By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
The February 5 edition of First Teachers featured a discussion of the Obama administration’s decision not to use the terms “Muslim terrorists” and “radical Islam” in describing the assassins of the editors of the French publication Charlie Hebdo and terrorist groups such as ISIS. Several readers have written to add their thoughts to this topic.
J.D.C., a reader from Texas, is convinced that concerns for political correctness distort the way many Americans think about Islam. He writes, “It is not the role of the government of the United States to define what is genuine Islam and what is not. It is even perilous for any non-Muslim to draw this distinction. ‘Moderate Muslims’ commit many horrible crimes, as when Saudi moneybags buy sex slaves from India and Pakistan, but won’t let girls flee burning buildings unless properly dressed. As far as I can tell, what makes a Muslim moderate is that he is in some sort of shaky alliance with the United States, not much more. When Catholic leaders seeking to appear ‘enlightened’ and ‘ecumenical’ pretend that Islam is some sort of kindred religion, or offer up mealy-mouthed excuses for Muslim behavior, it becomes hard to take them seriously.”
W.B. of Virginia sees things similarly. He is convinced that Islam is a “violent religion,” a “cult” that needs to be looked at truthfully, even if we do not like what we find. He writes that “Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. Jesus asks us to forgive our enemies; the Muslim prophet calls upon his followers to kill their enemies. To be a sincere Muslim, one must kill his enemies and advance the rule of Allah throughout the world. When presented with an adulteress woman, Jesus forgave her; Mohammed threw the first stone.
“In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said that He came to redeem the world not through violence (although He made clear He could summon 12 legions of angels to protect Him); Mohammed engaged in bloody battles to subdue non-believers.”
W.B. points to Jesus on the cross, “when persecuted and crucified, He asked the Father to forgive them for they knew not what they were doing; Mohammed prayed for the destruction of other men, his adversaries, including Christian and Jews.”
He points to the following passage in the Koran to underscore his point: “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and the apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement (Sura 56:33).”
W.B. concludes, “In order to be peaceful, the Muslim must disobey his prophet. For a Christian to be peaceful is to obey Jesus. The two religions are antithetical.”
His observations deserve a hearing; we owe it to our students to present them the truth about what motivates Muslim terrorists. What W.B. says is in the Koran is there. But our young people also have to be made ready for the response that they will get from modern Muslims if they bring up these lines from the Koran. Moderate Muslims argue that the passages in the Koran calling for violence against nonbelievers are not representative of Muslim beliefs; that they are “cherry-picked” and “out of context”; that groups such as ISIS are a violent and unrepresentative minority in the modern Muslim world.
Zack Hunt, a recent graduate of Yale’s Divinity School, operates a blog site (zackhunt.net) devoted to modern religious issues. He is a Christian, but his analysis of this issue is much like what one would hear from a moderate Muslim. The February 9 edition of his blog site was entitled “Reading The Bible Like We Read the Koran.” In it he argues, “If we cherry-picked verses from the Bible the way we cherry-pick verses from the Quran, we can ‘read’ the Bible exactly like we ‘read’ the Quran and come to the exact same conclusions about Christianity that we do about Islam being a religion of hate, violence, and oppression.”
He offers as proof “Deut. 3:3-7, Joshua 6:20-21, and 1 Samuel 15:3 . . . all of which sanction the genocide of infidels. 1 Kings 18:40 is clear that we should also kill the infidel leaders of other religions. Exodus 21:1-11 gives us the go-ahead to own slaves.”
Hunt points to Exodus 21:7 which “suggests selling your daughters as a sex slave. And if we really want to prove to God that we submit to His will, Judges 11:29-40 tells us that sacrificing our children is a justified way to demonstrate our faithfulness.”
I checked the passages Hunt cites. He is not misrepresenting them. He may be overstating the case when he says the Bible “offers its own version of Sharia Law,” but he is correct in pointing out that in Lev. 20:9 it states that a child who “curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death.”
What about the New Testament? I think Hunt is being unfair with Jesus’ admonition that we should cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes if they are a source of temptation. It should be obvious that our Lord was speaking metaphorically, to make a point about the seriousness of sin.
But it is hard to make the case that we are dealing with metaphors in the other passages Hunt points to: “Let’s not forget about women and their biblically approved second-class citizenship. We’ve got 1 Cor. 14:34, Eph. 5:22, and Col. 3:18 to keep women silent, in their place, and subordinate to men. Oh, and 1 Cor. 11:6 is clear that women need to keep their heads covered lest they make a disgrace of themselves….And just in case you were still feeling timid about that whole owning other human beings thing, Col. 3:22, Eph. 6:5, and 1 Peter 2:18 offer all the justification you need to keep your slaves in line. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of verses that bear a striking resemblance to the passages we rip out of the Quran to denounce Islam.”
Is Hunt being unfair? Or is it that his observations divert our attention from the central issue in this matter? Isn’t it true that the major question for our time is not the number of troubling passages can be found in the Bible in comparison to those in the Koran, but how many modern believers are acting upon them? We do not find large numbers of modern Christians and Jews using the Bible as a justification for stoning women for adultery, legalizing slavery (including women as sex slaves) or killing non-believers. On the other hand, the number of Muslims inspired by the Koran to call for these things is large enough to be throwing the world into turmoil.
More to the point, Christian and Jewish theologians would rise up in unison to correct co-religionists who quoted from the Bible to justify the slaughter of nonbelievers, slavery, or the abuse of women. So far there has not been such a groundswell from Muslim religious leaders. It is an issue that must be addressed.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.
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