I frequently find that Islamist apologists ( and many atheists) have a cute if deplorable habit - they attempt to rationalize or make trivial the brutality committed in the name of Islam by citing out of context Biblical verses to show that 'all religion is the same' or that the Qu'ran and the Bible are similar.
Here's a good example I'd thought I'd share with you that appeared in the comments section of a Breitbart Article about the scandal of Muslim pedophile rape gangs in Rotherham, UK and the local police and government's deliberate and knowing failure to deal with it in the name of political correctness while over 1,400 young British girls were victimized.
In response to a statement that there's nothing in the Bible that allows this kind of behavior, one 'Dr. Polidori' responded:
"... kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, save alive for yourselves." - Numbers 31:17-18
Sounds pretty damning, doesn't it? At least until you know the whole story.
This verse specifically refers to the Midianites and it is not a guide to behavior towards any other people or wars in the future. Numbers 25 tells how the Midianites, specifically the women, led the Israelites astray into worshiping the idol Baal, and kindled G-ds anger so that He struck the Israelites with a plague, which only ended when Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron, killed an Israelite man and the Midianite woman he brought into his family (Numbers 25:6-9).
That's why the women 'who had lain with man' were to be killed but the ones whom hadn't were spared. Moses was concerned that the Midianite women 'who had lain with men', including Israelites would corrupt the Hebrew nation and lead them into sin and idolatry again.
This verse also implies ('save alive for yourselves') that the Isrealites took the Midianite virgins as spoils and sex slaves. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For one thing, it would have been sinful for the Israelite men to rape the Midianite girls because rape was (and still is) abhorrent and sinful to G-d (Deuteronomy 22:23-28, esp. 25).
And secondly, the Torah, unlike the Qu'ran with its' 'What thy right hand possesses' doctrine (Qu'ran 4:24) specifically forbids such behavior.
In Deuteronomy 20-14, it states explicitly that female captives are NOT to be raped or sold into slavery but to shave their heads and cut their nails ( to make them less desirable to their captors) and are to be allowed 30 days to mourn without being enslaved,molested or coerced in any way - after which they are free to leave or to be married to their captors.
Only a truly perverse mentality would attempt to rationalize what's being done in the name of Islam by promulgating a vile lie about something that was actually an attempt to mitigate the fate of women captured in war and their status as booty.
The usual disclaimer..many Muslims likewise would never indulge in the sort of behavior characterized by Qu'ran 4:24 and numerous other places in the Qu'ran and Hadiths. But the fact remains that there is definitely a religious justification for this treatment of women, especially non-Muslims, and that a substantial number of Muslims adhere to that interpretation of Islam, including many prominent imams, Qaddis, clerics and scholars of both Sunni and Shi'te Islam.
We see this in action every day, and until we admit it instead of rationalizing it, it's going to not only continue but to become even more blatant.
