Originally posted by Rosuav
You're right about the specific rules governing their warfare; on top of this, the Israelites were specifically commissioned to wipe out certain people-groups, and no others. (God specified which groups in a geographical sense, but they weren't being killed simply because they live where the Israelites were going to live - they were being killed because of their practices, which presumably they had all borrowed from their neighbours anyway.) So it's not genocide, but more a judicial execution. You'll find elsewhere some cases where, under certain conditions, an entire town was to be wiped out (I don't know that the law was ever invoked, but the possibility was there); it's the same sort of thing on a larger scale. Very very specific rules govern who was to be executed, and how, and by whom.
Being a Christian myself, I am inclined to agree with your assessment. You must be aware though that many would find this a rather sanitized version of how these verses come across to modern sensibilities.


Originally posted by Rosuav
Not sure how to interpret this. Are words in parens added to improve readability, but aren't in the original (like italics in the King James Bible)?
Heck if I know. The page that allows you access to the whole Qu'ran is here: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/


Comments on translation are available by clicking on links at the top of each chapter. They all lead here:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/qmtintro.html

The three names - YUSUFALI, PICKTHAL, and SHAKIR - represent three different translaters, so what you are getting here is three different translations. I think using all three should give one a relatively good idea what the verse is supposed to mean.