01-02-2007, 12:48 AM
The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence
There's nothing quite so hypocritical as an Evangelical Christian criticizing the Qur'an for (allegedly) advocating indiscriminate violence. In order to participate in this exercise in self-delusion, one not only has to turn a blind-eye to the unambiguous views of 1,400 years of mainstream Islamic scholarship, but it's necessary to pass over quite a number of explicit verses in the Bible and large portions of Christian history as well. This is discussed in a forthright and learned manner by a Yale University scholar in the following article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature:
The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence
However, in spite of the overall merits of this article, it seems that the author couldn't quell the temptation to take a swipe at the scripture of Islam. After informing us of a view that holds that the Bible is the "most dangerous" of all books, the author opines that "…other books, notably the Qur'an, are surely as lethal". Well this statement is "not quite true", regardless of the author's claim, since even though both the Bible and the Qur'an have been abused and misinterpreted, if one looks at history there's no way to justify the statement that the Qur'an is "as lethal". Indeed, in spite of the bloody activities of a vocal and militant fringe element of Islam in recent decades, the violence committed in the name of Islam over the centuries still pales in comparison to the crimes carried out in the name of Christianity. In medieval times, Muslims had nothing on the scale of the Spanish Inquisition or the Wars of Religion that Europe experienced, nor did Muslims ever put the entire population of Jerusalem to the sword or burn large numbers of heretics at the stake. If we look at the post-Enlightenment world after which many formerly Christian and Muslim nations become secularized, the case against the Bible gets even worse. In these years, the Bible was used to justify everything from race-based slavery, colonial imperialism and, until just very recently, racial segregation and apartheid. Even though Muslims have their share of racists and bigots, and ethnic discrimination and rivalries unfortunately aren't unheard of in the Muslim World, these iniquities have never been justified by appeals to the Qur'an. One should also keep in mind that the Holocaust of European Jewry was orchestrated in the same nominally Christian (not Muslim!) country that produced Evangelical Christianity and the Gutenberg Bible. Likewise, Lebanese Philangist Christians, not Muslims, carried out the largest massacre of civilians in the Middle East in recent decades. Similarly, even though Palestinian suicide bombers have caused some to cast a reproachful (albeit ignorant) glance upon the Qur'an, the fact remains that the Bible is the only scripture that contains a God-approved act of suicide in order to kill enemy civilians (Judges 16:26-30).
The true irony in all of this is that the misguided Muslims who have committed horrible acts of violence in the name of Islam in recent years are following a modern Western influenced re-interpretation of Islam which took form during the late colonial period (i.e. after Christian powers invaded Muslim countries and started to exploit them). This undeniable fact has been documented in a number of books and articles, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
In the end, the actions of a fanatical minority of Muslims today does not prove that the Qur'an is a "lethal" book, rather it only proves that some Muslims have an interpretation of it that flies in the face of over 1,400 years of competent Islamic scholarship. If the Qur'an advocates indiscriminate violence against civilians, isn't it odd that more than a millennium of scrupulous and God-fearing Muslim memorizers, exegetes and jurists failed to realize it?