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Monday, June 8, 2009

So asks Raymond Ibrahim in a terrific article in the Middle East Quarterly:

"There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur'an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam."[1] So announces former nun and self-professed "freelance monotheist," Karen Armstrong. This quote sums up the single most influential argument currently serving to deflect the accusation that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant: All monotheistic religions, proponents of such an argument say, and not just Islam, have their fair share of violent and intolerant scriptures, as well as bloody histories. Thus, whenever Islam's sacred scriptures -- the Qur'an first, followed by the reports on the words and deeds of Muhammad (the Hadith) -- are highlighted as demonstrative of the religion's innate bellicosity, the immediate rejoinder is that other scriptures, specifically those of Judeo-Christianity, are as riddled with violent passages.

More often than not, this argument puts an end to any discussion regarding whether violence and intolerance are unique to Islam. Instead, the default answer becomes that it is not Islam per se but rather Muslim grievance and frustration--ever exacerbated by economic, political, and social factors--that lead to violence. That this view comports perfectly with the secular West's "materialistic" epistemology makes it all the more unquestioned...

He does go on to question it, and does a good job of it, too.

4 Comments

"He does go on to question it, and does a good job of it, too."

And he probably didn't break a sweat doing it either. Mr. Ibrahim's facile dismantlement of Ms. Armstrong's argument is also instructive as to why Ms. Armstrong likely abandoned her former vocation - she obviously didn't read the book.

Spengler, Why Couldn’t Obama’s Speechwriters Find a “Peace” Quote from the Koran? Excerpt:

"The Koran, however, contains numerous warnings not to make peace with non-Muslims, but not a single statement comparable to those in Jewish and Christian sources. This may be verified by searching for the word, “peace,” in any of the several online versions of the Koran, ... There are 49 instances of the word in the Koran, most warning against false peace, ..."

Of course one problem is, in simply taking note of these types of prescriptive and other salient facts, one is immediately accused of being "Islamophobic," unnuanced, a racist, etc. by a multi-culti induced public - foremostly by the left but others as well - that views all "religion" as equally (naive, perverse, deluded, fill in the blank) and in contradistinction to similarly naive conceptions of "secularism."

(E.g., I'm a theist and a Christian who is also a passionate defender of secular forms of governance in the classical lineage of Locke and Montesquieu and am also an anti-religionist, in the spirit of Romans (N.T.) and other Christian texts, including modern Christian commenters such as Jacques Ellul, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many, many others. There's also the commentary of people such as Raymond Aron and others, concerning the subject of secular and ideological religions. But that serves merely as a quick point of reference and indicator only, to reflect upon the nearly total lack of depth when "religion" vs. "secular" conceptions are invoked in a great deal of discourse.)

I'm not sure about that. I agree that in the Bible there is a lot of violence, but that doesn't mean that Jews or Christians are as violent today as some Muslims.

#3 Jewish Beliefs: that's precisely the point. At issue here is not whether your holy book, or mine, or someone else's, has unpleasant things to say. The issue is: how much can we rely on those passages to predict what you will do next?

In the case of Islamists, the answer is: quite likely. Muhammad spread Islam throughout Arabia at the edge of the sword, negotiating when it suited him and breaking his word whenever convenient. But the point is not that he did this; the point is that modern Muslims are told to behave like Muhammad!

Certainly, there are unsavory passages in, for example, the Old Testament; Lot and his daughters come to mind, or Dina and her brothers, or some of the battles of Moses and Joshua, or King David and Uriah. But are modern Jews ever told to emulate any of these people, or to use their lives as a model? The answer is NO.

As Mark Steyn once pointed out, not every Muslim is a terrorist... but an awful lot of terrorists are Muslims. That doesn't mean that we should be suspicious of all Muslims for being Muslims. It does mean, however, that we should stop the silly moral equivalence. Historically and statistically, Jews do not commit terrorism in the name of Judaism, nor Christians in the name of Christianity. But Muslims do perpetrate terrorism in the name of Islam... and that's an important difference.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

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