Islam 101 - Part 3

Here's part three of my Islam 101 series - the subject this week is the difference between the Qur'an's violence and the Bible's violence. Bear in mind that although I here defend Christianity, I in no way condone its violent passages and do not agree with everything espoused in the Bible. I am an atheist, but I believe that Christianity more often than not is fundamentally good, and has brought much good to the world - far more than Islam.

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THE QUR'AN VS. THE BIBLE

Islamic apologists, after steadfastly asserting that Islam is peaceful in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, may eventually admit that the Qur'an sanctions warfare against unbelievers. But then they will invariably say, "But there is loads of violence in the Bible, too. Christianity is just as bad." But is this true?

They will often quote several passages from the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, to prove their case. However, there are big differences between such Biblical verses and Qur'anic violence. I am going to look at just a few of those passages, but most other passages one could find will be subject to the same principles.

Let us look at three passages from the Old Testament which we are told are "just as bad" as anything in the Qur'an:

"When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you. And when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them." (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)

The context of this passage is easily discernible from the text. War was to be waged only against the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. As jarring to our sensibilities as it is that any merciful God would command such atrocities against anyone, this is different to Qur'anic violence because war was to be waged only against these tribes, which are extinct today. There is no way modern Christians can take these verses as commanding them to commit violence against the rest of the world in a modern context. This is in contrast to the Qur'an, which contains open-ended commands to fight non-believers, with nothing to specify certain peoples or a certain time period, e.g. “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those who are with him are ruthless to the unbelievers, but merciful to each other.” (48:29); "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them." (9:5) etc.

“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you. Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:10-17)

This sounds pretty open-ended like the Qur'an, right? Wrong. The very next sentence reads: "Completely destroy them — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites — as the LORD your God has commanded you.” Again, we can see here that violence was commanded against particular people at that time and only until the Israelites had taken back the land given to them by God. There is nothing in the text which encourages Christians to imitate this behaviour today.

"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.” (Numbers 31:17-18)

This sounds quite a bit like Muhammad's example, and is admittedly pretty vile. But its saving grace is the fact that surrounding verses clearly identify this passage as referring to war against the Midianites only. Also, as with many other such passages in the Bible, it is written in the past tense, and so it is a historical account, not a command for all Christians to follow for all time.

The Old Testament also contains several rules which appear to command the execution of pagans, as well as the stoning of adulterers and homosexuals. However, most Christians today believe that these rulings have been superceded by later covenants, as well as by the teachings of Jesus (e.g. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"), which is why even the most fundamentalist Christians today, such as Fred Phelps, who despise homosexuals, aren't calling for them to be killed (unlike in the Islamic world). Or else they have developed non-literalist ways to interpret such passages.

Perhaps grasping at straws, some apologists even attempt to quote passages that "prove" that the New Testament also encourages violence. Passages such as:

"I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence." (Luke 19:26-27)

However, these are not the words of Jesus but of a king in one of his parables.

"Do not think that I have come to send peace on earth. I did not come to send peace, but a sword. I am sent to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Matthew 10:34-35)

Even if this passage were calling for any literal violence, it would seem to be primarily a jihad against mothers-in-law, and so can't be remotely compared to Muhammad's exhortations to fight all non-believers. As it happens, though, the passage is not literal. The sword is clearly metaphorical; Jesus is referring to the fact that for one to convert to Christianity will often cause division within one's own family. It isn't a command to fight or kill anyone.

And in this we see one of the most important differences between Islam and Christianity: that is, the difference between Jesus and Muhammad. One was clearly a man of peace, who taught that Christians should "love your enemies" and "turn the other cheek", that "blessed are the peacemakers" and that "those who live by the sword shall die by the sword", and who practised what he preached. The other was a warlord who, it is estimated, participated in 27 battles during his career, commanded his followers to commit violent acts in his name, and had his enemies assassinated. No one can credibly argue that Jesus preached jihad or anything like jihad. Those who try to create moral equivalence between the two religions will be found wanting.

And even if Christianity was just as violent as Islam, it is a simple matter of fact that there are no armed Christian or Jewish groups today who are committing violence against non-believers and quoting scripture to justify their actions. By contrast, jihadists quote the Qur'an all the time. Osama bin Laden, to use the most obvious example, has in his communiques quoted Qur'an 3:145, 47:4-6, 2:154, 9:14, 47:19, 8:72 and 9:5. Meanwhile, violent passages from the Bible have never been used to justify violence. Even the Crusaders at their most grasping and venal did not invoke passages from the Bible to justify warfare against non-Christians. Christians may have done violent and even evil things, but never presented on a platform of scriptural backing. That is because violence in the Bible has always been understood by Christians as being descriptive, not prescriptive.

This is also largely because of the influence of centuries of interpretive traditions which have moved away from literalism regarding these passages. For example, Christians have attempted to spiritualise violent Biblical acts such as Joshua's sacking of Jericho by seeing them as symbolic of inner rather than physical destruction. Biblical violence is also seen by many Christians as purely historical. For example, the Catholic edition of the Revised Standard edition of the Bible says that the physical destruction of an enemy in obedience to the deity "must be seen in light of the imperfect stage of moral development reached at that time". Such violence is also often directly rejected, as by Reverend David Holwick of First Baptist Church in New Jersey, who in a sermon about the morally problematic passages of the Bible said: "Too many atrocities have been done in God's name. God doesn't need human armies or politicians to win."

By contrast, there have been no comparable traditions in Islam. While individual Muslims may have similar ideas, no major Muslim sect or leader has ever renounced or apologised for the idea of jihad violence, and throughout the centuries such teachings have been interpreted literally by Muslims, to the point that they are still enshrined in Islamic law today. I will be exploring this further next week.

Next week: Islamic law's attitude towards jihad warfare and why this is not simply a matter of forgotten history.