Also, some of the largest veins in the body run through your thighs, and if you hit that, they'll bleed out pretty quickly.

DShiznit: The thing is, the portions of the Qur'an that were written after Mohammed became a political leader (instead of just a spiritual leader), are largely about the justification of war, and rules of conduct for Muslim soldiers. This is why there's such a dichotomy in Muslim beliefs and practices. The radical terrorist types tend to read one half and ignore the other, and the borderline-pacifist types tend to read the other half, and in a lot of ways are more Christ-like than most Christians. (The Meccan and Medinan passages to be specific). I highly recommend reading this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703915204575103481069258868.html

That was an interesting read, elfprince, thanks for that.

...except "their God" is the same God Christians and Jews worship. And from what I understand, Christians and Jews are well respected in some of the Arab lands as "people of the book," because they each have a holy book written about the same God.

Here's the deal on that (as someone who dated-ish a Muslim girl for a year and a half). Christians, Jews (and depending on who you ask, a couple others) are accorded respect in Islam as followers of the same God, and have various rights and protections not afforded to pagans. This even extends to limited intermarriage rights: Muslim men marry women who are "people of the book." Muslim women on the other hand may not marry men who are "people of the book." All that being said, the Muslim understanding of God's character and nature are VERY different from Christianity or Judaism, despite the historic ties connecting all three to the God of Abraham. A fairly high percentage of evangelical Christians will flat out claim that Allah is NOT the God of Abraham based on the magnitude of the differences, but even people like myself who take the historical ties more seriously (Mohammed hoped that the Jewish community would accept him as a prophet), the differences are still significant. The major theological differences surround the issues of the nature of sin, the incarnation, and what precisely constitutes monotheism. If you're actually interested I can explain in more detail the views of each faith on the subject, but those are the basic issues.

I guess my 9th grade World Cultures class was a bit basic.