.

Ok, found what I was going to ask:

So Muslims believe it was actually Ishmael? Can someone tell me how this story is written differently in the Quran (sp?) to portray the different beliefs (i.e. which child was actually the child of promise). Interested to know what it says differently. Thanks guys!

And found this from Niass too that would be interesting to know I reckon:

um, I have another question about Islam... I was driving around earlier thinking about this thread and and wondered how is the begining of the earth told. Like in the bible and Genesis starts with "in the begining was the word and the word was ..." and then continues to tell us about the creation of earth and animals etc and then adam and eve and the tree of knowledge etc...is it similar or the same or completly different?


When I looked back through the posts I also found this:

It does state in the Bible that the Qu'arn was given to Mohammed... again, I need to look up where exactly. But I can't believe that God would give His people so many different religions and then expect us to pick which was divine - they all are.

Is this true? Anyone know? I have never read it....would be interesting to see...

ETA: sorry if anyone has answered these and I've missed it, this thread is getting pretty long lol.
It might take me a while to answer all these questions but I'll try to do it tonight

In regards to Ishamel in The Quran, The Quran is a rather differant text to the Bible. It's not laid out in chronological order and there are many parts that make referance to preceeding texts rather than repeating the stories. I geuss that it is assumed knowledge because The Quran was revealed in a time and place when many people were conversant with Christain and Jewish theology. The belief the the child that Abraham was asked to sacrifice is a scholarly one rather than a revealed one.
The Quran has many passages that make referance to assumed knowledge and draws upon this assumed knowledge to make moral points etc. For this reason there are many works of exegesis (the Arabic word is tafsir) and most good English translations of the meaning of The Quran include extensive notes.

In regards to creation in Islam, we believe that the universe was created in 6 days however these 6 days are allegorical (although I think some believe them to be literal), I believe that there is also a differance of opinion in the order in which things were created. I believe that Genesis states that Allah created light first while The Quran says "the heavens and the earth were joined together as one unit, before We clove them asunder" (which IMO is a fairly neat way of explaining the big bang) There is no set period of time that is regarded as a 'Quranic Day'. The verses referring to 6 days use youm, the Arabic word for day, but the term youm is used in The Quran to refer to a variety of differant periods of time so in The Quranic sense it might be better understood to mean a long period of time (an era or an eon)
I geuss that one significant differance is in our beliefs about the creation of Adam and Eve. We believe that Adam and Eve were both fashioned from clay/earth (once again some see this as long term and allegorical and some see it as literal) and that they shared the same soul instead of believing that Eve was made from Adam's rib (although I believe there is a minority view that holds that Eve was created from a rib). Also Adam and Eve were both equally responsible for eating the forbidden fruit but they were forgiven by Allah/G-d. The concept of original sin is rejected by Islam.
We also reject the idea that Allah/G-d needed a rest on the 7th day and that Allah/G-d created us in his image.
Rather than being a narrative of creation the Quran is more about explaining the lessons to be learnt from contemplating creation and promping us to think about the order of things and who is behind it.

I've also heard that Jesus (pbuh) prophesised the coming of Mohammed (pbuh) but I'm not sure what verse it is. I could probably find out.

I hope that all makes sense. I can try to expand on anything that anyone doesn't understand.
I should end in the traditional Islamic way by explaining that all mistakes are my fault and all the good comes from Allah.