[nicky g]

But part of the point is that those verses don't make much sense outside of their context. Also that the translators are Muslim does not mean we have to accept their translations; different Muslims make different translations. The Saudis supported the propogation of new translations that took deliberately aggressive and arguably distortive lines for example; I don;t know if the ones you refer to are amongst them. It is ironically notable that extremist Muslims often use the same arguments, translations and interpretations as extremist anti-Muslims. So I don't accept the premise of your question that they are necessarily warlike; at least not ion an expansionist sense. Also there is an argument to be made that it is good that the Quran establishes rules of war, in that it forbids excesses that might otherwise occur.

I think it is a bit much to cite Quranic verses demonstrating the irredeemable belligerency of Islam, and then when I go to a lot of effort to show how those verses do not necessarily demonstrate the agrression they appear to out of context in specific translations, turn around and say "well look at Mohammed's life instead." Can we have one argument at a time? Let's say I think your characterisation of him as something worse than a war-crazed pirate is a little exaggerated. And if we re going to simply use him as an "example", what of the examples of the warrior kings and prophets of the Old Testament? If you take its word, they got up to a lot worse than Muhammed ever did.